End of Pre-K:
John turned 5 and had an Avengers-themed birthday party at Makutu's Island with 9 friends from school and his two cousins.
He finished up Pre-K at the end of May 2013 and participated in the graduation. They gave us a DVD with interviews they did with the kids. John said his favorite part of Pre-K was art and holiday parties, and he was most looking forward to homework in Kindergarten!
6/13 - I wrote to my mom: "Wasn't it nice that John was so concerned about your house getting
'robbered your money'? He also told me
when I asked what his teacher's name was "Neil. I think Grandma thinks it
is Nail, but it is Neil."'
Summer 2013:
John went to several summer camps including Math/Science camp, Vacation Bible School at Grammy and Pa's church, and three weeks of sports camp, in which he got to do all the team sports, plus archery and daily swimming lessons. He was really nervous about swimming - the first week, he didn't even get into the water. By the end of the summer he was paddling around on his own! He also went to a week of Kindergarten Prep at his new school. He went in the mornings, wore his uniform, and had a lot of fun figuring out what school would be like.
2013-2014 school year
Kindergarten was a great year for John. He learned to read very early on in the year, and absolutely took off. Reading and writing became his favorite things to do. The other big news academically was that he scored a 99% in math on the district gifted test. This enabled him to be identified as gifted at his school and they were able to begin providing services for him. In addition to being given (marginally) more difficult work, he attended a math class with his gifted teacher once a week, and bonded with the teacher instantly. Outside of that, he didn't progress too much in math in Kindergarten. I was not a big fan of his teacher in general, because I felt she didn't work well with him in either academics or behavior. As a parent, I felt there were some ups and downs in Kindergarten, but as a student I don't think John perceived it that way, so that's great!
He made friends in his class, and I was able to volunteer in his class several times, and chaperone the field trip to the zoo. He really liked his school and all his classes and teachers. Fun activities included: Fall Festival, singing with his class in the Variety Show, grandparents' day in his class, and of course, a party to celebrate finishing Kindergarten.
Outside of school, we went to Rocky Point several times, and he and I had a few dates to see Lion King and Disney Classics at the Symphony. He started taking karate in December and continued to go twice a week for the rest of the school year. He started speech therapy twice a week in May 2013 and was released almost exactly a year later in May 2014.
His interests for the year were dinosaurs, space, and Magic Tree House books!
-He had a best friend for most of the year and was such a tender-hearted kid about him. Apparently this child really admired John's twistable crayons, so for weeks, John told me he needed to buy him Twistables. When I finally told him that his friend's crayons were fine, he pleaded, "Please, mommy, I PROMISED him!" Sweetheart.
-In November, he had a worksheet about hand washing, and he wrote in "Happy Thanksgiving" on the picture of the towel, because that's what we had on our hand towels at the time. He also captioned the picture, "Gurms make me sick!"
-Is
there anything sweeter than your son giving you a ring he picked out at
the elementary school's Christmas boutique? "I will wrap up your other
present, Mommy, but I just couldn't wait until Christmas to give this to
you!"
-On Christmas Eve, he left out a bowl of water for Roodough. He spent a lot of time learning phonogram sounds in school, and -ough does say "off" as one of its sounds. So, John sounded out Rudolph and that's what he came up with.
-March 2014 - "Will the dinosaurs be with us in heaven?"
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