End of school year 2014-15 (finally)

LUKE:

Our preschool pro finished his second year a couple of weeks ago.

First and last day of preschool. He looks so much older!

 I finally manned up and helped chaperone a class field trip to the nursery.

 They got to plant a flower to take home and dig around in the dirt, so of course they loved it.

 They learned about dinosaurs and made dinosaur footprints in clay

 They had class pictures by Studio West

And then there was graduation!

For their program, they sang a song for each letter of the alphabet. I believe this is the "Letter O" song. Luke is always very exuberant with the actions that go to songs, plus he likes to pretend that his hands are puppets that are singing the words. So he basically just flailed around the whole time, it was so funny.

 

 

 He is such a goofball. Dear Mrs. Woolsey is a saint, she is one of the most patient, level headed ladies I know. She has three different preschool groups going year round.

 Here is the joke he wanted me to write in her card. We need to work on his handwriting a lot this summer, so that he will be ready for kindergarten.

 

 When the program was over, we had some cookies.

 

 Luke had not been feeling great that day...by the time we got home, he was coughing so much he threw up and needed a breathing treatment. He is sick so often, I am glad we are getting a break from school! Poor kid.

 He had to skip the next day of school but was able to finish his last week of classes.

MADELYN:

 First and last day of 4th grade! She likes to wear the same outfit so we can see how she's grown.

 

 This was a tough year for her (and me). Go Math! nearly killed us. It is incomprehensible the way they try to teach certain things. Let's make things more confusing and less efficient, shall we? EWW. I wanted to burn this book. If you have had dealings with this common core curriculum, you'll know what I mean. Plus, our school is a STEAM school and it focuses heavily on math (and science, engineering, art and technology), so it just seemed like so much to deal with.

Part of her final project, which took four weeks and nearly gave me an ulcer.

Her teacher, Mr. Carter, was a good teacher and a nice guy, we just had issues because he assigned so much homework. Whatever math wasn't finished at school had to be completed at home, but this was always a problem because Madelyn has ADD and was supposed to have special accommodations through her 504 disability plan. (Which Mr. Carter forgot about...)

In November, we finally reminded him about the 504 plan and he cut her math work load in half, which helped immensely. By the end of the year, he was recommending that her language work be cut in half, too. She is a smart girl, she just gets overwhelmed by the volume and really can't cope with the stress.

Mr. Carter was a huge fan of PROJECTS. Every freaking three weeks there was a major project due. (Book reports! Dioramas! Video reports with commercials! Game boards! Animal reports! Valentine Box! Science Fair!) Elaborate, "parents as partners" projects every time and I wanted to die by year's end.

I am so glad to be done.

We came out for Arts Night a few weeks ago...last year during Arts Night I went into early labor!

 Madelyn is a great little artist and really enjoys drawing and sketching.

 

She and her friend Natalie Moses decided to make "puff balls" out of yarn for their school's Mini Mall activity. All the kids are encouraged to have shops that they create business plans for and advertise and the kids pay with tickets they earn for good behavior. We worked hard to make all those puff balls and they sold every one (and some gum and Blow Pops).

Earlier this year, one of the projects I helped Madelyn with was writing an ancestor essay about her grandpa Frank Yoder for the Sons of Utah Pioneers.

On the last day of school, there was an awards assembly and we were super excited and proud that Madelyn won first place and twenty $1 gold coins as a prize!! She also earned awards for Reading, Math, Citizenship and Perfect Attendance for the 4th quarter!

 I'm so happy that she had a successful year, even though it was hard. 

I'm even more glad that I don't have to harp on her about homework for a few months. PHEW.

4th grade, so far

 Madelyn is done with her first quarter of 4th grade already. Sheesh, time flies.

I went to her parent teacher conference a couple of weeks ago, and her teacher Mr. Carter said that she is doing really well in all her subjects--even math--which is rather surprising. (Her math homework causes epic amounts of drama and suffering. For her and for me.) The only area of improvement he had to suggest was her "behavior", as in "She gets frustrated easily and is very emotional. Is she like that at home?"

"HAHAHA! ONLY SINCE DAY ONE!!!" I wanted to shout.

But really, aside from some playground drama and the boy that sits beside her driving her nuts, she is doing well and having a good year. She has a lot of book reports and projects due all the time, which is annoying, but I guess that is what school is about. She is reading at a 6th grade level!

 

 I dug up her old school photos from K-3rd grade. It's fun to see her in different glasses and various stages of tooth gappiness. (I know that is not a word, I made it up.) She has lost three more teeth in the past couple of weeks--two of them at school two days in a row.

 We agonized over an outfit for 4th grade school pictures, but I'm glad we went with her yellow dress. It is very "Madelyn" right now. Last year, her favorite color was turquoise, but now it's yellow. (I love it, too.) I can't believe how grown up she is. She will be 10 years old in two months!! Gah.

