All the K/1 classes met in the school cafeteria tonight to construct these gingerbread houses out of empty milk cartons, graham crackers, frosting and candies. A cute, fun project!
School Days
School Holiday Party
I signed up to bring a treat for the class holiday party, but the treat I decided on became an activity as well – decorating gingerbread men! So I dropped Anna off at Nikki’s house and headed to the school for the holiday party. What fun!
Did you know that the echo line in Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer after “Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say…” is no longer “Ho, Ho, Ho”, but “In his underwear!”? I didn’t. All the parents who had come along to help in the class cracked up when the kids all shouted that line. Who knew?
After the party, Carrie and I dashed to pick up Anna, and then went home to pack up the car. We’re in NYC now!
Field Trip
Carrie took her first school field trip today. They went to tour a historic home and watch a puppet show of The Night Before Christmas, and then they went to the local VA hospital to sing Christmas, Hannukah and patriotic songs. Anna and I went along as chaperones (well, OK, I was a chaperone, Anna was my tag-along). It was a lot of fun!
Parent Teacher Conference
We went to our first parent-teacher conference this evening. The teacher had a lot of nice things to say about Carrie. I was kind of surprised to hear that Carrie cries at least once a day at school, but her teacher is confident that it’s just a maturity thing that will come with time, and it’s never more than a fleeting moment in her day. It must be fleeting, because she’s never once mentioned being sad in school.
We already knew that reading is one of Carrie’s strengths, but she’s also doing really well in math and everything else. Even though she’s young, she’s holding her own as one of the youngest in a class with a bigger than usual age range, and she’s well liked by her classmates. I think that’s a pretty good start to kindergarten!
School Picture, Kindergarten
We got Carrie’s school pictures back today. She picked out both her dress and the background color. I can only take credit for her pretty brown eyes!
School Birthday
24 cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles…check!
Napkins…check!
Camera…check!
Time to go watch Carrie celebrate her birthday with her class!
Game Night
They had a family game night at the primary school this evening, ending in a barn dance in the gym which was actually quite fun. Exhausting, but fun.
School Visit
Today I had a lunch date with Carrie at the school cafeteria. She was thrilled to have me there, and I hope I can join her another time. The other kids were funny, too – once I helped one of them open something, the rest of them suddenly had something that needed opening!
Then I read Some Dogs Do to the class. I don’t know why I get nervous reading to a group of small children, but I do. But I made it through and I think they liked the story.
I also went to the library to get an idea of what I could volunteer for. If I can get some childcare for Anna a couple of times a month I think I’ll go help out.
Get Acquainted Night
Tonight we dropped Anna off to play with her friend Nikki and took Carrie to her open house night. I was a little preoccupied with signing up to help out with events at first (and making sure we got a good time slot for parent teacher conferences!) but when I looked around the room at everything the class has been doing for the past two weeks I was suitably impressed. They have a chart of jobs that are assigned weekly – last week, Carrie was line leader. This week she has been the pledge leader. And she has the entire pledge of allegience memorized! They also have a class bunny, Jumping Jack (J.J. for short). They were looking for volunteers to watch J.J. over a break week, but I think the dogs might eat him!
We walked around the school to visit all the “specials” rooms (art, music, P.E.) but none of the teachers for those classes were there tonight. And then we hit the book fair. Oh, how they get you hooked in the book fair. It all started when they sent Carrie home a couple of days ago with a free book (complements of the PTSA) and a laboriously hand-written list of the books that she wanted. I ask you, how can any parent resist the list? She had even tried to duplicate the font style for Knuffle Bunny Too, with little horizontal lines at the tops and bottoms of all the letters. So we came home with a few books…despite having just turned in a Scholastic order form two days ago. Sigh.
Anyway, I do like what I’ve seen so far of this multi-age environment, and Carrie seems to be settling in well. Her teacher made sure to tell us that she loves Carrie’s imagination. Apparently she was dancing around the playground with one arm sticking straight out, saying “Today, I am a telescope!” at recess this afternoon. That’s my Carrie!
Summer in a Shoebox
Carrie is going to have weekly homework assignments which come home on Friday and are due back on Tuesday. The first one was “Summer in a Shoebox”. She had to find 4-8 items that represented memories of things she did over the summer, and put them in a shoebox. They’re going to write or tell stories about those things over the next few weeks. This is Carrie’s summer, in a shoebox:
We put in a ticket from the Strong Museum butterfly garden, a bubble wand, a piece of chalk, a small vial of water from the pool, an acorn from Ithaca, a picture of her cousins and a drawing of her playing on the playground. The shoebox, with added soccer stickers, was from the sneakers we bought for her to play soccer in. That pretty much sums up our summer!