Report Card time

This is what Sammy's teachers wrote on his latest report card:

Sammy is a happy and loving child who is a joy to have back in class.  His gentle demeanor is always appreciated.  Socially, Sammy likes to play with his classmates on the playground and gets along well with them.  While in class, Sammy works independently and concentrates on his work through completion, even when there are distractions around him.  Sammy can often be seen working in Practical Life and his favourite activity is the cracker-pounding lesson.  After crushing and eating the cracker, Sammy will meticulously wash, dry and put the material back on the shelf.  In math, Sammy is developing a firm grasp of numbers 1-10 and in language, a knowledge of letter sounds a, m, b, t, and f.  Sammy continues to be a wonderful addition to our class and we anticipate a great year of development for him.  Welcome back, Sammy!

Mommy had a little laugh-cry (happy tears) when she read this because right before report cards were distributed, Sammy had been letting me know that he does the cracker slice at school but with no other details.  In fact, there is a cracker-pounding and a apple-slice activity, both of which Sammy likes doing, so he just combined the names of the activities.  The report card explains it all!  The teacher told me at the parent-teacher conference that Sam is so focused on an activity, he acts as if there is no one else in the room.  Mrs Feven also mentioned a time at the playground when she was caught smiling by one of the little girls in her class and was asked, "What are you smiling at?''  She then realized she was smiling because of our little Sammy.  Sam was on top of a play structure shouting for his classmate Kayin and because he rarely speaks outloud, she was surprised that the voice she heard came from Sam and was happy that he was enjoying himself so much on the playground.  (Thanks Mrs Feven for looking out for our little guy!)

I have included Sammy's school pictures here.  The one with the blue background was taken June 2011 so there is not much difference from this year's picture.  School pictures were actually taken October 2010 but we were in Canada at the time and retakes weren't taken until June 2011.  I had tried to prep Sam before school and told him there was a man who was going to take his picture at school today and to remember to smile.  The first thing he told me when I picked him up that day was, "I didn't smile."  This year, I was scheduled to read to Sam's class on picture day so I stayed at school while the pictures were taken.  Sammy was pretty upset when it was time to take pictures and I think my presence made it a little bit worse.  I asked him why he was so sad and he responded, "Because there was something on my eyeball."  When Sam brought the pictures home last week, I said, "Oh, do you remember you were sad on picture day?"  And he said, "No, I was happy for the picture."  It's good to know there is no post-traumatic feelings about picture day.