 I scanned in some of her recent drawings, depicting all her favorite Halloween things--the Grim Reaper with a bloody scythe, a vampire jack-o-lantern, and a haunted house with a zombie, several witches, another grim reaper, "voodoo heads" and several disembodied flying eyeballs.
She has a flair for this sort of thing.

She is still in gymnastics, still a good little helper with baby Isabelle, still loves bossing Luke around (although when she can manage to not be too bossy, they play together well), still sleeps with the cat on her bed, still likes to dilly dally and procrastinate and nerds out about science, NOVA, sea creatures, Doctor Who (Eleven is her favorite Doctor) the Harry Potter and Hobbit movies and Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. I'm always catching her reading past her bedtime, or in the morning when she's supposed to be getting ready for school.

 I'd write more, but I've got to go force her to stop playing Minecraft and go to bed. She is on fall break and can't be bothered with "normal bedtimes", or "not having ice cream for every meal". Oh, to be young again.

School's back in, hallelujah

 Oh, my poor blog. This past month has been nuts.

 School started on August 14th for Madelyn, who is in 4th grade this year with Mr. Carter. She started gymnastics back up again this week, too and it's nice to be back in a routine! Her homework has been a killer, though. I'm hoping it will be a good year for her. She does not like being outnumbered by boys in her class, but there's not much we can do about that. She is such a smart, sweet girl. She and I already started on her science fair project and have done a book report/presentation on The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling. She's making her mama proud.

Luke had to wait till September 3rd to start his second year of preschool. He was READY and so was I. (He insisted on picking out his clothes--he always wants to wear that Beatles shirt.) He's going to be bored to death by the time he finally gets to kindergarten--he is turning five in just three weeks so he just missed the age deadline. He is super smart, too. He can read like a pro already.

He's attending a new preschool this year and so far, so good. He really needs something like this to keep him busy and out of trouble. Over the summer, he and Madelyn were constantly squabbling--too much time cooped up together. And he has such an active mind, so when he gets bored, stuff happens. Such as!

Luke and Emery (my cute niece, who never has caused any trouble over here) were playing one afternoon, and I knew they were in Madelyn's room with her My Little Ponies. I was taking care of Isabelle and not paying too much attention to what they were doing and hadn't checked on them in a while. Then, they came back out into the living room and wanted a snack, and I noticed a black smudge on Luke's shirt that looked like marker. I decided to go investigate further, because I didn't want them to leave the caps off of Madelyn's new markers. (She has a dry erase easel in her room.)

I got to her bedroom and the door was shut. I opened it and saw a marker without a lid on the floor. I bent down to pick it up and looked up at the rest of the room and saw....

Okay, so they had ransacked a bunch of stuff. But then.......

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry or be impressed with their handiwork. It was obvious that they had just had the time of their lives getting away with something HUGE. 

Kids!!! I'm pretty sure that Luke was the mastermind behind this.

And then Madelyn got home and took the whole thing very personally.

 

 

But by the time we figured out that the marker would come off with some Fantastik spray and magic erasers, I found the whole thing to be pretty funny. It did take a few hours of scrubbing, though. (Thank you, Maria, for all your help.)

And that's why I'm glad that school is back in session.

Luke's first day of preschool!

This has been a long awaited day.

 It was the first day...of the first year...of preschool for Luke! Haha. Poor kid missed the school cutoff by about 3 weeks to be able to attend kindergarten next year. But he was ready for something and I found a preschool that accepted 3-year-olds. (He'll be 4 this month.) He'll also go to preschool next year, and THEN start kindergarten the year after that.

Madelyn got sort of upset when we told her he was starting preschool. "He's going to steal all my memories!!" she said. (???)

Then she wanted to know why SHE didn't get to go to two years of preschool, only one. I told her it was because we were transitioning from New Mexico to Utah at the time, and also she wasn't potty trained yet.  If she hadn't been so stubborn about that, maybe it would have happened. Anyway...

Luke is so smart already, though.

 I know I've bragged about him several times, but really. He knows the alphabet backwards and forwards, phonics, can read probably 60 words or more, numbers, can count to 100, colors, shapes (pentagons, hexagons, the works), colors, animals, is a computer whiz, etc.

 So he was really excited and ready to have fun!

 On the way over, he was singing loudly to Dogs Eating Dogs (Blink-182). My early mornings require punk music to keep me awake.

 His school is at Cedar Music Store & Studio. They have a Pre-K curriculum but it's music based. So he'll be learning the different notes, composers, instruments (he already loves and knows a lot of instruments thanks to his favorite Baby Einstein video) and songs.

 

:)

 Remember when Esqueleto does this in Nacho Libre? That's who I think of every time Luke does this.

 He has two teachers--Jolene and Cami.

 He's been asking where his star went ever since he got home.

 He had no trouble at all with me just dropping him off and leaving him. Phew!!

 I went home in between but didn't do anything exciting because we had a freakishly busy and tiring weekend and I was still feeling wiped out.

 I had a "wowwypop" waiting for him when I picked him up but he'd had such a stimulating morning that he fell asleep on the way home. He had a great time and is excited to go back.

My baby is growing up!