Back to School: DZ and Serenity
Donovan was really excited to go back to school. He is a really social guy and was looking forward to seeing his friends again. He is also really excited that he finally gets homework, and was a bit disgruntled that they didn’t give him any the first week. =) He gets a little math paper every night, that he does as soon as he gets home from school, and then he does 20 minutes of reading each night before bed. He has really improved so much in his reading! He can recognize all the kindergarten sight words already, and he can figure out a lot of longer words too. He gets in a hurry and guesses frequently still, but his guesses are right a lot more often too. He just sounds a lot more fluent every day, which is so much fun to see! He’s even reading to Maia sometimes, and he’s inspired her to read aloud more too for her own “homework.”
Back to School: Serenity comes home from school most days and says “3rd grade is the BEST EVER!” Since the start of school she’s taught us all a math conga line, and we all danced around the house saying “Commutative Property OF Addition!” (even Maia, which is pretty cute to hear.) She also got to have pretzels and 7-up, and she learned about consequences and writing real sentences at the same time, and she LOVED it. She loved sentences!!! Writing sentences in homework last year was like pulling teeth, but Mrs. Thomason makes it fun. She had them take as many pretzels as they wanted between 1 and 10, and then after they took them she said they had to write as many sentences about themselves as they took pretzels, and the 7-up was because the sentences needed to be at least seven words long. They also got candy while reading Charlie and the Chocolate factory and it was a hit as well. She is so happy and excited! She’s also getting homework occasionally in Spanish and Science, and their lessons are so interesting. She’s keeping track of everything in a planner, which is teaching her a lot about personal responsibility. I am thrilled about this year too!
This year we had a joint back to school party for P1 and I1. I noticed that there were four families that had kids in both, and they were among the most likely to come to a party too. So I decided to try having one party for both, and it was a blast! We reserved the clubhouse and had a pool party! I filled the pool with beach balls and got some popsicles, and that was it! A mom from Donovan's class brought fruit, but simple was fun. The kids got to meet a few of the new kids joining their class and hang out with their friends!
