Read-A-Thon

I have been busy these past couple months planning the first ever Read-A-Thon for Ellie and Caden's school. It has been really fun but a lot of work organizing something from scratch. I had to figure out how we were going to track reading, create all the forms, decide on prizes and find sponsors, and put together a fun way to present it all. Thankfully, I have had the help and support from good friends.

Last Friday the Cat in the Hat and I presented the Read-a-thon to the students. We visited each neighborhood and did a mini assembly lasting about 10 minutes. The students seemed really excited and I hope the RAT is a sucess.

Here is video of the poem I read with the Cat in the Hat. Then I went on to explain how the RAT works and showed the kids the prizes.

Ellie's 1st Project

Ellie had her first big school project and was so excited about it. She had to pick a National Park and research it then create a poster and present it to the class. She chose Zion National Park not knowing that Ryan I have been there several times and had lots of pictures. Now we need to take the kids there.

Little Red Hen

Caden had his first school play. They performed The Little Red Hen. Caden was a narrator and got to dress up like a farmer. They did so well at saying their lines.

Ellie's First Day of School

Ellie had an awesome first day of school. She is in 2nd grade this year and seems so grown up. She came home raving about her teacher, Mrs. Burks, and is just thrilled to be in her class. She knows a couple of kids but none of her good friends are in the class. She has made some new friends though and I think it is going to be a geat year for her.

Caden's Preschool Graduation

Caden graduated from Shining Stars Preschool on Thursday, May 27th. Miss Mindy always ends the year with a big pizza party for the families. One of the moms made the kids graduation hats and the kids each recieved a diploma and a book of pictures and projects and a dvd of the year. Miss Mindy has been such a great teacher. Both Ellie and Caden have gone to Shining Stars for 2 years. I have been amazed at the creativity and enthusiasm Miss Mindy has had for the past 4 years. We are really going to miss seeing her. She isn't teaching 3 year olds next year or I would have Max go there in Sept. He is going to have to wait a year until he is 4.

Caden's class did tons of fun things this year. They learned about a differnt country every month, took lots of field trips, and had awesome parties for every holiday. Check out Shining Stars Preschool blog for pics.

It is hard for me to believe that Caden will be in Kindergarten this September and be going to school with Ellie. He enjoys school and is very smart but also enjoys his down time at home. In Sept. he will be going to half day kindergarten and Max will be going to preschool 3 mornings a week. What will I do with my free time? Crazy!

Young Authors Night

Ellie's school hosts a Young Authors night every year in April. The students dress up and show off their written work. Ellie's class published a book this year. Here she is showing off her book to her dad and grandpa.

Ellie next to her artwork she did with the Artist in Residence.

We were fortunate to have my dad come visit us from PA for a couple of days. It is not often that we have family around to share in special events. We had a good visit. The kids loved playing games with grandpa. We went to the High Desert Museum, Sun Mountan Fun and just hung out and had a really good time.

Pennies for Peace

The school district and local college worked together to bring Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, to Bend. The schools and community have been collecting pennies for Pennies for Peace for a few weeks. 20 kids from each school were invited to attend an assembly with Greg Mortenson. Ellie was lucky enough to be chosen (probably because I helped with the campaign at her school). I went with her as a chaperone on the field trip. The schools raised $52,000 with more money coming in from the community tonight. That sum is amazing. It is enough to build and staff a school in Afganistan. I was even lucky enough to shake Greg's hand since I was sitting on the end of a row near the door he entered through. Greg told the students that the kids in Pakistan and Afganistan take off their shoes before entering the school to show respect. He then had all of us take off our shoes to show respect for the school we were in. It was a short and sweet presentation with mostly questions to the kids to get them thinking. I was glad to be able to go though and am anxious to watch his lecture tonight. (Tickets to his lecture sold out in under in hour but they are going to be filming it and showing it on OnDemand).

Caden's Valentine Party

Caden had his school Valentine Party today. I brought frosting and cookies for them to decorate. They also played some fun games and made love bugs. The highlight was exchanging valentines. He got quite a haul, pencils, candy, stickers and of course sweet valentines from all his classmates.

