Parent Teacher Conferences

Last night was Parent Teacher Conferences with Tessa's teacher.

Matt and I had an early appointment, the second one of the evening at just 4:10. That was nice. When we got there Ms. McKee was already meeting with another parent. We stood in the hall and looked at the bulletin board outside Tessa's classroom.
Each child had written a paper about what they were thankful for. It was absolutely hilarious.
First off, they must have done the assignment just before lunch, because every single child in class wrote that they were thankful for food at least once. Tessa wrote it twice, separated by just one sentence, lol.
Some kids wrote individual foods they were thankful for - I believe Tessa was thankful for cheese and eggs. Interesting, because she doesn't actually like eggs...
One was thankful for his 'solle' - which I interpreted as 'soul'
One was thankful for the internet - a child after my own heart.
Tessa has horrible handwriting - one of the 2 or 3 worst in the class - but her spelling is perfect and her punctuation is great.
Most of the spelling was very phonetic - like 'skool' for school. Punctuation was all over the place - one had a perfectly circle, very dark period after. every. word.
We laughed - almost hysterically - until I noticed a couple other parents (from different classes) were in the hallway with us. Then I weakly said "they're so cute..." so we didn't look like we were making fun. Luckily, that's when we were called in.

Ms. McKee had nice things to say about Tessa - she seems to like her. Who wouldn't? She's charming, for sure.
She talks too much in class (no idea where she got that from...)
She's very, VERY social - friends with everyone.
She's super smart - so far everything they've learned has come pretty easily to her.
Summit has a heavy focus in Math and Science - that's one of the main reasons we chose to send her there. They have two Math homework sheets each night. One tests conceptual learning with story problems, etc. That one she always does perfectly.
The second homework sheet is timed problems. She has a bit of a hard time with that one.
Summit uses Saxon math, and timed tests are a big part of that. They have to figure 25 problems in 2 minutes - she has a hard time with that. We practice at home quite often, and the problem is not that she doesn't have time to do the sums, but that she is distracted. She'll answer 4 or 5, then stop to look around. It's maddening to watch! We've tried everything - threatening, bribing, begging, yelling...
When she wants to, she gets all 25 problems done. When she doesn't, she misses 5, 6, 7 - sometimes more.
Ms. McKee told us that eventually they'll be expected to do 100 problems in 5 minutes. That's going to be tough. They're almost done with addition, now, and are beginning to move on to subtraction.

She had all As, with one B (in Math).
Ms. McKee said she is not worried about her understanding - only that she needs to work a little more on getting the timing down.

We are SO proud of our smart girl, and so happy with her school.