Kayla 6 years 11 months

Kayla loved kindergarten. Now she is in first grade and her baby sister is in preschool. Kayla had a really good friend she since we have been in the neighborhood move away and that was a tragedy for her. She tried to tell us she has no friends at school but we didn’t believe her and her teacher says she has many friends she plays with. I had the opportunity to work in her classroom and watch the children at recess. One thing I noticed during recess is that the boys were doing physical activities in fairly large groups and keeping the girls out. The girls were in small-groups or even just one-on-one. What little contact there was between the boys and girls was usually teasing or chasing. Kayla was able to play with both boys and girls, but mostly plays with girls. She is one of the most popular kids in her class and gets invitations to other children's homes for parties and other activities. She really has a good group of friends both at school and in the neighborhood and she gets along well with them. We have tried to encourage these friendships with more play dates at home on the weekends. Sometimes we will even go on an outing and allow her to bring a friend along. The only issue that has really come up with Kayla’s behavior is at school sometimes she will over-react to stressful situation and can become anxious, moody or slightly depressed. With encouragement, she usually seems to come out of it before the day end. We don’t see this really at home so we are just keeping an open line of communication with her teacher and trying to keep on top of it if the issue comes up. Kayla continues to be a big help with her sister. She models such good behavior for her and we are so proud of her.

Kayla continues to excel with her reading and language skills. She is able to hold her own in conversations with adults, and uses some surprisingly difficult words in her speech. She also is beginning to use this vocabulary in her writing for school Kayla learned the letters and their sounds very quickly in kindergarten, and started to read some easy rhyming books in the latter half of the year. In first grade, she really seems to be taking off, and is reading first and even second grade books. We continue to go on outings to museums, cultural centers, nature centers, etc. Sometimes, if Kayla has a particular interest in something, we'll buy a book from the museum shop to bring home and read it aloud together. Since Kayla already has good phonological awareness and has learned to decode, we figure the best thing would be to find fun and challenging new books for her to read with our help. Kayla is doing above average with first grade math - learning and understanding mathematical problem solving, understanding of data and number concepts - but her favorite subject seems to be science. We are so pleased with how well she is doing in school and so we will just continue to do what we are doing now, it seems to be working so why ruin a good thing.


Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences approach has additional domains such as musical ability. Kayla has always enjoyed listening to and making music and singing from a young age. Around 3ish we got an electronic keyboard and ever since she has played on it. We found a neighbor who teaches piano and so we have Kayla going to see her once a week for lessons. We like this teacher because she is teaching Kayla to read music, to use correct fingering on the piano as well as to sing some of the songs by sight reading of the notes. Piano and voice lessons all rolled into one - and best of all- Kayla seems to love it! We feel it is important to encourage this behavior as she enjoyed it at a young age and it just seemed a great age to take it to the next level. Sometimes Kayla cheats at games when she can get away with it. Sometimes when she gets caught, she gets upset and doesn't want to keep playing the game. We realize that Kayla hasn't developed a strong sense of morality at this age yet. We figure games are a good place to begin learning right and wrong, so we don't get upset, but we generally call her on the cheating and insist on playing by the rules.