At David's pre-school, they do "learning stories" instead of report cards or their ilk. Here is his:

David and the Dreydal
November 30, 2010

"Laura, Laura, look what I am doing." David called to me. I came over with my video camera because I knew David had been working very hard with paper and pencil. He pointed to his drawings: "Hay, gimel, nun. There's one more, hmmm, I know it. If you get me a dreydal I can show you." I brought one of my dreydals over. "Oh that's right Shinn." David carefully drew the three branches of shin

"Do you know what all these mean David?" I asked. "Yes this is take half, none, take all and put one in."

With a twist of his fingers David set the dreydal spinning. It spun perfectly over the table top."I can do it even better with a bigger dreydal," he explained. I went back to my box and picked out my biggest dreydal. Then David took that dreydal and set it spinning. While it was spinning he picked up the small dreydal and with a twist of his fingers he had two dreydals spinning on the table.

"David," I said, "could you teach the other children the dreydal game?" "Sure," he said. "You need to have candy to put in. And I could bring my big dreydal."

On Friday morning David brought several dreydals. We sat at the table and invited children to play with us. David explained the rules, showed the children how to spin the dreydal and kept the game moving by reminded children to take their turn.

Meaning
David you have learned to make your fingers do whatever you want now, you wanted to make the symbols on the dreydal and you did. You had several practices on the paper because now you know you cannot always do something right the first time. And you sure could make that dreydal spin!
David you also know the valuable lesson of asking for just a little help. You wanted me to get the dreydal so you could look at it, but first you tried to remember yourself. That is called good problem solving, you could not remember shinn and you thought about how to solve that problem, then you asked me for a dreydal to copy.
You were so excited when you finished your writing. I am glad you wanted to share your good feelings with me. And then when you said you would help the other children learn the dreydal game I was just as excited as you.
The day we played dreydal with everybody you did such a good job. You were friendly and helpful. We all had good fun and we all won in the end, didn’t we?

Future Possibilities
I will invite David to share as much as he wants with the Kangaroo class. He has already led us in dolphins and dreydal. We will be using his snow book next week. His love of reading has influenced the other children to gather around when he requests a story.
We will be spending more time writing stories in the new year and David will have time to perfect his creative writing skills. The stories will be read to the whole class so he can inspire his peers.
On the list of kindergarten readiness David is all check marks. He is motivated by intellectual curiosity and now has the skill sets to act on these interests.