Celebrating Easter!

This Easter was definitely busy!  We started on Saturday heading over to Home Depot for the kids' workshop.  They were making bird feeder that suction onto windows.  They also had the Easter bunny there and they printed us up a picture with him and they even had a little Easter egg hunt too!  The kids had a great time! 

After Home Depot we did some storm clean up from way back in January and then that night we colored eggs! 

 The kids' Easter baskets!

 Finding the baskets!  Of course they only had a few minutes to enjoy/explore them before we were running out the door to church.

 The Easter bunny came back while we were at church to hide the eggs for us (so they wouldn't go bad outside, Thank you Easter bunny!).  Unfortunately it was still too long, a third of the eggs were eaten by the crows before we could get to them!  The kids still had a great time hunting them though!

 Carson does NOT like grass!

 PICTURE TIME!!!

 Carson and that tongue!!!  Not bad even with that though! On a side note, Carson loves the swing outside so much that he passes out!

Parent Conferences -Dillon

On March 27th Daddy and I went in to parent conferences at the preschool.  It mostly focused on the frog class which is Kayda but we got a report card and talked briefly about Dillon.  Ms. Brenda told us that Dillon is a boys boy, he normally pays great attention in class but if the boys start to a pig pile, Dillon's gonna jump right in.  He is VERY social but is one of the top bumblebees.  He knows everything they would expect him to at his age.  Here is his report card.

• Social and Emotional growth: RECEIVED "REGULARLY" ON ALL
• Participates in circle, art/craft, music and dramatic
• Plays cooperatively with others
• Responds agreeably to adult suggestions and/or requests
• Can share adult attention
• Shows adjustment to school routines
• Expresses emotions in appropriate ways
• Is respectful and courteous
• Is learning to work independently

• Physical Development:
• Loco-motor skills: crawl, walk, run, jump  
• Can use scissors to cut: straight, curved and zigzagged (sometimes) lines
• Is learning to hold a crayon correctly

• Cognitive Development/Learning readiness growth: RECEIVED "REGULARLY" ON ALL BUT IDENTIFY SOUNDS
• Adequate attention span
• Can identify colors and simple shapes (Regularly and a +)
• Can identify most letters
• Can identify most sounds
• Can identify numerals 10-20
• Counts aloud from memory 1-18
• Recognizes own name in print
• Writes name correctly (this wasn't evaluated by the teachers but we have been working on it at home and he can write it in all caps, we're practicing just the first letter being capitalized)
• Can recall 9-1-1 as emergency
• Understands and follows simple directions on first request

• Comments: "Dillon is a very bright little boy that is always eager to learn!  Sometimes he gets alittle wild during free play when distracted by his friends!  Love having Dillon and looking forward to next year!!"

Parent Conferences - Kayda

This is a little late in posting (March 27th)...The preschool does parent conferences for the kids in the "frog" class, which means we got to go in and hear Ms. Brenda talk all about Kayda and what she can do.  According to her teacher she never has to ask Kayda to pay attention, she is very eager to learn and can be found front and center in circle time with her eyes glued to the teacher.  She is very quick and it is the teacher's opinion that Kayda would test into the "highly qualified" classes, should we choose to take that route. 

Kayda's report card shows that she has the highest score (regularly) on EVERYTHING they tested.  These are the areas.

• Social and Emotional growth: 
• Participates in circle, art/craft, music and dramatic
• Plays cooperatively with others
• Responds agreeably to adult suggestions and/or requests
• Can share adult attention
• Shows adjustment to school routines
• Expresses emotions in appropriate ways
• Is respectful and courteous
• Is learning to work independently
• Physical Development:
• Loco-motor skills: crawl, walk, run, jump
• Ball skills: bounce, catch, throw
• Can use scissors to cut: straight, curved and zigzagged line
• Is learning to hold a crayon correctly
• Cognitive Development/Learning readiness growth:
• Adequate attention span
• Can identify colors and simple shapes
• Can identify most letters
• Can identify most sounds
• Can identify numerals 50-100
• Counts aloud from memory 1-100
• Recognizes own name in print
• Writes name correctly
• Can recall 9-1-1 as emergency
• Understands and follows simple directions on first request
• Comments: "Kayda is such a bright little girls who LOVES to learn!  She is a friend to everyone, and I have so enjoyed being her teacher!! Have fun in kindergarten Kayda!"

They included some activities that they did to "test" some of the things listed above.  She was able to read ALL of the color words, knows all her vowels and both of their sounds, knows all the days of the week, most of the months, can read and tell you the sounds for all the letters (upper and lower case).  Can sight read and/or sound out many three letter words.  Can recognize two digit numbers, can add even when written as numbers not as dots (teacher was very impressed that Kayda used her fingers to figure it out).   She self corrects, if she colors one too many or circles the wrong answer she crosses out the wrong one.  They played a game where the teacher said got to box number ___ and put your favorite color, or draw and animal and write the letter it starts with, Kayda filled all 12 in appropriately.   Ms. Brenda also informed up that Kayda is a no-nonsense kind of girl.  She'll play with the girls but if there is too much "girl drama" she'll just up and leave to go play with the boys instead!

Girly Girl

I'll be the first to admit that having a "girly" daughter was never in my plans.  Yet I ended up with Kayda, my sweet girl who loves all things girly, dresses, bows, shoes, make up (which she never gets to wear) and earrings.  I LOVE it.  I love to play with her hair and see her twirling around in her dresses.  I remember at a birthday party last year Kayda insisted on wearing a dress, I overheard an pregnant lady there say "I'm not gonna make my daughter wear dresses to things, I don't care about that."  Well guess what, I didn't, with Kayda you have to force her NOT to wear a dress.  She would wear one everyday if that was an option.  Anyway, back to the story.  Last night after Kayda's shower I remembered that Grandma G had some sponge rollers and since Kayda's hair has a little bit of curl naturally (especially on beautiful ringlet in front) I decided to give them a shot.  She thought it was SO much fun putting them in, she sat on the counter and handed them to me while I put them all in.  I told her "I don't know if this will work, we may be braiding your hair in the morning but it might give you some pretty curls.  If it works maybe we can do it Saturday night so you'll have curls for Easter."  Her response was "We could take a shower and put them in EVERY night!" 

 Here she is all ready for bed.

  Well, we may have been a little TOO successful. When I took them out her hair went right back into little balls all over her head as is if the curlers were still there. I had to pull on them and hair spray them to try to get them to loosen up a bit. Here she is 30 minutes after taking them out, on her way to school.  She wouldn't give me a real smile, this was as close as I could get.  She wasn't very happy about having her picture taken.  Notice her outfit, she dressed herself, again she would wear dresses/skirts EVERY day.

And here they are all relaxed and perfect six hours later!    Keep in mind I did her hair with hot curlers last week and they were gone in 20 minutes.  Everyone that saw her today kept referring to Shirley Temple.  I've gotta say I was fascinated watching her little curls bounce!  Papa H always calls her a pixie, the curls definitely suited her!

And this is random but here's the kids room all set up at Grandma and Papa G's.  It seems to be working pretty well here, we have a family room and everything downstairs but we don't seem to need it very often.  The kids are loving living here, not sure what they'll do when it's time to buy a new house!