Revolting Development

There are behavior charts in Maria and Veronica's classroom and I think I mentioned it last year when Maria was in Kindergarten, she loved it and was always on PINK which means SUPER STUDENT and now Veronica is in Kindergarten and she is on PINK every day and Maria is NOT.  It's harder, we have figured out, for two reasons.  The first thing is that I think there is just not as much impetus for a first grade student to be SUPER than for a Kindergarten student.  Veronica is excited to be there every day and she loves her teacher so much and she just wants to do right by her and the whole school.  Veronica told me the other day, did you know Jesus loved us so much that he DIED?  I said yes I did and she said well that is why I can just BE GOOD.

In first grade it gets a little more complicated, I am finding.  Maria certainly still cares about the fact that Jesus loves her so much but she just doesn't care as much as she did last year.  She certainly doesn't care about getting on Pink.  She has been on green (ready to learn) or maybe sometimes blue (good choices) but she just - everything has to be aligned exactly right for her to be on Pink, it's rare.  I don't care so much, she is doing well academically, things are good but this week she was on RED TWICE!  TWICE!  The first time, I got an email from her teacher saying that she didn't know if it was the weather or what but for the first time, she had more than half the class below green.  I asked Maria what color she was on and she burst into tears, saying "I don't want to tell you!".  I figured maybe she was on yellow or orange but hell no, she was on RED!  I said well you are not going to be in trouble for the first time it happened, Maria, and especially because it seemed like the whole class was having a problem.  That was on Wednesday and then Thursday she was on pink and Friday?  Back on RED!  Sheesh!  I made up these little quick prayers she could say when she felt like she was going to talk or whatever, like "lord I feel like I'm going to get in trouble, please come help me on the double".  I mean, I was trying!  I was extremely shocked when she did it again and this time she ran in the hallway!  What the heck?

So she was 'grounded' on Friday and we said she can try again this week, I mean, what else do you do?  Today I took the girls to the pumpkin patch and we had a high old time.  Here's a cute picture: