100th Day of School!

| February 17, 2016

Kindergarten makes a big deal out of the 100th day of school. There are whole books about it. I have no idea why, but there you go. At Sam’s school, she had a 100 day of school project to create. She was told to put things on a no more than half sheet of posterboard sized paper in groups of 2, 5, 10, or 25 to represent 100 days of school. All of the projects were going to be displayed and the kids were going to be taken around the school to see them.

When I told Sam about the project, she had a very definite idea in mind – no help from mom here! Here she is all ready for school, and her project. She did a great job. I was really proud of her!

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Don’t know if I loved school this much…

| February 12, 2016

My sweet little girl really loves school. She loves being there, all the activities, her friends, and happily, her teachers. The other day we were finishing up her homework sheet for the night and she wrote this note that she attached for her teachers. I love the “inventive” spelling. The school encourages the kids to write things the way they sound and I think she actually did a great job.

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Sight Words

| February 2, 2016

I still don’t quite understand it, because it is not how we learned to read, but nowadays kids Sam’s age are given lists of “sight words” to memorize. They are words that are commonly found in reading and they are just supposed to learn them. It allegedly makes reading easier. I don’t know. I hated memorizing vocabulary words. Doing it at age 6 seems horrible. At any rate, Sam is plugging away and doing really well. She knows quite a few of the list she got at the beginning of school. There are some she still struggles with, but she’s getting there. Some of the words you can sound out, and others you can’t. It’s the ones that they can’t sound out that she has a hard time with.

At any rate, Samantha and I were practicing her sight words last night and I decided to throw in some new ones. One of the new words was “no”. She was having trouble with it because you can’t really sound it out, but I wanted her to try. Our conversation was thus:

Me: “Come on, Sam, you should know this. Mommy says it all the time.”
Sam: [pause for thought] “Dammit?”

Sigh….Score one for Mommy….

Party Time!

| December 23, 2015

Yesterday was Sam’s holiday party at school. Since I am off from work this whole week, I signed up to be one of the parent volunteers. I don’t get into her classroom much (frankly, ever) and I knew Sam would love it if I was there. It was a lot of fun. Sam was thrilled when I showed up (the party was her last hour of school) and I think it was a toss up between whether she was just happy to see me or happy that I was the volunteer in charge of bringing milk! Milk is still her favorite drink and she never has it at school since they only drink water.

I helped the other volunteers put out cookies on their plates and offered the kids milk or water. Here is her classroom. Sam is sitting at her regular seat and table. Actually, all the kids were!

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One of the other volunteers offered to take a picture of us. I was dressed in my most festive attire! I had Christmas socks on too, but you can’t see those.

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After their snack, the kids were broken up into two groups for party activities. Sam’s group first did a craft of making a reindeer face out of wooden sticks, pom poms and other supplies. The kids all sat on the rug listening to the instructions.

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Making antlers out of a pipe cleaner seemed a bit more than most of the kids could do (I made a million….) but Sam did hers herself! Her friend, Ella, who she shares a locker with, is right next to her.

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The kids then switched activities and Sam’s group got a chance to throw marshmallow “snowballs” into a bucket. On her first try, Sam got one, but on her next, they both went in!

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The remaining time was spent watching a video of someone reading The Polar Express. They seem to like that story. I had never read it before, or saw the movie, and Sam’s teacher lent me the book for winter break.

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It was a cute party, but fast, and before we knew it, it was time to go. Sam did give Ms. Cipolloni and Mrs. Biehl her snowmen she made before we left, as well as gift cards. They loved their homemade presents. Sam signed the back of each one. Ms. Cipolloni told Sam that she especiallly loved it because, if Sam remembers, she had just told the class her Christmas tree at home fell down and a lot of her ornaments broke. It was a good thing Sam gave her a new one!

Today is Sam’s last day before winter break. Yay! No school, no homework! Let the Christmasing begin!

The Holiday Showcase!

| December 18, 2015

Today was Sam’s kindergarten showcase. The kids have been working so hard with the music teacher learning all their Christmas songs. Sam told me a lot of them were new songs she did not learn in preschool and she liked that she was doing something new. We all came out to see her — Mark and I, Grandmom and Poppy and Pop Pop. She loves that we all show up for her important things.

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The kids sang their little hearts out. Sam was not as expressive with her hand and arm motions as some of the kids, but she did do the motions. If she hadn’t have been in the front row we never would have seen it though! I was happy that she sang every song.

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In this one they are singing the Dreidel song and she is showing the “made it out of clay” part.

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A few days before the show, Sam asked me if I ever sang Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in school. When I told her I did, she asked me if I sang the extra parts. I didn’t know what she meant and she explained it to me:

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
(reindeer)
Had a very shiny nose
(like a light bulb)
And if you ever saw it
(saw it)
You would even say it glows
(like a flash light)
All of the other reindeer
(reindeer)
Used to laugh and call him names
(like Pinnochio)
They never let poor Rudolph
(Rudolph)
Play in any reindeer games
(like Monopoly)

I said, oh, I know what you mean, but no, I don’t think we sang that part in school. She then told me, “Well, we are going to do that….Ooohhhh. I think Miss Cipolloni said don’t tell our parents so it will be a surprise and I just told you, so…..” It was so cute. She knew she blew it. I assured her that it was good she told me so that when they started singing Rudolph I would pay extra close attention so as not to miss it.

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She was most happy to always tell me about the songs they were going to do with the bells. She is light blue bells (not dark blue!) and when her teacher holds up cards with colored dots on them, they ring their bells. When she first told me about it I said it must be confusing that there are two different colored blue bells and she was very quick to assure me that it is NOT confusing AT ALL! They are professional bell ringers, I suppose….

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The music teacher said to be sure to watch their faces and I could see why. Every kid was concentrating so hard to make sure they rang at the right time.

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There is Miss Cipolloni with her cards. Such stern little faces they all had!

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My little girl, always making hearts for me. 🙂

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It was such a great show. The kids all did so well and looked so adorable in their holiday finest. Sam was in the front and I guess looked so darn cute, they even grabbed her (and a boy) to give the flowers to the music teacher. I asked Sam after if she knew she was going to do that, and she said no. Yeah, well, my kid is cute, what can I say!

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Her whole concert can be found online here, although I will say the video is a little buggy!