ready for 1st grade

Grace had a great year of kindergarten. Things sure got busy towards the end of the year. At a school assembly, Grace got an award for "always asking thorough and interesting questions."

Her enrichment class completed a unit on animal habitats. All the children selected animals to make diorama habitats for and then parents were invited to a special zoo fair where we were able to tour the habitats and ask the 'experts' any questions we liked about the animals. Cori took a cute video of his interview with Grace. He wasn't asking good enough questions because she kept prompting him, "Don't you want to know how many fins they have? If they give live birth? How they breathe? If they are even MAMALS?"She wanted her diorama to be like looking outside a submarine portal. I helped with some tracing and hot glueing and wrapping the outside of the project, but the rest was all Grace. 

It was nice that the High School finished up their year before Grace's school because I was able to get a sitter and attend the assembly and her 2 class parties (One for her kinder class, and the other for her enrichment -PM- class). At the Kindergarten awards assembly, Grace was recognized for 4th quarter perfect attendance (A serious surprise. We don't stress about perfect attendance around here.) and for a perfect score on the 70 phonogram test. They gave all kindergarteners 4 chances to reach 100% on this test and Gracie aced it all 4 times.

She and her class mates gave cute presentations at both parties. They sang songs and chanted out some of the dozen or so recitations they had memorized over the year. The schedule got switched up at the last minute and resulted in ice cream sundaes at 9:50 in the morning. The students were all pretty excited about this. 

Above, Grace with her Kinder teacher, Mrs. P. Below, she is with Mrs. F. her enrichment teacher. Class of 2024? That blew our minds a little.

On their first and last days of school, we let the kids choose what they would like to do for dinner. On Grant's last day, we made a trip to Chick-fil-a. Grace chose Olive Garden. They received one end-of-the-school-year gift each in the form of some summer reading.

Grace wasted no time. This book lives in her hands or under her pillow. The putting of books under her pillow is a little habit that formed a couple of months ago. Her reading level climbed rather abruptly towards the end of the school year. Once she was reading on her own, there was never enough time to read everything she wanted to before bed. So she would mark her page and stash the book under her pillow so she could finish it first thing the next morning. So often, I would go to wake her (around 6:30) and she would be stretched out atop her made up bed, legs crossed, reading away. This became more regular as she stepped into chapter books. She loves the Magic Treehouse series and has no problems reading those solo. Harry Potter is more slow going for her when she is reading it alone, but we have been reading together at night. And I have to read through some of Hagrid's dialogue a couple of times myself before I totally understand what he saying... 

Grace is already very excited for 1st grade. She is totally enamored with being a student and summer break has been a sad reality slowly creeping her way. I'm armed with crafts,  work books, and our library card. Here's hoping she will love summer as much as I will love having her home with me all day.