Todd & I had a meeting with Mercer's teacher. All-in-all he's doing VERY well. She says that he's different than many boys. He's active and rough-and-tumble like normal, but unlike the other boys he is also extremely observant about his classmates, teachers, and surroundings. He notices when someone is not there, he notices when the teacher is not feeling well. He notices when the slightest of things have been changed and will ask why. We heard from his teacher last year and the teacher this year too that he is very caring -- has a huge heart. For instance, if a kid in the class doesn't have a place to sit, Mercer will give up his chair. Interesting!
She says he's the leader of the class. Whatever Mercer does - the rest of the kids do. (You wouldn't know it talking to him after school each day, though. He and his classmates do have tiffs. So-and-so pushed me. So-and-so scratched me.) Mercer does his fair share of doling it out too, unfortunately. She also told us that sometimes he acts-out because he's frustrated. He's a perfectionist and if he's trying to do something / can't master it... he's really hard on himself. He's ambitious and really wants to learn.
He is excelling in his school work. There's really nothing that she's concerned about -- in fact when she realized he's only 4 -- she said that he's excelling. For some reason, she thought he was 5. At the conclusion of the parent-teacher conference, she kept saying that she couldn't believe he was only 4. She wanted us to let him know how proud we are of him because this is very important to him -- that he knows he's doing a good job. We're impressed with what all he's learning -- countries, states, numbers, and putting words together with sound groups. We are happy about the choice made to keep him on the same track in the Montessori program.
He's also getting better at riding his bike & trying to perfect the skill. One day when we had some nice weather and nothing on the calendar, we decided to head over to a local park to practice his bike-riding. This park is level and has a nice loop that he could ride on. Literally, as soon as we got there, there was another little boy getting out of his car next to ours -- his family had brought his bicycle too.
The two boys talked and then started riding their bikes together. This other child was pretty proficient at it & would speed off, but it motivated Mercer to try to keep up and to continue riding even if he did take a little tumble. Of course, he had to play on the playground while there as well. And - Todd and I encouraged that we go on a little hike while at the same park, as there's a nice bridge over a little stream we like to look at.
We've done some other hiking this fall as well... because of the letterbox ("treasure stamp") hobby that we have, we were directed to another BEAUTIFUL hiking spot along a river in North Georgia.
We didn't make it to the top where the big waterfall was located, but we found a nice smaller water fall along the way. We had to "climb" down on tree roots & vines to get down to this smaller fall; we heard that getting to the larger fall required even more climbing up roots and could have been possibly dangerous for a 4 year old -- so -- its OK that we didn't make it that far! We were happy to have discovered this spot where camping is allowed. Todd thought it may be fun to have a guys camping night sometime with neighbors & their sons. 
The hike, the apple picking, and the corn maze about rounded out our fall travels to the mountain areas. We got to see a lot of nice color in the trees and get out in the crisp fall air.
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