How is this Kindergarten?

I am constantly amazed at then work Gavin does at school and how much he has grown and learned since September. I knew that the requirements were much higher than they used to be and that they are now expected to be reading when they are leaving kindergarten but I guess I am shocked they Gavin has been reading for a couple months now and clearly advancing in the level of his ability. The higher expectations were one of the ma y reasons we decided it was best to not enroll him until the year it was required (the year he turned 6 before the December 1st cutoff). I was also not prepared for how advanced his writing would also be, he apparently loves the writing center in class and spends a lot of now free time there writing new stories and drawing illustrations. The packet we got before Thanksgiving was impressive to me because they don't receive help, they are expected to use the various site word boards in the class, their abilities to sound out words, and their journal pages for help. The stories he brings home now are multiple pages and sentences. The makes sense they would be developing writing skills as their reading skills improve but it is still amazing to me that Gavin now spends time wanting to sit at home reading and writing on his own. He still loves to run around playing, riding his bike, and all the fun parts of being a kid but he now has an appreciation of sitting in his room or even outside when it is nice and writing and reading. That is amazing and certainly not something I was prepared for! I very much enjoy the stories he brings home and while he is still working on spelling, it is often fairly easy to read because he is using the sounds he hears in the words to spell them. Today he brought home a stack of writing from February and I found this sweet story about his friends coming over to play a few weeks ago. He was so excited because we had not seen them in months. Between Gavin's school schedule and their schedule it just hadn't worked out. It was such a huge thing and they had so much fun! When he went back to school the next week, he wrote about it. Such a fun way for both him and us to remember the important moments of his first year in grade school!