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!

Tyler's Preschool 3's Class Wrap Up

Tyler had a great year at UCPP, in the Curious Cubs class.  His teacher was Patty Bohnenberger, Mrs B., who also taught Timmy, and has become a friend of mine.  She was exactly the kind of teacher Tyler needed, especially when his imagination, stubbornness, and/or emotions ran away from him!

Tyler ended up having a rough start to the year, largely over Stella, which I have mentioned before.  He had a hard time sharing her attention.  Eventually he was able to become friends with everyone in the class, including the adorable twins, Erin and Maggie, who were his primary competition for Stella's attention.  I am proud to say that Tyler even asked to have Maggie and Erin over this summer to play (they had us to their pool instead).  While Tyler still needs to work on self-calming when he gets upset, Patty worked with him tirelessly to give him the tools he needs to use his words, express himself appropriately, and move on.  Throughout the year she would email me if he had a particularly hard day, my favorite email started, "Tyler had a few upsets today, but one was over something with Stella, and I count those in a different category because they are basically an old married couple."  Patty also helped us with getting Tyler into speech services and worked with Tyler and his extreme picky eating!  She was fabulous with him.

Tyler's favorite centers this year were art, whatever they were exploring at the sensory table, building blocks, play doh, and, of course, playground time.  At the end of the year Patty gave Tyler the A1 Architect award, for constantly building elaborate cities and knowing specifically where things should go.  I obviously loved this award, but can also read between the lines that "knowing specifically where things should go" is code for "bossy and demanding"!

The rest of this post is mostly a giant slideshow of the pictures that Patty took during their regular school days.  (Note to self, try to do quarterly posts next school year!)  They aren't necessarily great pictures of Tyler, but I always loved getting them along with her weekly emails, because it gave me much more insight into what activities they were doing, who Tyler was playing with (you will notice Stella is typically very near by), and gave me something to ask him about specifically, beyond anything I could have gotten from just asking him what he did at school each day.

Beginning of the year

Tyler and I during meet the teacher, and Tyler on his first day of school.

Fall Fun

In the top right picture Tyler is eating an apple slice!  Yes, this was a photo worthy event!

Winter Play

Spring Stuff

For the end of the year party, the parents were invited in to hear stories the kids had written, and then have snacks while Mrs. B. passed out the class awards, this is when Tyler got his A1 Architect award.  Tyler's end of year progress report, under Teacher's notes, read:  We love having Tyler in our cub class!  He really knows how to have a good time and it is fun to spend time with him.  He's silly, care-free and always has a smile and a hug to share.  Tyler has made progress in all areas this year, and it has been a pleasure working and playing with him.

Five for Friday - 2014

A few fun things from 2014 that I still want to get into the blog.

1.  Susan's daughter, Andrea, got married to Clint in August.  We took a weekend trip to PA with Chris and Jenny for it.  It was a beautiful wedding and a lot of fun; Jenny definitely had the most fun.  ;)  It was also a little extra emotional, as Susan had received her last chemo treatment just days before Andrea's wedding, and her ex had lovely things to say during his Father of the Bride speech.  It was definitely a celebration!

2.  In September, Timmy and Tyler both graduated to new bikes, Tyler to a two wheeler with training wheels, Timmy to getting his training wheels off!  You can see Tim's original plan of action with Timmy involved holding onto him by the hoodie.  After that he took the pedals off and just had Timmy push around until he figured out the balance.  After that he got it pretty quickly!  They were both very proud of themselves when they made their break throughs, but neither of them necessarily loves bike riding or asks to do it very often.  Watching these, I can't believe that these videos are less then a year old!  They've both grown up so much!

3.  Ryan and Sami had baby Graham last October.  A bunch of the girls took Sami to the Melting Pot a few weeks before to celebrate.  I went to meet Graham in the hospital, and then Tim and the boys and I went to meet him soon after he got home.  The boys were excited to have a new friend and they enjoy every time they get to see him.  On top of just getting together with our friends who are now nieghbors, Timmy and Tyler have helped me babysit Graham, and Ryan and Sami have watched Tyler for us.  It's good to have more friends with kids!

4.  We celebrated Stella's birthday in November with a fun party at her house with Mr Knick Knack. Stella and her friends had a great time.  There was lots of dancing and giggling.  Timmy and Caleb thought that they were too cool for the party, there was lots of sighing and eye rolling from them.  Everyone settled in for pizza and cake though!  When it was time to leave, Tyler and Stella did some impromptu prom poses for the camera until Timmy, ever the photo-bomber, interfered.  Poor Tyler needs to grow, but he is six months younger then Stella!

5.  Nats Fest 2014 was in December.  It was a fun afternoon, the highlight was the mystery player reading to the kids again.  We got there early and got Timmy and Tyler seats right up front.  The reader this year was Ryan Zimmerman.  He read two books, the second one was a long, strange story about a child going to the grocery store alone during a snow storm.  Multiple times Zimmerman said that kids should not try to do the things in the book.  Timmy played paparazzi, and it must have been a new experience for Zimmerman, especially when Timmy put his foot up to take a picture.  The video is of Timmy's turn to ask Zimmerman a question, it took a lot of encouragement to get him to ask him anything, but he was excited after he did.

These are actually from a game we went to, Tim's turned out best, Tyler refused to smile, I guess he had his game face on!