Zane's Second Grade Year in Review

Sending Zane back to school this year was very emotional for me. Zane ended first grade with a big dark cloud over his head so going back to school was like the light at the end of a dark summer. By the time school started he was better than new and so excited to see everyone again. I think he was also relieved to know that this year would be so much easier than the year before. There wouldn't be any major life struggles, just a normal school year being a normal kiddo. For me, this year I was just filled with such a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunity to do the normal, mundane things. It never is far from my mind that not all heart kiddos stories turn out so wonderful.

 First day of 2nd grade.

 Walking into Mrs. Moore's class, full of confidence.

 This year's theme at Prairie Vale was The Greatest School on Earth, a la The Greatest Showman. This was the awesome quote that greeted us on their first day. I loved it.



Zane has never had a difficult time with anything, academically, in school. Everything comes pretty easy to him. I think in large part do to the fact that he got another year at home to prepare and mature before going to kindergarten. This year we started to push up against the fact that he should try to better himself  even if it isn't necessarily required. For instance Zane is a great reader. He tests reading at like a fifth grade level. However, Zane also has a very short attention span and loves starting new books. He also doesn't have the patience for a book taking him multiple days to read. So instead of pushing himself to read somewhat harder books, that would take him longer to read, not have pictures, and maybe somewhat challenging to him, he would just read twenty or thirty pretty easy books that he could finish quickly. In addition to this we had a continual fight over AR testing this year. He could never quite understand why Zach and I got so upset with him when he took five tests on books he hadn't read, failed them miserably, all in an attempt to be the first person to meet their AR goal in the class. With all that being said he read the second most books of anyone in second grade. All this is determined by the tests he took which I feel a little bad about.

Zane with his second grade teacher Mrs. Moore.

Receiving his reading award.





I am happy to report that the AR testing debacle was the biggest fight of the year. Generally speaking he had a good attitude towards school and everything that went along with it. He still never has really had any substantial homework, so we shall see how he handles that as that increases in the next few years. He did well in math, but that was also an area where I felt like he should be pushing himself to be quicker and do better on his timed quizzes. He didn't seem to think this was something he needed to work on and his teacher never mentioned it either. He made good grades and as of right now everything seems to come pretty easily to him.

Chicks and Cheerios breakfast with Zane. This is the only second grade real event.

This year Zane made some new, very close friends. He has always been friends with everyone, but this year I felt like he found some real kindred spirits. They were both in his class so they had all sorts of fun together. Last month he and two other girls had their first official Harry Potter Club meeting at one of the girl's houses. They played Harry Potter, talked all things HP, did HP crafts, and have plans to do this more often. Zane does seem to have a lot of friends that are girls, as he has a more creative, imaginative mind than a lot of boys. He doesn't seem to mind and frankly I'm happy that he enjoys playing will sorts of different people.

 Yes I made it to the first field trip, ever, with Zane this year!



Zane had been eagerly awaiting being able to be in Christmas Choir as a second grader. It did not disappoint. Choir was for sure one of the highlights of his year. They practiced twice a week for a little over a month then put on two different concerts. Next year he will be able to be in Christmas Choir and Spring Choir which I know he's very excited about. A couple of his best buddies were in choir with him which made it that much more fun.



This year Zane got to be a Kids Heart Challenge Heart Hero for his school This included a cape ceremony in front of the whole school and all sorts of fun, very positive recognition. Everyone at his school was so wonderful and supportive last year it was nice to be able to celebrate how far he's come, while supporting such a great cause. Thatcher and I even made the yearbook from his cape ceremony. Zane ended up raising the most money in the second grade and got to be the gym teacher for the day. He also got to be front and center, holding the banner, at the silly string party that all the top fundraisers got to attend at the end of the year. His gym teacher told me last week that their school raised the second most money in our region, so hopefully sharing his story helped do some good.

