Always Thinking Ahead

Yesterday was Zach's kindergarten assessment.  He is very excited about his new Batman Backpack and announced to everyone last night at dinner how happy he was that he would no longer be carrying his Thomas the Tank Engine one.  As we walked home from the assessment, he asked,

"Mama, what's the biggest grade?"
"12th grade," I answered. 
"What's after that?" he asked. 
"College," I replied. 
"Oh," (slight pause) "Do you need a backpack for college?"

When the assessment was over, the teacher pulled me aside to tell me about it.  The kids were given a pattern block exercise to complete.  They get a piece of paper with a picture on it made out of smaller shapes and the kids recreate the picture using the blocks provided.

Usually, kids just dive in and start putting pieces on as they find them in the box.  Zach, however, looks up at the teacher and says, "I think I'll start with the triangles, is that ok?" and then proceded to count twelve triangles in his picture and gather twelve blocks.  Then he asked, "What's this shape?"  When the teacher told him it was a rhombus, he said, "Oh, I'm going to need twenty-six of those," and proceded to gather them.  He did this for every shape in the pattern and then, and only then, did he begin to place the blocks on the paper.

When the teacher asked him if he could read, he told her, "Just one book at home about Batman."  She replied, "Well, let's take a look at this story," and she put an easy reader in front of him.  He opened the book to the first page and looked up at the teacher and said, "Remind me again what this "w-h" word is?"  After getting help with the word "what" he read the entire book.