Caden's School

Each month this year Caden's preschool is focusing on a different country. January was Japan and I got to go in for a day and do some fun activities. I made candy sushi out of rice krispie treats and fruit rollups. I also taught the kids some simple orgami. I also showed the kids some items and pictures from Japan that my parents had sent me when they lived there. It was fun and the kids seemed to enjoy it. You can check out more pics at Caden's school blog: http://shiningstarsclass.blogspot.com/

Thanksgiving Feast

Both Ellie and Caden celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast at their schools. They both wore costumes and had lots of yummy food.

Marathon runner

Congratulations to Ellie for running a half marathon and earning her giant foot and tshirt. The kindergarteners have only been running 2x a week this spring so they only had to run a half marathon to earn the reward. Next year running club begins in fall, breaks for winter then starts up again in spring so she will need to run all 26 miles to earn her shirt. Way to go Ellie!!! Note: the half marathon is consecutive. Generally she ran a mile each running club day.

Ellie also earned her 4th AR diploma for the year and got a gift card to Subway. Thats a total of 87 books read, 91% correct on her reading comprehension tests, and all at a average of a 3rd grade reading level. What a great year Ellie!

Caden's last day of school

Caden finished up his first year of preschool at the end of May. They had a pizza party to celebrate. Miss Mindy presented all of them with a star award and starbursts. Caden was given the Most Friendly. He had a great year of school and was really sad it came to an end. Miss Mindy gave each of the kids a binder with all their favorite artwork from the year. She also made them a very special DVD with tons of photos of the class throughout the year. She really is the best preschool teacher ever and Caden can't wait to go back next year. You can view his preschool blog for more info and photos at http://www.shiningstarsclass.blogspot.com/

Farm Program

Ellie's Kindergarten Farm program was last Thursday. All 5 kindergarten classes got together to sing songs then each class did a performance. Ellie's class read Cock-a-doodle-do Barnyard Hullabaloo. Each student had a reading part. They did very well. Here is a sampling from the evening. Ellie is the 2nd from the left. She is dressed up as a black and white horse.

Running Club

Now that the weather is warming up Ellie's school has started up Running Club. It is a program to encourage students to excercise. On Tuesday and Thursday they can participate by running around the field. Each lap is recorded and after each mile they earn a foot to put on their necklace. The goal is to run a half marathon and then they earn a t-shirt. Ellie loves this program. She makes sure she runs 4 laps each time so she can get a foot. She has run a total of 7 miles this month. (I think it got rained out once or twice). Go Ellie!!

Dr. Seuss' Birthday

Ellie's school is celebrating Dr. Seuss's 105th birthday and Read Across America Week with lots of fun activities. On Monday everyone wore red and white and they had a special assembly. At the assembly each neighborhood perfomed something. Discovery Falls did a skit of 3 little kittens that lost their mittens. Ellie got to be a kitten and meow while some first and second graders read the poem. She was also very excited when the principal came in riding a moped with Thing 1 and Thing 2. They also had 'rock out to a good book' where music is played on the intercom and the students have to stop what they are doing and read a book until the music stops. Today was dress as your favorite character from a book day. She loves Junie B. Jones but didn't want to dress up as her because she is kind of goofy and she thought the kids would laugh at her. So she dressed up as fancy nancy. She has an actual fancy nancy dress but she didn't want to wear it to school (Ellie is very picky). She chose just to accessorize a dress with jewels and a crown. I also curled her hair and put it up all fancy. They are having a parade at school and are going to different classrooms to have stories read to them. They are also having a special snack of green eggs and ham. Then we have the rest of the week of for teacher work day and parent teacher conferences.

Just picked ellie up from school and her teacher was dressed as fancy nancy too! She even had striped leggings like ellie's tights. She took a picture, I will post it when she emails it to me.

School Rummage Sale

This weekend was the school Rummage sale. We spent Thursday and Friday going through all our stuff looking for things to donate. At first I felt bad because we wouldn't have much to donate especially after the kids "toy" sale in January. But when I went through their clothes and our junk closet I came up with over 100 items. It feels so good to get rid of stuff. I volunteered Friday evening when they were accepting donations. I spent the time unpacking boxes full of stuff and setting them out on tables. There was so much stuff! I set aside some books and a couple of toys for the kids. Then I went back this afternoon and was impressed by how much was sold in the morning. I mostly folded clothes and packed the things that didn't sale back into boxes to be dontated to St. Vincents. It was actually pretty fun volunteering and I met a couple other moms that have kindergarteners and are involved in the school.