Zane was a Wolf in  Cub Scouts this year where he earned all kinds of new belt loops and participated in all sorts of fun things.  He won the least wood on the car category at the pinewood derby, ending in his tiny sliver of a car breaking, but a trophy is a trophy. They went to see a minor league baseball game last month and got to go on the field which I think might have been his favorite activity. There was lots of camping, den adventures, volunteering, and they are currently preparing for a four day sleep over summer camp in a few weeks. He has enjoyed having Rowan in his same Pack and has a whole different set of friends that he has made through Scouting, which I love.

 Now he's a Bear!

Overall it was a beautifully uneventful year. He seemed to have fun at school, but he was decidedly ready for summer break. No tears from this big kid about being out of school. He is a sad thinking about next year being his last year at Prairie Vale. I'm a little sad that he will miss out on all the "last year at this school" celebrations since there will still be a fourth grade at Prairie Vale next year. Zane's class will be the first fourth grade class in a new building so I am anxious to see how that plays out next year. I sure do wish time would slow down. This kid will be nine in just a few weeks.

 Last day of school 2019!







Rowan's Kindergarten Year in Review

It's truly hard to believe that tiny little Rowan is officially a first grader. This year has gone by so quickly. I feel like I missed it. I was nervous sending Rowan to kindergarten since he was five and was going to be on the younger side for a kindergartener, almost a year younger than Zane was when he started. He seemed so little to me and so fragile, emotionally and physically. He knew how to read a few words when he started, but was much farther behind where Zane was when we sent him off. I didn't know how his tender little soul would handle the changes and the whole school environment. Also I had so loved my years with Rowan at home I desperately didn't want them to end.

 Meet the teacher day, August 2018.

 First day of kindergarten, August 15th 2018.

 Off he goes, down the hall to his classroom. His backpack seemed huge on day one. It seems almost small now. He has grown so much this past year.

The year started with a bit of a struggle. He was tired a lot and just a ball of emotion most nights. I think much more so than Zane had been, again because he was younger, but also because Rowan's go to emotion is sadness/crying, Zane's is much louder and angrier. I will take a cuddly kindergartener at the end of the day over a screaming one any day. As the year progressed this got better and for the most part he came home in a great mode most days with all kinds of stories to tell. Now the problem being Rowan struggles with the truth, so who know which of the stories were true. There were multiple times this year where he told me something that I was sure was a lie, for example that he went to Mrs. Blue's class (a first grade teacher) to read. My response was a "no you didn't Rowan." To which Zane replies from the background, "yeah they do that, it's the reading with friends program. They go to all the different first grade classes to read." I'm sure on the flip side of that lots of his stories about normal daily activities and happenings with his buddies were complete fabrications. Generally speaking he did not have much to say about his days though. Zane use to give me minute by minute play by plays of his days when he came home from kindergarten so I felt much more out of the loop this year.

 He was missing his mamma and his baby brother pretty badly at the beginning, but I think he got over that pretty quickly.









Rowan absolutely adored his teacher, Mrs. Dooley. He fell head over heels in love with her and would say things like, "I just really like all her activities," when I would question what he loved most about her. She is also an unbelievably patient and kind human being. I was thrilled that he was in her class. In good news Rowan enjoys the act of learning. He loved working on his site words through out the year, laying them out, organizing them, and was very motivated to get through all the levels of words. This was hard work for him since he really didn't read hardly at all when he started the year. He quickly grasped the idea of sounding words out and still gets very frustrated by words that have silent letters in them, or words that just don't follow the rules. (Don't we all.) He ended the year reading a lot Elephant and Piggie books and first level readers. He's getting there and I think is in a good place, hopefully we can progress some over the summer since AR reading starts next year.

This year he has also developed a love for writing, all be it he can't spell hardly anything correctly, he loves the act of writing. Usually he's writing lists of words or a "story" of some kind. There were many days this year when he came home with some sort of prize or candy for having filled up the entire page in notebook during journal time. Rowan writing is tiny, I mean barely can read his letters, tiny, and I frequently have to remind him that the letters should take up the whole line. Meanwhile Zane writes huge and frequently had notes on his paper to stay between the lines. Their personalities can be perfectly described by their handwriting.

