CELINE & ADDY OFF TO SCHOOL - 4th Grade & Kindergarten

Celine Started School on Wednesday, September 4th as a big 4th Grader! Her teacher is Ms. Hansen.  We attended the curriculam night where we got to meet the teacher and go over the years plan and I could tell she was going to be a strict teacher.  Maybe that will be good for the kids.  Here is the picture of her on the first day of school.

I also saw this neat idea on Pinterest (that your supposed to start in Kindergarten (better late than never), where you take a large men's' t-shirt and write their graduation class date on it and have them wear the same shirt on the first day of each new school year.

Here is the one for Celine.

Here is the one for Addison.

When Celine was in third grade, she signed up to be a Valet Member since you have to be in the Fourth grade.  They did some training prior to 3rd grade being over and a day of training before the first day of school this year started.  Celine was on the schedule to be a Valet Member for the first week of school, which was only three days.  Valet is where the parent's drive up the lane and they have 4 or 5 valet students that open car doors for the students coming to school.  Celine was responsible for waiting for cars to stop by her, open the doors, say "good morning" to the kids and then "have a nice day" to the parents as the students close the doors so the parent's can drive away.  Below is a picture of her performing her Valet duties!

Addison actually started a few days later than Celine did.  There is this new program in the state of Washington for new Kindergarteners that instead of starting on the same day of school with everyone else, the teacher schedules a meeting with the student and their families and basically tests the child to see how many letters and numbers they recognize, to see where they are at when coming into the class.  Here is a picture of Addy on her first day of school.

 She had a great first week of Kindergarten, she absolutely loved it!  Then she began to have substitute teachers for a while.  We later found out that her original teacher, Mrs. Zech, was carrying her child down the stairs and accidently fell down the stairs, where she ended up knocking out her front two teeth and had to have 27 stiches all around her jaw.  The baby was fine though.  She finally just came back to school this last Monday and told all the kids how much she missed them.  Addy thinks its pretty cool that she has PE, library and music class.  She said she's making new friends in class, but whenever we asked what their names are, she always says she "fweegets".  She's gotten better about learning their names now though. : )

So now it's just me and Christian at home while the girls are working hard at school!!

We had Addison's Parent/Teacher conference and her teacher started off by saying that she is such a sweetheart, then she pretty much said, but she "is a cheater"!  We were shocked and the teacher laughed.  She said that she realized Addison doesn't like to be wrong, so when its time to write something on their piece of paper, Addy looks at her neighbors paper first to see how they are doing it before she starts on her paper!  Cheater, Cheater!  :)  Finding it out that day, we got home to tell the girls how the conferences went and we asked about each of their days and Addy says "we took a test today and guess what?  Teacher let me sit at her very special table up front!!"  I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was because her teacher didn't want to her cheat and peek at her neighbors paper!  We had a talk with her and told her that it wasn't okay for her to look at her neighbors paper 1) because it's wront and 2) because what if her neighbor was doing it wrong?!  So we told her that it is okay to make mistakes and that is why pencils have erasers.  Little Stinker.

Celine's conference went really well.  Her teacher said she plays an active part in class and always wants to help and read her stories.  She said she is an excellent "free writer".  She was having an issue with a semi-bully in her class, named Jasmine, so I brought it up to her teacher and her teacher said that Celine wasn't the only one this girl was picking on.  It seems to have settled down as of right now.

Celine has been doing really well in math.  And thank goodness for the 4th grade math program this year, since it has taught ME so much, plus helped me remember my multiplication facts!!  Addy's going to be set by time she's in 4th grade : )

It's December 1st and the girls have to return to school tomorrow after being on Thanksgiving break.  Celine finished with her Tuesday after-school art class.  It was a 7-week program where they had an art teacher have them draw certain pictures based on each of the seven continents.  She loved it. 

Addison has a crush on this little boy named Michael, but he goes by the name Mico.  Mico this, Mico that.  When we're driving out of the parking lot after school, Addy will see him walking on the sidewalk next to her car and she'll try to roll down her window to scream "bye Mico"!  I always lock her window and tell her not to shout out the window and she just says "but he's just sooooo funny".  Oh boy, we have our hands full with this one.