Peyton's first parent-teacher conference

I was a little nervous this morning as I walked into Peyton's classroom to meet with Mrs. Cole.  She politely pulled up a child's chair to the small child's table while Peyton played anxiously with blocks.  I could tell Peyton was uneasy about me meeting with Mrs. Cole.  She kept asking why.  She even asked Mrs. Cole why I was still there.  It was definitely Peyton's domain and she respected Mrs. Cole as the authority.  She deferred to Mrs. Cole multiple times as if I was not there.  It was real funny.

Anyway, here are the highlights of the meeting:
- Peyton is a "delight"
- She is extremely social and thoroughly enjoys her friends
- She has trouble recognizing her name.  I dug into this a little more because at home she recognizes her name all the time and she also finds her cubby hole at school without help.  After we talked about it some, we both realized that the example Mrs. Cole gave was when they hold up the name of who will be line leader.  Obviously, Peyton thinks that line leader is a coveted position so she raises her hand each time regardless of who's name was shown.  She will be a leader!
- Her portraits of the family are well drawn and show multiple body parts.  We need to work on the body portion of the drawing.  Her figures have large heads, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, hands (coming straight from the head - those need to "drop" as Mrs. Cole said), legs and feet that show walking.  All good signs.
- Still having trouble with the color yellow.  This weekend I bought her like 4 outfits that all have the color yellow in them. 
- We need to work on letters and numbers.  Mrs. Cole thinks that she will learn these over the course of this next year with no problem, but it doesn't hurt to work on it at home.  She said that there is a fine line between readiness and learning.  The child has to be ready to learn and Peyton will soon become competitive realizing that her friends know something she doesn't.
- She said she has seen an improvement in Peyton's sulking when she doesn't get her way.  I said we were working on it at home as well.
- Overall, Mrs. Cole thinks she's right where she needs to be and there are no red flags.  I did ask about the slight speech issue I've noticed and she gave me a referral number to call and have Peyton screened.  I figure that we might as well check it out to make sure she does or doesn't need any additional help.  The good news is that the speech therapist comes right into the room and plays with the kids.  The class has no idea that it's special. 

So, our big girl is growing up so fast.  I'm glad our first parent-teacher conference is done.  What stress!

Here is our line leader with Mrs. Cole.

They have to line up on the wall and wait for us to get them.  The girl on Peyton's right is Jacqueline.  They are really good friends.