reflections

Today was Erin's last day of kindergarten, which is astounding to me. She had a great first year in school and she's learned and changed so much since last august. And looking over her final report card, her growth is pretty obvious. Their marks are "-" for "beginning the skill", "check mark" for "meets the standard" and "+" for "exceeds the standard". At the beginning of the year she had plenty of minuses and a few checks, this grade term she had mostly pluses. I'm glad we decided to enroll her in school this year, instead of redshirting her, as is so super-common around here for kids with fall birthdays.

This morning I took a few pictures at morning line-up. That's Erin's teacher off to face the last day with coffee in hand.


This whole last school week has been a lingering 4-day party, in my estimation. Monday was an all-day field trip to the aquarium, tuesday was "field day" , like a small carnival with all kinds out outdoor games and crafts going on, wednesday was a "reading field trip" where each child brought a blanket to sit on and books from home and they spent considerable time in the adjacent park reading books under the trees, and today was some sort of school-wide sing-a-long and an early dismissal.

So I picked up Erin along with her buddy Maia and took them and the twins out to lunch to celebrate "no more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks" and I bit my tongue and did not teach them that song.

It always requires some extra thought in choosing a place which is cheesy and casual enough to offer coloring menus for the kids, and in this case, chimpanzee eye masks too, and not so cheesy that I won't like the food. But I think I chose a good compromise this time.


Kate was fascinated by the goings-on in the kitchen, clearly visible from our booth:


And some special desserts to top off the meal for the new first-graders.


Back at home, I thought I'd film Erin and her thoughts on her school year. This video is totally spontaneous, but amazingly enough Erin sounds pretty much 100% rehearsed for some reason.


FYI: "Sharing" is a weekly activity that all the kids do. There is a topic of the week that the kids must write about and then read their essay in front of the class, along with visual aids sometimes.

The girls all start a dancing class and beginning tennis next week, both of which will last the duration of Erin's short summer. It's first grade for her at the end of the first week of August, and preschool for the twins a few days later.