Ellie's Kindergarten Graduation

At our elementary school, they have the cutest Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony.  The kids all get dressed up in caps and gowns and "cross a bridge" to 1st grade.  Ellie is now done with kindergarten, and she got to "cross the bridge."  Where is my baby girl?

 Ellie and her teacher, Mrs. Grabowski.

 The first day of school, Ellie came home and said she had a new best friend, Jasmine.  They ended up having a whole gaggle of girls that were friends (there were like 2 girls to every boy in her class), and apparently they got into quite a few girl arguments and friend changes.  I guess its never to early to learn how to get along with other girls.

 Ellie, Jasmine and Brooklynn.

Since I am topic- I recently got some pictures taken of Ellie (the ones she got taken at school were horrific.)  She has really grown a lot this past year. She has continued to excel in her school work- she had a great teacher that was able to challenge her.  I went in once a week and worked on a project with three of the kids from the class.  It was pretty amazing to me to see how bright some of these kindergartners are.

 She loves to wear dresses and get dressed up.  She loves to have her hair done and to wear bows in her hair.  She loves to wear shoes with a "heel", anything bigger than 1/2".  Her favorite activity is coloring and making pictures and cards.  We have gotten a ton of pictures drawn by her this year that says how much she loves us.  Her teacher is quite talented at drawing and she has shown Ellie some of her skills, so that drawings that Ellie brings home are pretty sophisticated for a kindergartner.

 At the beginning of the year, I started teaching Ellie piano.  She does really well when I am not around.  When I am right there she pretends she doesn't know which hand is left and which is right, and she makes a big production about learning to play.  I think it is almost time to pass her off to a new teacher.

 She is learning to love to read.  Her new favorite books are a series about fairies.  She can sit down and read one in an hour to hour and half.  It is nice to have her independently reading, and enjoying herself.

 She loves to play with friends.  She is always looking for a friend to have over to play and is really  disappointed if we can't easily find one that is available.

We sure love our Ellie girl and we are so glad that we have this added level of complexity to our lives. 

Gymnastic Olympic Day

Its that time again, time for the end of the school year at gymnastics.  The kids had their Olympic day again where we all got to go into the gym with them and see up close what they have been learning and take pictures. Unfortunately, a lot of the action shots got blurry, but my kids have really learned a lot this year.  The boys have learned a ton- their best trick is a roundoff-back handspring, but they are not gutsy enough to do it unless the coach is spotting them. Both Adam and Michael have been invited to join the boys team in the fall, at level 5.  We are still undecided as to whether they are going to do it or try something else.  We will decide in August, I am letting them take the summer off.  If they decide to do it, they will be in the gym 5 hours a week and occasionally have a meet on a Saturday- but not until January or February.  Adam's strengths are on the bars and rings.  Michael is really good at flips, handsprings and head stands (all floor exercises).  Adam has well developed "4-pack" almost 6-pack abs. Michael is all muscle on his bony little body.

 These next three pictures show a very blurry back handspring by Michael.

The boys and their coach, coach Matt.

 Ellie loves gymnastics.  I have her in both gymnastics and dance and she by far prefers gymnastics.  Since I don't care at all if she ever does sports like soccer or volleyball, I want her to have more experience with both before she tries to focus on one.  She is in an invitation-only class and I just found out a few weeks ago that she is actually in the wrong class- she is by far the youngest in her class and there is another class for the younger kids, but she keeps up just fine and enjoys it.  Her strengths are the bars and trampoline.

Ellie and her coach, coach Becky.

 I'm so proud of my little gymnasts.

Happy Mother's Day

I'm a lucky girl!

Boosterthon

Our school recently did the boosterthon fundraiser.  Actually, it did about 3 fundraisers at the same time, but this was one of them.  I HATE, HATE, HATE fundraisers, and this was no exception. I especially hate that the school doesn't just ask us for money, instead they make it tricky for us to donate a flat amount.  A few weeks ago, the kids came home with info on the Boosterthon.  I had heard of this fundraiser and heard good things about it.  I did a quick google search and found that the company keeps 48% of the profits.   48%, I could barely believe it.  They come in and basically brainwash the kids for 10 days teaching them sales techniques so that they can get more money.  Then they run a small track and collect the pledges for how many laps they do.  Each lap is 1/16th of a mile.  They are allowed to collect for up to 35 laps.  They encouraged the kids to get donations per lap.  If I donated $1 per lap, that would be $105, which would be fine, but then boosterthon would get $49 of the money.  Personally, if I am going to be giving money to the school, I would prefer they got to keep it all, or at least get something to show for it, like wrapping paper.  Furthermore, I refuse to ask family and friends for money.  I don't like them asking me and so I don't allow my kids to ask them.  So, if I don't support your child, don't take it personally.

Anyway, the kids came home every day for 10 days begging for money and begging to call Aunts and Uncles and Grandma (you can thank me later that I didn't have them call you).  Then the big fun run came. The company set up a "track" on the field (if you call plastic cones set up in a circle a track).  The kids were set to run.  Each time they ran the track, they would stop at the start and have a teacher mark a mark on their backs to say how many laps they ran.  It was a nice day, a little cooler than it had been the week before for field day, so that helped.

Ellie was first.  She ran pretty well, after about 5 laps, she found a friend and ran with her friend most of the rest of the laps.  She didn't run too hard, but pretty steady, and ended up with 35 laps.

Michael's grade was next.  He got started, ran a couple of laps and then decided he didn't want to get overheated and went and got some water.  He walked the next lap, then jogged a couple of laps, stopping if he felt he was exerting himself too much, then he didn't want to get dehydrated so he went and got more water.

 This is how I saw him a lot. 

 He did end up running 38 laps, but I really had to encourage him and say things like- "Ellie got 35 laps, you don't want her to get more than you," and, "its half way time, if you don't run more laps in the second half you won't make 35."

 Adam's grade was last.  He got out and ran, and pretty much ran the whole time.  He did walk a few laps now and again and get a couple of drinks of water.   There were more kids that ran in his time slot so there was more back-up waiting for the teachers to mark the shirts.  He ended up with 45 laps. 

Obviously, it was a little hotter by the time he got out to run, plus he pushed himself.

That night, Michael decided to hit his dad up for the money that he had pledged him, at 25 cents a lap.   Joe was trying to figure out why he wanted it in cash, come to find out, Michael had thought they got to keep the money they earned from running the laps.  He was counting on that money to buy books at the book fair.  Because I hadn't entered Joe's bid for Michael into the computer, I suggested that Joe go ahead and give him the money so he could go to the book fair, as long as he didn't tell the other two kids that he had done that.

Overall, I heard that the Boosterthon earned our school $28k.  So I can see that for that much money, it is probably good to go with a company.  Question I have, is why can't the school just do their own fun run?  Problem is, I don't want to be the event organizer, and probably no one else does either....

Field Day

The kids had their field day last week.  For the first time, I was actually able to go, thanks to Koni.  They don't allow little children to come (I think they figure there is enough chaos as it is that day) so every other year I haven't gone.  I was in charge of the three legged race, but there were 23 stations- meaning there were 23 different activitied that the kids got to do.  They seemed to have a ton of fun, even though it was pretty hot. 

One of the stations was tug-of-war, only the 2-4 grade got to do that.  They competed by grade and even had a championship.  Both Adam and Michael's class won their grade in the tug-o-war contest.

That last one is my favorite of Michael, check out his tongue.  I didn't get to go to Ellie's field day, there are too many kids to do the whole school at once, so they have a morning and an afternoon group.  I just did the morning group with the boys.  I will have plenty of oppurtunities to see Ellie at field day in the future.