November 22, 2005 - Tuesday
I went to Harry's first kindergarten parent-teacher conference today. I took Harry and he sat in the corner of the room and played with legos. It was scheduled as a 10-minute meeting and was in the middle of the day, so Harry's mother (with an hour commute) did not attend, but I did get her on the cell phone so she could listen in. I asked Harry if he was nervous. He didn't seem to know what I meant. "Mrs. Dellasanta is going to tell me everything you do at school" I said. He still didn't seem to understand what there was to be nervous about.

And there was nothing. He's a good boy and a good kindergarten student. Most of the conference was spent looking through a journal that the kids work on every Monday. They draw picture about what they did over the previous weekend and write a sentence about it below. We'd had no idea Harry was doing this, the coy boy, and it was fabulous. We've seen his drawing ability improve in the pictures that he brings home, but this was even better. Plus we saw his progress writing words and sentences (spelling mistakes apparently aren't scrutinized and I found that interesting from a learning theory perspective).

After the conference Harry and I headed unstairs to the library and the Scholastic Book Fair. Harry had put two books on his wish list and this was the day we could go buy them. Charmingly, there was one book for him, the Official Guide to the Bionicle, and one for me, a naturally simplistic little book about six current football players (I tend to watch football in the pool and the boys think it's my favorite sport - really it's because I'm in an office pool). I told Harry it was awfully nice for him to think of me and find me a book, but also tried to think of a way to get out of spending money on a book that I really had no interest in. But it was only $3.99 it Harry was thinking of me/others. I just couldn't rationalize not getting it.

Later in the afternoon, after we'd picked up Jeremy from school, we all went to the library. As we were checking out, I saw another kid using a library card and it occurred to me that Harry was probably old enough now to get one himself. So, he did and we checked out his dinosaur books on his card. He seemed very proud.


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