Just a quick update on the goings on in softball this fall.

Perri has started Practices, it’s been two weeks and we have had 7 practices. We go every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday for and hour and a half. YEESHHH! If it seems like a lot, it is.

Anyway, She is on a team that we really like. We know the coach from last fall and she knows most of the girls either from school or from other teams she was on. So that’s good. The team color is WHITE! The girls had a choice between purple and white and they chose white. And I’ll tell you why……They don’t do Laundry!! SO the team name is ” WHITE LIGHTNING” Good name, bad color!

Perri has really come along way since she started playing and other than running at SUPER SLOW SPEED, which she thinks is SUPER FAST SPEED she does pretty good.

She is in the 10U division, that is all the girls are 10 and under. Which scared me at first, I just pictured all these really big 10 year old girls towering over her and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that to her. But as it ends up, all the girls from the 8U division for the most part are trying out 10U this fall to see how it goes, so most of the girls on her team are her size and some are a little bigger.

Some of the rules are different. You can steal home, and we all know you can get a home run just on errors alone, so this could be really good or really bad, we’ll have to wait and see. Also the bases are further apart, and the pitching mound is further away. They also get to slide which I must say I think is Perri’s best skill in the game. That girl can slide! her cosch has her slide to show all the other girls how to do it. NO FEAR!  The list goes on and on , in the differences in rules so I will spare you all of the details. OH! OH! OH! one more difference, they have hand signals! our team at this point has three signals. One for bunting, one for stealing the base and one to take a pitch ( meaning, let the pitch go, don’t swing at it) I just learned that.

The season will start on Sept. 6th with opening ceremonies and her first game, I will update my blog and let everyone know how she does and hopefully I can figure out how to put pictures on here. 

To be continued……..

So Perri has had quite the first week of school. She got her test scores back as I wrote about in the previous post and yesterday she got a letter in the mail from the Temecula Valley Unified School District office (TVUSD)  Stating that she has been accepted into the GATE program for her third grade year. We haven’t told her and don’t think we will right away.

The first sentence of the letter says ( which I think is kind of funny):

“Your child Perri Sparano, has met the requirements specified by the TVUSD for Identification as Potentially gifted and talented”. POTENTIALLY…HA! I got a laugh out of that. I guess they don’t want to come right out and say if she is or isnt  gifted and talented. They reserve the right to change thier mind I guess.

So the way it works and the reason we aren’t telling her is because they integrate it into her regular class work,  they don”t have a seperate class for the gate students, she will stay in her same class with her same teacher but they will change up the lesson plan to suit her. This is what the letter says.” Depending on the strengths of the child and the cirriculum being covered, teachers will incorporate depth, acceleration,novelty and or complexity into the lesson to adequately challenge the gifted student”. It also says that the kids are often not aware that what they are doing is “different” from that of thier peers. thats why we don’t want to tell her. I don’t know if she would use it as an excuse to complain that it’s too hard but better safe than sorry. We will eventually tell her, but I want to see how she does first.

Perri is potentially gifted and talented in the following areas:

out of 9 boxes, she has 5 marked, they are

Itellectual Ability

Specific Academic

Creativity Ability

Language Arts

Math

The other areas that were not marked were:  Leadership

                                                                      Visual & Performing Arts

                                                                      High Achievement

                                                                      Reading

I don’t know why the box for reading wasn’t marked or leadership but I guess they get all the answers out of the test she took and they can read the results better than I can because I never saw the test, we just knew she passed. The test I am talking about is different from the test I told you about in the last post. She took the GATE test last year in 2nd grade and we knew she passed but never saw the results.

Well, that’s it. We returned the letter saying we wanted her to be enrolled into the program, now we just wait I suppose to see if the teacher says anything to us. I will have a chance to talk to her this coming week about it at the “Back to School Night” so I will mention it to her but I think as soon as it takes affect she will contact us somehow to let us know how she is doing. and I will keep you all posted.

So, I haven’t written on here in forever, I don’t even know if any will read this because it’s been so long. BUT….Yesterday, I received a very nice surprise in the mail from the school, I should say, I was surprised to get the letter and a little surprised at what it was but in some way I always knew what it would say.

So if you remember last spring I wrote about STAR testing that the kids do in school, and the things that the second graders gave up because of the STAR testing, or I should say what I didn’t get because of STAR testing and it being too taxing on the kids. I wanted a second grade performance, like all the grades do. We didn’t get it because of the testing. I wanted to see Perri sing out loud in her performance, I love stuff like that and it didn’t happen because LET’s ALL SAY IT TOGETHER…”Because of STAR testing!”

So yesterday in the mail come the results of the STAR test, this I never even thought of, RESULTS?! I didn’t think we would ever see them, or I should say it never crossed my mind if we see them or not. SO, apparently we get a print out of her results every year ( ya learn something new everyday).

My baby did good!! I was a little shocked, but I knew all along she was smart, so I have to brag. So this is how they break it down.

The test is on Math( place value, addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions,division,algebra, geometry,statistics, data analysis and probability). they break down each area in the test and score them with a percentage, they do the same with the English Language Arts portion of the test which includes ( Word analysis, Vocabulary, reading comprehension,literary response, written conventions,writing strategies) All of this at a second grade level.

 So there were 130 questions on the entire test Perri only missed 7.Her math scores were thru the roof and her English language Arts scores were almost as high. Out of the ten areas she scored 100% in 5 of them and no less than 93% in all the others. Except on area she scored a 83% .WOOHOO! My baby did good!

So let me off set this by saying that she went to a birthday party on Saturday and there they played a game ( don’t know the name) but there were 5 items placed in paper bags, they passed around the bags and you had to guess what was in the bag and write it down. One of the items was a hair brush, perri wrote down that it was a pencil.

So the long and the short of it is. My baby gets 100% in a test that has algebra and geometry but she cant tell the difference between and hair brush and a pencil when it’s in a paper bag.

We are so pround of her! she loves school and we can’t be happier for her that she does so well and I know someday it will all pay off for her.

She has started school, loves her new teacher and has gotten up early both days to make sure she is ready to go.