Who's my smart girl?

Jacelyn is! I have been buying a ton of the first reader books for her. There are a lot of series out there, like the one below (one of her favorites):

The last week or so, I have changed up our bedtime reading. I will read her one or two books, and then she will read me one of her first reader books. I told her teacher this, thanking her for what she does and whatnot, but not much was made of it. I think she might not have believed me, but that's ok. Every parent thinks their child is a genius, and some of us are prone to exaggeration.

Yesterday I was sitting in the carpool line, waiting for one of the aides to bring Jacelyn to the car. Instead of an aide, Jacelyn's teacher comes bounding out to the car, and you can tell that she's excited about something. She opens the door and starts putting Jacelyn in, and tells me that Jacelyn read out loud, by herself, to the class. She is apparently one of the first kids to do this. She got a certificate for being an early reader, and she got to get a toy out of the prize box (she chose a plastic lizard). Jacelyn was clutching a Dick and Jane collection in her hands, the book she read out of. "She read 21 pages of this book to the class by herself!" Mrs. Myers announced proudly. She let Jacelyn borrow the book to read to us. She is also going to read for the principal, Sister Patricia, today.

I was so proud. I sniffled a little bit, I admit it. I told Jacelyn I would buy her that book if she wanted me to. I think Sunday I am going to take her to the bookstore and let her pick out a few new things. I want to encourage her to be a reader. Like Stephen King says, anyone can talk about the weather, but as a general rule readers can go on from there.

We are going to keep doing what we're doing - one or two stories from me every night, and then one from her. We have been talking lately about buying the first Harry Potter in paperback and reading a chapter of that each night. She's all for the idea, even after I told her there were no pictures.

She's doing so well, and I am so proud of her. Her class has actually had homework lately, although it's not called homework. Generally it's a writing worksheet, and her teacher writes at the top "For Practice at Home. Please return". I'm cool with it, though. I think they are prepping them for kindergarten, because the kindergarten gets 15-30 minutes of homework daily (except for Friday - Sister doesn't let the teachers assign homework on Fridays). I'm excited for her.

That's it. I hope everyone enjoyed the deluge of pictures I put up yesterday. Since I was at work until almost 10:00pm, I had time. I hate meetings. I clocked in yesterday at 7:53am, took probably a two hour lunch to pick up Jacelyn and drop her at home, then did some stuff around the house, came back to work, and clocked out at 9:48pm. I'm tired!