September/Early October: Our Kindergartners

Here are some first week and Sept/October bus stop pictures as well as a sampling of some of the schoolwork that's come home so far.

Walking to the bus stop on the second day of school.
They were happy to being going back.
The mornings were long.....Dan would have his shoes and backpack on by 8am, and we didn't have to walk to the bus stop till 8:35! I think it was nervous/excited energy. The mornings are more relaxed now (four weeks later- but that first week or so, he would get ready for school and be READY to walk out the door NOW!) 

Anabella loves walking Solomon to the bus stop.

They liked carrying water bottles in their backpacks. Whew, good thing, because we needed it that morning! It was hot! And, the bus was late every morning (and afternoon) that first week. It made Daniel very anxious, let me tell ya. Actually on the third day, the bus was so late picking them up that they said all the other kids were already in the classroom. The K teachers meet the kids outside that first week and the classes walk in together. 

Day 3- and Dan had already convinced me that he didn't need to wear a "collared shirt" ha!

Hurry up bus before he falls asleep! 

On Day 4, Thursday, Svetlana joined us again. Sergey will ride the bus from home in the mornings since it comes so early and then ride to our house in the afternoons. 

Day 5- we made it through the first week! TGIF! 

In art the first week, they learned to make cardinals (their school mascot), so Anabella wanted me to write "I Love Cardinals" on this napkin. She added the dots to make it pretty. 

Then she signed our names to it. 

Another picture we worked on together.

Daniel has soccer practice at a local elementary school on Thursdays. Here's a cute picture of S and S when they accompanied us one afternoon. 

Flowers I picked one morning on my walk with Solomon.
One of the highlights of my day (second to being at the bus stop when the kids come home) is my morning walk with Solomon. I'm pretty sure it's one of his as well. 

One of Daniel's drawings.
WOW! Look at that blue bird! 

I sometimes write little lunchbox notes on their napkins on days when they pack lunch (which was pretty much all of September, though here lately they've been buying once in a while depending on what's on the menu.) This is a lunch napkin Anabella made me for me.  

Look at her xoxo.....so sweet!! 

Second week of school she got to bring home a book from the library.
We took this picture to send to Aunt Cindy.
Her first library book! 

This is what Solomon does every time I sit down. Any time of day.
On this particular day, I was sitting down to quiz Sergey on his regions. Solomon could not get close enough. I had a book in the my lap, so he perched himself onto my shoulder! That dog!! 

Sergey thought it was funny that I was doing a selfie with Solomon, so he wanted to join in, too! Solomon did not like sharing his seat.....or selfie. 

Here we are at Chick-fil-a on Monday Jersey night. We all got a free 8 piece for wearing our favorite jersey! 

Daniel's first library book! He got a Lego Meet the Monsters book.
His second book was also a Lego book. 

Daniel told me these are "level 2 books." I had to smile.  He has a pair of size 8 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pjs that he loves (they were hand-me-downs from Hayden, so they've shrunk some), but he's so proud that they are size 8. He's so funny. The other day he couldn't find anything he wanted to wear and said, "I just want clothes that are size 8!" ha! Like his Daddy, he has long arms and legs, so I think he's going to mostly skip size 5 and go straight to size 6/7 because he's right, his size 5 pants/shirts really are too small. But, I hardly think he quite needs a size 8 yet. 

Here Dan is building with K-nex one afternoon after school. See the arms of his shirt- and that's a 5/6! He might be able to wear some 7/8 after all. 

The weather was mostly warm in September, so most days they wore shorts, but late September and Early October has been chilly so we broke out the long pants a few times here lately. 

Anabella's second library book was "squirrels" she said, which she got because she thinks they're cute. Both Tigers and Prairie Dogs books were good choices as they were nonfiction reads that we all learned from. We have a lot of books at home, but we hardly ever read nonfiction. I'd never thought to let them choose nonfiction from the public library either, so these nonfiction reads were enlightening to say the least. Good job, Anabella. Her third book was on Rabbits. Are you sensing a theme here? Maybe she'll be a veterinarian after all.

Anabella's writing is really taking off now. She's starting to write sentences, one of her favorites is "I love..." I was slightly offended in this one to be second to China?! 

Fashionista! 

This is what I get when I try to take this cutie's picture! Hey, at least I got his face this time! 