I also found out that I am in charge of the carnival part of the school Bingo Carnival night in April. I was actually working on the flyer and sent it to the PTA president with a note about helping with the carnival. She responded that the person in charge could no longer do it and asked if I could be in charge. I said yes then wondered what I got myself into. I was fortunate to meet the woman that coordinated it for the past couple years and it sounds like she was pretty organized and will pass the folder on to me. I guess that gives me a project for March.

Game night

I was at Goodwill looking for Halloween costume acessories and I ended up getting 3 games for the kids. Clue Jr., Princess Monopoly, and Buckarroo. The games look brand new and were only $1.99. The kids LOVE them, especially monopoly. Even Caden can play it. We have had a lot of fun nights playing games.

Also, I have been meaning to blog about my first PTA meeting. Or Houswife Politics (as Ryan calls it). Apparently there are 250 + members at the school but only 20 showed up for the meeting and I was told that was a lot. Out of the 20 I knew 6 of them. It was different than I expected but I am excited about volunteering and getting to know people. I signed up to do the booths for the spring carnival and to put together the school cookbook. The school has a lot of fun activities planned this year.

School update

Ellie completed her first full week of school. She absolutely loves it. She comes home on a high and spends the next hour telling me every detail of her day. I thought she would be a little shy at first but she wasn't. She has made friends and begs to go to school early so she can have time to play on the playground. I thought she would want me to at least walk her in but after that first day she told me she could do it herself. Then of course Caden says "mom I can go into my school all by myself too". They are getting so independent. I love to see them so happy and excited about something though. Every other wednesday the kindergarten class gets to go to school for the full day. Ellie got to eat lunch in the cafeteria, go to P.E. and the library. She now can't wait for Wednesdays! Her teacher sends out a weekly newsletter to the parents and Ellie's picture was in it this week (see pics below). They read the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, learned the song, made hats and had a special snack.

Reading!

I don't know why I am having such a hard time blogging lately. I guess there haven't been too many hours of free time in the evening. And when Ryan is home, I want to hang out with him. He was gone the week of my last post, home for the weekend, gone the next week, home for memorial weekend and that week and flew out again tonight. Needless to say the weekends have been busy catching up on errands I can't get done with 3 kids. I also had to reread Twilight (a must after finishing the "Host"). I seriously just can't get enough. So between reading and G.H. (I'm on level medium!) I guess I just haven't had time to blog. I do start to feel bad though when family starts calling and asking if everything is o.k b/c I haven't blogged in a while. Sorry! So here are the updates:

Ellie gave a talk in church today. She did so well. She did it all by herself. She read her talk and I just held up the pictures she colored. Yes she can READ! And I'm not just talking about small words and short sentences. She can read at least 95% of any book in her room (she has tons). It is amazing. After reading me three books tonight she said, "reading is the funnest thing in the whole wide world". Its crazy, this girl reads everything from signs to labels, mail, anything she can get her hands on. She has also started "spelling". She has been writing these stories and she doesn't even ask me how to spell anything. Of course, most words are misspelled but I can actually read what she has written. I seriously don't know what to do with her. Her kindergarten teacher is going to have a hard time keeping her busy.

Our Preschool Graduate

Ellie's last day of preschool was on Friday. Miss Mindy had a pizza and ice cream party for the families. It was really fun. Miss Mindy made scrapbooks of the year for all the kids. I can't believe how much time and effort she put into it. The book had samples of her writing and artwork as well as lots of pictures. So cute! Ellie loves it! Ellie is really going to miss all her friends and is concerned she won't see them again. Hopefully we can set up a couple playdates this summer though. Miss Mindy was a great teacher. Luckily, Caden gets to have her as a teacher next year.

Afterwards we went by her new elementery school to register her for Kindergarten. We went on a little tour of the school. We even ran into a couple of people we knew. She seemed a little overwhelmed and shy while we were there but afterwards was totally excited.

Here are some pics from the day: