Writing Sample & School update

I'm very happy to report that I have nothing to report! 
The first month of school has gone by with very little fanfare.  Cate has even said "I'm coming back" a couple times already as we drive away from carpool.   She is doing well in her behavior ratings and has gotten greens (good behavior) all except one day - as I write this I am at the same time breathing a sigh of relief and hoping I didn't just jinxed myself.  We have had to make one accommodation for her so far - she is only doing 5 spelling words per week instead of the 10 the rest of the class has to test on.  Cate just can't handle more than 5 right now - the whole concept of a spelling test is a little hit or miss with her.  Home work is already taking about 30 minutes for us right now because we have to add in some reading practice on top of the teachers spelling and math assignments. 

We are doing pretty good 5 words - we follow the teacher's "homework" for studying them which includes reading and spelling out load on Monday, writing 3 times each on Tuesday, sky writing on Weds, trying to write with the work covered on Thurs, test on Friday.  She has been getting 3/5 so far every week because she is transposing letters.  Which is weird because she never does that at home even when I give her practice tests - at home she might give me the wrong vowel or give up on the word before she says the last letter but never transposes.  We'll keep trying though. 

Our biggest challenge right now is counting.  Her class goal is to count & write numbers to 120 by the end of the quarter.  Cate can only count to 12 without any mistakes or help.  Get her in the teens and all bets are off - we think part of it is speech related because the sounds she makes for the numbers are very similar.  The rest is that she just doesn't care - she will name the number correct if you point to it on a number chart 90% of the time for the first one you ask her, 75% for the 5th one you ask her, 50% for the 10th one - you get the picture, she doesn't like the exercise and tunes out guessing the longer it goes on.   I'd say on any given day when I have her say the numbers out load while pointing to them from 1 - 120 she probably gets 75% or less correct.  So we work on it every night but haven't made much progress.  Anyone who has any creative ideas please let me know - it is a very frustrating thing to teach counting to a child who doesn't want to learn it.

Outside school things were a little crazy last weekend with family visiting and parties/dinners for Ric, my mom's and my birthdays in less than a week.  Which leads me to my writing sample which I am LOVING!!!  Cate wrote this birthday card for me - grandma spelled the words (actually for most of them she only gave her the letter sounds) but the writing is all her.  Her writing is definitely greatly improved since last year although her free form is much better then when she tries to write in between lines.

This one is Lucy's card - her lines and circles are pretty good too but her thing is stickers!