Birthday lunch at school.





As a kindergartener he got to go to all the different specials classes that Zane had been raving about for two years. This year they also added a STEM class to their rotation. Rowan loved all his specials teachers and going to specials was usually a highlight of his day. When asked he will say that art class is his favorite. The art teacher at his school is absolutely amazing and I have multiple kindergarten master pieces on our walls to show for it. He also told lots of tales about all the cool experiments they did in STEM class. I think Rowan may grow up to be an architect so a lot of the STEM projects seemed right up his alley.




This year I was able to go to both of Rowan's field trips, which he loved. In the fall we went to the science museum and I nearly lost multiple children, but we had a good time. Then a few weeks ago I went with him to the zoo. The zoo was fun, but hot and we were there about an hour and half too long for kindergarteners. I got to meet a lot of his little friends this way. They all seem nice but Rowan isn't friends with every single person in kindergarten like Zane was, which is completely fine. He has a good time with his little group of friends and happily did not have anyone who drove him crazy like Zane had.





These were the two Rowan's in Mrs. Dooley's class.



I loved getting to do this with him and can't imagine the sadness/guilt that I would have faced if I hadn't been able to go. We had a blast at both events.



Of course one of the big highlights from kindergarten was Rowan's broken arm. This happened in September and two casts and almost two monhe finally had his arm free again. This meant he missed all of fall tball, but he did really well having a cast on for so long. I think there were two other kids with casts on at the same time as him in his class which helped.





He also finally lost his first tooth this year. He's only lost two so far, but he was very excited for the tooth fairies arrival.

This year was also Rowan's first year in Cub Scout. He and one other little boy were the only Lion Scouts and Zach was their den leader so it was definitely a laid back, gentle introduction to Cub Scouts. He got to camp at the zoo, they did multiple service projects, and they went caroling. He got to race in his first Pinewood Derby, which to hear him tell it he is "stinking good" at. He won first place in his den, with zero competition so yes he is so stinking good at it. He officially became  Tiger in March and you've never seen anything cuter than Rowan's tiny body in a full Class A Cub Scout attire.





Kindergarten does two music programs during the year. There is a kindergarten lunch at Christmas time where they sing The Merry Hula. I think they start working on in September and then they have a program on the last day of the year, which I think they start working on in February. The songs are sung for months in advance so by the time the big day comes along everyone knows all the words, especially since this is our second time having a kid perform them. Rowan was the absolute cutest kid in both programs and these days were some of the highlights of his year for me.

I mean look at this cuteness in his Hawaiian shirt and everything.

 

Do you wanna do the Merry Hula?

The last program in the wide mouth frog, which you might remember Zane was the crocodile in his when he was in kindergarten. They learn  eight or ten songs for this and Rowan's been singing them all for weeks. I love this program and it is the cutest dang thing you will ever see. Rowan had some amazing facial expressions that pushed it over the top as well. After this program they are free to be checked out. It's a perfect ending to kindergarten.



 Of course Rowan, being Rowan, has had mixed emotions about this school year being over. He does seem excited for summer and being home with Thatcher and I everyday. However, he's also extremely sad about not being in Mrs. Dooley's class anymore and missing his friends. On the last day of school there were bouts of tears from him all day. Rowan has big feelings, that he feels so strongly. He loves deeply and is emotional about it. I think all those things are wonderful and they are what makes him who he is. He needed lots of cuddles yesterday and reassurance that he'll see Mrs. Dooley again and his friends will still be there and that everything will be ok. Needless to say he had a great first year of school. I cannot believe it's over. I can't wait to see what wonderful things lie in his future.

Here are his fall school pictures (on top) verses his spring school pictures on the bottom. Just look at how much he has grown up. 



Last day of school pictures.