Conner had his last day of 1st grade on Friday! I think he had a good day. He was definitely ecstatic when he came running down the hill to meet me for the last time. In his hand he carried his Golden Ticket to 2nd grade. At one point it got misplaced in the house and you could see the fear in his eyes, totally believing that he couldn't go to 2nd grade without it!
Throughout the day Conner sang and demonstrated on air guitar the anthem for the day (even for the principal):
{insert: "School's Out for Summer" by Alice Cooper}
For his teacher's gift . . . I just have to say wow. This year he has fallen in love with The Magic Treehousebooks. He now has 2 boxed sets and he stays up late every night reading them (even though he's not supposed to). His teacher began reading these books to the class towards the beginning of the year and Conner was hooked right away. The weekend before the last week of school (make sense?) he decided that he was going to write his own Magic Treehouse book. Day after day he would retreat to some quiet corner of the house and just write. And write and write. The stories, ideas, and sentence structure (especially the dialog) were just amazing to me. After a day or two we decided that his finished book would be a great gift for Ms. C, especially because she introduced him to the books. By Thursday he had written 8 chapters of "Antarctica Before Snack-Time" and we put it into a portfolio to present to Ms. C. I think she really liked it. If nothing else, Conner felt really proud of himself - as evidenced by the huge grin on his face when he walked away from her desk.
Here is an excerpt from Antarctica Before Snack-Time, chapter 4 - Snow Bellies
Annie climbed down the rope ladder. Jack followed. When they reached the bottom they saw some penguins sliding on the ice. "Why are they doing that?" asked Annie. "I'll look in the book," said Jack. He flipped through the book until he found a picture of penguins sliding on their bellies. He read outloud: "Penguins don't waddle on the ice. They slide on their bellies." Jack looked up. He saw that Annie was sliding on her belly. "Look at me!" she shouted. Jack thought that looked fun. So he joined her.
One of my favorite parts of the book are the chapter titles. Chapter 3 is titled, "Brrrr". And chapter 8 is titled, "Still Brrrr." For a summer project I think he's going to work on illustrations for each chapter and then we'll put it together in a Blurb book.
At the beginning of the year I mentioned that this was Conner's first year in a new charter school. It was interesting to jump into this without having much prior knowledge about how they operate and not being able to hear opinions & experiences from parents who have been there/done that. But we went in with an open mind and it ended up being a really good experience. Conner has received all the academic push he needs and then some. One of the things we really enjoy is that they let the children progress in reading, math, etc. at their own pace. If the kids are breezing through the material, they let them go as far as they can (with regular testing & assessment to keep everyone on track). Conner's reading group was only 10-12 lessons away (they do 1 or 2 a day) from completing the 2nd grade material. His teacher says he should be able to start in the 3rd grade books in the fall. His math group spent their time in the 2nd grade classroom and I think they were well into 3rd grade material. Another thing I enjoy is the small school atmosphere (only 100 students this year) -- being a small town girl myself, the idea of big schools just makes me nervous! To sum it up, it's been a good year and it will be so fun/weird/convenient/exciting to have Payton there next year as a kindergartner. Acckk!! I showed him the classroom on Friday and he seems excited about having a desk, "because we don't have desks in pre-school."
last day of school activities:
- welcoming summer with a bang (one of these 3 children is suffering from post-nap grumpiness disorder. I'll let you guess which one).
- ice cream for snack time
- take the entire family to see Kung Fu Panda. I'm sure that Conner is now armed with enough ninja & kung fu moves to get him through the summer.
