School!

Better late than never, here's some pictures of the biggest event of our year: Rebecca starting Kindergarten!

All dressed up and ready to go! She was SO nervous, SO excited, and just about to burst. I love this picture, because you can see it all in those shining eyes. 

Couldn't resist this shot...they're so small in front of that sign!

It was REALLY hard for them to say goodbye! You might expect Caiden to be upset about being left behind, but it was just as hard for her to go somewhere without him. They must have hugged goodbye about 5 times, and yes, there were tears.  :(

We left her hard at work and trying really hard to be optimistic about making it through the day. By now her nerves were REALLY going strong!

But she made it! Here she is having congratulations ice cream after a GREAT day. She made friends, she loved the teacher, she loved the classroom, she had nothing but complimentary and exciting things to say. It's been over a month now and she is completely settled in. She LOVES getting homework, and she's already sounding out words to spell and reading us a book every night! 

Not to be outdone, here is an identical photo of Caiden on his first day of daycare. We call it "school" for his ego, because he REALLY wants to be grown-up like his sister!

And a congratulatory ice cream trip for the boy, too.  :)  He is also in love with his school. They aren't doing too much academically, which I think is good in his case. He's just not interested in the "book-learning" at this stage. But he has done a unit on space, bats, apples, and a fire station field trip! He loves having a place that belongs to just him, and being grown-up while away from Mommy. 

Sample of her weekly homework. She also now gets a monthly homework assignment (last month was a presentation about your family - she spent days choosing and taping pictures), and a nightly book to read. She's really shining with the reading, already sounding out words like "time", "dinner", "halloween"....it's really amazing. 

A sample of the type of projects they do at Caiden's school. He was extremely proud of this one, because it was displayed on the wall at school for an entire week before being sent home. 

They cram a lot of work into 2 1/2 hours at Grandhaven! She comes home almost every day with some sort of project she did. I'm already running out of refrigerator space!

Caiden shocked me the other day as they were eating their after-school snack by spelling Rebecca's name completely on his own!

More Rebecca work. 

So, all in all, schoolk has been a smashing success for everyone involved. AND, Mommy gets some work time done during the daylight hours, which is good for ALL!