We flunked kindergarten

It's been a few weeks since Jacob started Kindergarten and he's doing fabulous. I'm amazed at how fast he's learning. I tried, but failed a bit at trying to teach him to recognize/write all his letters. In just a couple weeks, he's not only mastered recognition, he can write all the letters fairly well, AND he knows the sounds. I know, I know, that's what school is for, but I'm impressed. I guess that's what teachers do. He's also making new friends, and even gets to play with an old friend from daycare at recess, as she also goes to school here. He knows when he has homework and will sit and do it without argument. So he's doing very well. Husband and I aren't so much. We were helping him with a homework assignment a week or so ago and it had 3 letters, upper and lowercase in these little bubbles. There were 4 boxes of these letters. We thought instructions were to color all the capital P's one color, all the lowercase p's another, etc. We were so proud sending it back to school that Monday. Until we got it back Tuesday, and I noticed X's through that assignment. My mom was visiting and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. Then it dawned on me: Duh, he was supposed to color the upper and lowercase of the same letter in each box. We had him coloring the same letter and case in all four boxes. I know this explanation is hard to follow, but basically we screwed him up with that assignment. Three college degrees between the 2 of us and we complicate kindergarten homework. Oops. What makes it worse? His teacher is our neighbor. So I felt pretty dumb. He also has this key ring with letters on it that he's supposed to practice writing and sound with. Once he's "mastered" those letters, we send them back and more letters are put on the ring. And we lost it. So we're really batting 1000. He did have to bring something yesterday for show-and-tell that started with the letter "N". Not easy. "N" is a hard letter. We thought for a long time, and instead of a nickel, we sent him with a Nurse bear wearing a Name tag. Yeah, that's right, 2 "n"s for Jacob's show and tell. He had the most creative "n" object out of his class. I actually find it funny that we are so worried about not doing things right. It's like bringing your first baby home; you're so worried you'll do something wrong, but by the time the third comes along, you realize you will screw up, but they'll survive and that no one is perfect. By the time Isaiah gets to kindergarten, we'll be pros. And we'll learn how to do kindergarten assignments:)