Many Many Events This Past Weekend

Mrs. M told me today that her Teacher Appreciation gift basket came in handy. Her and her family hit the road Thursday and Friday because her son, Daniel, is the baseball team's pitcher and the team got to go to the playoffs. Unfortunately, our team lost both games. Mrs. M said that everyone enjoyed eating all the snacks on the road.

Katie is still enjoying her play time at school. Thursday was game day at school. Katie took her new "Trouble" board game and she said that the kids really liked playing it in class. Today was "Art Day".  All the students got to paint, color, draw, play with clay or play dough.  Katie brought home 3 creations, I will have to share you at another time.  They turned out so good.  Tomorrow, is "Outside Play Day".  Katie's taking her bean bag toss and horseshoes to play with the group. 

Friday was the big "Field Day". Oh my gosh! It was sooo HOT! The high was suppose to be in the mid 80's, but I think the humdity had to be 90%. I made the mistake of wearing my crop pants, instead of my shorts. Everyone was drenched in sweat. I HATE sweating! The upside to having a wet t-shirt, when the wind blows you have an instant air conditioner. LOL! Sorry, I had to say it eventhough it's probably uncouth to say. I believe the children thought they were in heaven. Coach B had all sorts of activities all over the soccer field. Katie couldn't believe her eyes, 4 inflatables. LOL! She loves those things. In fact, there were 2 bounce houses, 1 giant inflatable slide and 1 catepillar agility inflatable. On one side of the field, Coach B had races (running and sack racing). On the opposite side was the hula hoop contest and all the children learned the Cha-Cha Slide dance. It was so cute to watch them. The racing was precious! All the little kids ran straight to Coach B instead of the finish line. They would all end up in a ball that a few of the kids tripped upon each other. Katie did good. She ended up in the ball with the running. She received 3rd place out of 10 girls in the sack race. She was so excited. I was glad that Coach B gave every runner a ribbon. I'll have to post the hula hoop and Cha-Cha Slide dance videos at another time. It was priceless! I had no idea that Coach B taught the kids this dance or I would have tried to help her practice for Field Day. You'll see in the video that she wasn't dancing all that great. I asked her later, if she was embarrassed because I had the camera on her. "No", she answered. "Why didn't you dance?" I asked. "Because I couldn't really remember what to do." she answered. Later in the day, I think the heat was getting to Katie just a little. She drank her water and ate two ice pops, but she was actually asking me if we could leave yet. She never says that when it comes to school activities. In fact, she's always begging me to stay a little longer. We were both pretty exhausted as soon as we got back home. She hit her bed and I hit the couch for about an hour. Doug wanted to get some lawn mowing done, while Colton was sleeping. Thankfully, Colton slept his usual 2 hours. LOL!

Racing to the finish line

Placed 3rd in the Sack Race

"A" and Katie posing after coming out of the Catepillar

The gang chillin' in the shade.

Hula Hoop

Katie sporting her ribbons

Katie and ballet buddy, "J"

Saturday morning, we spent about 2 hours at the ballet studio for rehearsal. The girls got to wear their costumes and us parents got to watch the rehearsal. This is usually when I like to video tape Katie practicing. Unfortunately, right when I started to record, a group of older dancers stood up in front of stage and none of the parents could see, much less record our little ballerinas rehearsal. THANKS OLDER DANCERS! I'll have one more chance to record during this week's rehearsal at the performance stage before the recital.

Katie turn around so I can take your picture

Waiting to go on stage

We got home from ballet rehearsal just in enough time to get a breather and we headed out again.  Doug wanted to go to our local airport to see the Air Show that was advertised.  I believe the Army helped out a lot with the show because they had an Army helicopter giving rides, two other Army helicopters performing and a jet that was used in the Operation Desert Storm.  You'll have to forgive me, I forgot the name of this jet.   Doug told me, but I was too busy either watching the show or the kids fussing.

It's gettin' a little HOT at this point

Charlie Brown

Sunday afternoon, I attended Jodie's graduation. I still can't believe she's out of high school now. She plans to head to USA next Fall. Bless her heart, I felt so bad for her. She looked like she was crying the entire time. We wish her the best of luck with new adventures.

Congratulations Jodie!

Today, I got a lot of things accomplished that I've been putting off for a few days now. I don't know what it is, but we've been invaded with ants and spiders. I grabbed my good bug spray and commenced to killing those little bad boys. While I was at it, I cleaned up some of Doug's collection of stuff that has collected in our carport. Yay! It looks a little bit better.  

As you know, I've been working on our little Summer School for Katie.  I've got a few science experiments lined up.  I've got her projects lined up as well.  One of the projects, she is read a few books on my list and get a small journal as to what she thought about it and which ones was her favorite.  Since the tornadoes, she seems interested in the weather.  I don't think it's a issue of fear, but curiosity.  So, we will find out why we have the weather that we do; what time of the year each often occurs; experiment making a volcano, find out why warm air needs lots of room, make our own tornado.  Of course, we have to do some fun stuff like making fake snot, find out if oil and water mix, and bath salts.  I might even teach her to forecast the weather for us, we will see.  I hope to make it fun and hands on.  I've got my agenda and fun field trips planned.  We're hoping to make it to The McWane Science Center  this Summer. 

Katie was happy that she didn't have to bring her school books (different reading level books)home. Like any other typical kid, she hates homework. I tell you what though, that hard homework has paid off. Her DIBELS scores came back today. Our little girl is officially ready for the first grade. YAY! Just to remind you as to what DIBELS is, it stands for "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills".

DIBELS Scores
Katie is suppose to know the following at the beginning of the First Grade Year in August:

• Letter Naming (37 entering 1st Grade) - Katie scored 65 this month! Letter Naming means: Student recognizes upper and lowercase letters out of order.
• Phoneme Segmentation (35 entering 1st Grade) - Katie scored 68 this month!  Phoneme Seg. means: Student tells all the sounds heard in spoken words.  For example, mop has 3 sounds . . . m-o-p.
• Nonsense Words (50 by January entering 1st Grade) - Katie scored 52 this month!  Nonsense Words means: Student blends sounds together that make nonsense words.  For example, p-o-c = poc, k-a-j = kaj, o-t = ot.

We are so proud of our little girl!!!  Eventhough, she will not have a graduation, I'm thinking about having the grandparents and us maybe go out to eat or something special like that.  The other day, Katie and I went to the jewelry store to get a new battery for my watch.  While we were waiting, Katie and I checked out all the beautiful jewelry.  I showed her the children's jewelry section.  They had some sweet slide charm bracelets with initial pieces.  She seemed to really like the bracelet and asked if she could have one with a "K" and two birthstones for her birthday.  I was sort of thinking about getting it for her for graduating Kindergarten.   I may go back and check them out a little better.