I am SO pleased with the work Daniel is bringing home from school. I can tell he's doing his best work, and all the sudden, his writing has really taken shape. We didn't do much over the summer (just what they initiated on their own), but his fine motor skills have really developed. Here's what he wrote one afternoon when he got home, brought to me and asked what it said. Look at all those great letters!! Go, Daniel!! 

Daniel's class on hat day.
This was on the school's facebook page. His class filled up their "Caring Cardinal" reward chart so they got to pick a fun activity.

So, Anabella loves to draw and make things. Well, one afternoon after school she told me she was going to make a book. A book on the seasons. She asked if I would help. Then, went on to tell me how she was going to do it. We worked on spring together (it's below). The rest of these season pages she did herself. The one above was bare (because it's winter if you couldn't tell), so she decided to add the snowman (and sticker). 

Spring (she traced the "tree" aka her arm/hand completely independently).

This is summer. See the little fish swimming. I'm the big fish, she's the guppy. See her pretty eyelashes. (It's backwards, sorry).

This is Fall (see the leaves falling).
If she's not a veterinarian, I think Anabella may have a career in teaching. 

Daniel's teacher does a lot of cutting/pasting activities, which I know Daniel likes because he loves to cut & paste. This one was on matching beginning sounds. 

One of Daniel's pictures....done at home....it's so strange, but they come home and want to do schoolwork! Here I thought the school day was going to be too long. 

More of Daniel's work

 Daniel told us out of the blue one evening that Abraham Lincoln was our 16th president. Someone is listening and learning at school! They're learning about coins in math right now, so we've been reinforcing this at home, too.  

Another Daniel picture

This was in the hallway for Back to School Night.
Look how great he did pasting those tiles onto his name!
And, he's doing so well writing his name now, too.
So proud! 

This is the "color chart" Daniel's teacher uses to encourage good choices.
There's a calendar in his daily folder, which comes every day. If there's no mark, then that means he's had a "perfect" day (aka stayed on green- ready to learn). An outline of yellow for that day means he's made a bad choice and had a color change. If his bad choice occurs early enough in the day, he gets the opportunity to move it back up, but if it's at the end of the day (such as closing circle), which has been the case a few times, he comes home on yellow. The great thing is that all three times this happened in September, he had a color change UP to blue (GREAT choices) the next day. Which shows he's learning to make great choices!! And, the final week of September he had a perfect 5 day week!! On Friday, he moved ALL the way up to PINK- a ROLE MODEL!! Shows that he's learning routines and finding his place in Kindergarten. So proud of him. He had consequences for his yellow days and rewards for his blue and certainly for his pink one! Go, Daniel, keep up the good work! 

This was in the hallway in front of Anabella's class. Look familiar? I suppose it's where she got her "book" idea. 

One of Anabella's drawings done at home. It's a clown, in case the nose wasn't a dead give-away.

One of Daniel's masterpieces!
He puts himself in it (over his head) and calls himself a robot. 

She wanted me to write "written by" so that she could add "written by" to her book.....she likes me to spell words and then she copies them. This was another "book"....needless to say, we go through a lot of paper. 

Anabella's class earned a PJ day for filing up their class's Caring Cardinal. 

This is part of their school's character building curriculum on how to "fill their friends' buckets" by being kind, sharing and helpful.  

"I love....." is one of her favorite sentences to write....can you tell? Now, she's moved on to writing "I see...." More on that in October's post, or else I'll never get this one posted!  

Eyelashes and red lips, any guesses who this piece belongs to? 

Another Anabella creation....slightly different than what she usually does.
I just love their original works!  

Daniel's apple puppet- he had this out on the bus when he got off one day. So excited to show me. His class had an apple tasting that day. 

While they didn't bring home a lot of work in September, I think they were working more on establishing routines and building classroom friendships, we had way too much for what would fit around the kitchen. So.....having seen something like this somewhere, I created our own little schoolwork display right upstairs in the playroom. They both really liked it.

This was probably one of my most hodge-podged entries to date. Just wanted to give you a little taste of what the cuties are doing academically these days. I love recording it here so that I can look back and see how their drawing/handwriting evolves over time. Of course, I have it all stored away into file folders, too. I think I may need to invest in some "school keepsakes" storage bins here soon!