First Meeting with Mrs. M

We had our first parent:teacher conference this morning. I was a bit flustered and a few minutes late because Daniel had, for the third time this week, decided to stick his hands down his pants after he'd pood, then smear it all over his bed, wall, and self. Stinky poo everywhere. I can only hope that my neighbours had their baby monitor turned off as they'd have heard some rather rude words coming out of my mouth this morning.

Anyway, we met Mrs M. at Jack's school and we saw some of his work and discussed his progress. They commented on his good manners and friendly personality. She said she loved that he'll just come over to you and tell you a story. Tell lots of stories actually. And he concentrates at circle time and he's not aggressive with other kids and he's generally doing GREAT. I knew all of this already (I have lived with him for 4 years after all), but it's so NICE to hear someone else tell you how amazing your child is.

One thing I need to do is more numbers (1-20 by next summer is the goal) and name-writing and using scissors etc. But she gave me some wonderful ideas on how to make it fun, instead of making him sit down and just write it all out which he finds tedious (boring even for us, hey).
Here's some things she suggested:

• Give him M&Ms after dinner and let him separate out the colours and count them as he eats them. Trouble is, I hate M&Ms (hint to English friends - send Smarties! Please! On second thoughts - it's probably not allowed by Customs is it?)
  
• Show him numbers around the house - on the front door, on food packages etc.
• Teach him my phone number and how to ring it
  
• Have him cut out favourite pictures of toys from magazines & glue them in a book.
• Have him tell me a story and I'll write it down word-for-word in a book, so he'll get to recognise words he's actually spoken
  
• Play with his food - let him make shapes and count his food items on his plate

That's all I can remember right now.

I'd love to hear more suggestions any of you might have because my idea box is empty. It's 35 years since I was at elementary school and all I can remember is that we played British bulldog a lot and tried to avoid eating the semolina that stuck to the bowl, even when you turned it upside down and shook it.