When Lucy started first grade, we had a celebratory dinner the night of her first day of school. In second grade, she thought we should celebrate with a special meal on the second night...
...which is how traditions are born, right? I'm pretty sure we'll be celebrating third grade on the third day of school. =)
But for what it's worth, here's day one of the 2012-2013 school year:
Lucy was really excited to be going back to a familiar school for the first time ever. And although the first few weeks were still complicated by separation anxiety, Lucy settled pretty quickly into the school groove.
(i.e. "Honey, hurry and read your book before we get to school!")
(as if getting reading minutes was a problem for this particular child =)
Picture Day
A fun coincidence of second grade was that Lucy had 2 awesome teachers =)
Mrs. Bryon in the morning and Mrs. Cornaby in the afternoon.
Sometime mid-year we made the sweet discovery that Mrs. Cornaby's husband is the sexton of the Provo cemetary.
So we hope to perhaps bump into Mrs. C on future memorial days. =)
Spencer and I had fun with the second graders at the Scera Theatre's fall production of Flat Stanly.
Such a fun field trip! Such a beautiful fall day!
School is always fun on Halloween!
And one newly discovered delight of having an elementary school student is reading our family history as captured by Lucy's various, casual writing assignments. Like this little piece...
(Rebecca, I can't decide if Lucy is confusing Mowgli with Boots sincerely, or if she's writing about a one footed bird to increase the drama of her tale =)
...which was good documentation of this fun night,
making pies with Heather and Royce and Nate and Rebecca,
as well as Heather's golden birthday party, during which Zipper did indeed sit on Lucy's lap. =)
Other pieces of writing make me laugh out loud.
Let's talk about school lunch, for example.
Corn dogs were Lucy's favorite option in first grade.
I was glad to hear they weren't being offered everyday this year, but my relief quickly dissolved at the news that corn dogs had simply been replaced by chicken nuggets as a daily menu choice.
The natural defensive move would have been to send home lunch.
But school lunch was free for us.
And let's be honest about how my kids were lucky to get cereal or a maybe a banana on my busy preparing-for-preschool mornings.
So instead of home lunch, Lucy and I would occasionally have conversations about making healthy choices at school. Having no desire to give my girl a food complex, our talks were always super casual and happy and sometimes Lucy would cheerfully report back that she had spaghetti or a sandwich for lunch and I'd congratulate her for branching out.
So I laughed at the end of the year when she brought home this paper, itemizing various steps toward a goal of choice...
#1. try to like yogurt more.
Still makes me chuckle out loud. =)
Let's see, back to chronology....there was the December
program, the spring field trip to the park...
and the farm...
(feeling the wool of the sheep they just watched get sheered)
(learning about beehives, etc...)
Fun. And then it was time for Lucy's bonus buck store.
Which was pretty serious business this second time around and had to include a raffle item, I was told. Fine by my as long as long as she came up with it herself, I responded.
She came up with two.
And was a better business woman that day than I can hope to be in a lifetime.
A few days later, she turned eight years old.
It wasn't until summer that I got to read the rainbow story Lucy wrote at school...based on foggy memories of her fifth birthday.
I smiled over the words (her spelling, which is as good, and usually better, than mine, and punctuation retained),
One time on my 5th birthday I woke up and my mom said, "your 5 years old and that's a very special birthday!" I jumped around the living room because I was so exited about my party. I was in my room when my mom called, "time to go!" I got my shoes on and we went to the "Multipurpose" building wich I used to call the "mul-tie-pus" building. We parked at the laundromat and walked to the Multipurpos building. I jumped down the sidwalk and opened the door. We went into a room. there was a huge cake with 5 layers and one of my Pollypockets on top. The cake was right by the window so when I was looking at my cake somthing bright and colorful caught my eye. I called everyone to come and look outside and, there it was. "My Rainbow!" I yelled, holding my arms up high. everyone just stood there, gazing at the colors....
I cried a little over the illustrations and the
memory.
No pictures of field day or the last day of second grade. Too busy prepping the last days of preschool and getting us out the door for Memorial day weekend.
Suffice it to say: Second grade was a success.
Because this girl is a truly wonderful student of life.
