Timmy's 1st Grade Wrap Up

**This is my 300th Post!!! I may be way behind, but at least I've kept at it, for almost 7 years now!***

Timmy had a great year in 1st grade.  His teacher, Mrs Bekenstein was absolutely fantastic.  She was similar to Mrs Sheaffer in a lot of ways, she had very clear expectations of the kids, especially when it came to behavior, and she was quick and firm when reminding them of what was and was not acceptable.  Simultaneously, the kids know she just adores them, and she is just as quick with her praise.  One thing that was very different though, was that there was almost no homework all year!  While this made for much easier evenings at home, I felt like we weren't doing enough, and that we were a bit disconnected from what Timmy was doing in the classroom.  He definitely learned a lot this year though, so I guess it worked out!

Class Spring Photo - There's a lot of weirdness going on here, including the full military uniform on the classmate in the top right corner...

And in case you didn't notice, here's our gangsta son

He complained to us that the photographer wouldn't let him pose the same way for his individual photo!

Here's one of Timmy's stories from towards the end of the year.  Billy broke his ankle by tripping on the stairs, and we had told Timmy about it briefly.  A few days later Timmy came home with this, with a description of what happened, and a drawing with him smiling at the top of the stairs, multiple images tumbling down the stairs, and then him lying at the bottom of the stairs saying "ahhh".  We took it over to Billy and he kept the original.

For Timmy personally, he had a lot of growth at the very beginning of the year, with reading finally clicking for him in the first few weeks of the year.  He continued to love writing, and got the hang of some punctuation and self editing.  At the very end of the year, his hand writing suddenly had a big jump in legibility.  He even laughed when he tried to read some of his stories from the beginning of the year and couldn't read his own handwriting.  He also has a pretty strong base in math, and enjoyed history and FLES (Foreign Language for Every Student) where they learned some Japanese and about Japanese culture.  Actually, he HATED FLES in the begining of the year, writing in his letter to us for back to school night, "I like school.  I really like PE.  I do not like FLES."  But, sometime around Christmas he decided he did really like it, and would even complain and ask why we didn't enroll him in JI.  I told him that we wouldn't be changing that decision, but that he could join the Japanese Culture and Conversation Club (their club leader already knows they need a better name) and he could go to the after school meetings.  He joined and really enjoyed it.

Making Oragami in JCCC (On Character day, I don't usually send him to school dressed like Mario)

Timmy also joined Lego club in the spring and loved staying after school to build with legos.  I had tried to get him into some clubs in the fall, so I was glad that he joined a few finally and really enjoyed them.

He was also extra interested in attending this year's Matsuri (Japanese) Festival at the school in May.  He played Japanese games, we watched the JI 1st Graders do a performance, we had sushi for dinner, and tried on Kimono's.  It was a lot of fun! 

The next weekend we had the Son Challenge.  There were relay races, Minute to Win it type games, Silly clothes contests, and best of all, the photo booth!

In the beginning of June I went in to help with Field Day.  Mom was back in town and she went and followed Timmy's group through the stations.  The kids had a blast and I also really enjoyed myself, I was stationed at a game that was basically flag freeze tag.  It was interesting to watch the kids that I knew, whether they tried to hide their scarves unfairly, whether they were good sports when they got frozen, and also if they were good winners.  I was really excited to see what great kids all of my friends' kids are, and it was cool to see a little bit of their older kids' personalities too during their classes turn at my station.

Just one week later was the end of the year party for 1st grade, which happened to fall on Timmy's birthday.  The whole class kept teasing that the party was in honor of Timmy.  They mixed up the 1st grade classes into groups, by having each kid grab a lei out of a box, whatever color they got was the group they were in.  Then the groups rotated through stations just like field day.  I was on the relay race this time.  After the stations they had a Subway picnic before heading back inside.  Timmy said it was the best birthday ever.  And school ended just two days later!