School Days

We're three weeks into school now and of course, Madison LOVES it! Every minute of every day. She is so excited to go every morning and gets sad on the weekends when there's no school. I wanted to detail some highlights and memories from the beginning of her school days.

- We all LOVE her teacher, Mrs. Barnes. She's awesome!! I'm so grateful Jordan's aunt Marilyn suggested her.
- Amazingly, Madison says her favorite thing about school is PE. She has it twice a week and loves it.
- Mrs. Barnes uses a discipline system in her classroom involving colored cards. Everyone starts at green every morning and then moves down to yellow, orange and red if discipline is needed. You can also move up to purple for extraordinary behavior. Madison of course has no problem staying on green and comes home disappointed when she doesn't get purple. I mentioned it jokingly to Mrs. Barnes at our Curriculum Night and she said with kids like Madison you have to give out purples sparingly or they'd get one every day and it wouldn't be a motivator anymore. A couple days later, Madison came home so excited the she finally got a purple. I was happy for her but even more proud of what she did to earn the purple. When I dropped her off at school that morning, I noticed her talking to a girl on the playground as I drove off. It turns out that the girl was crying and Madison noticed and started talking to her to try to help her feel better. A teacher noticed and told Mrs. Barnes. Definitely a proud Mom moment. The Frozen stickers she really wanted were already gone from the treasure box, but she picked some Hello Kitty erasers instead.
- Madison sits at the same table as her cousin, Guess, and the two of them have become friends. It's funny because prior to school starting, the two of them never really interacted when we would get together for family dinners, etc. But they really latched onto each other at school! Guess is very social and outgoing so we joked with his parents (Jordan's cousin Wynn and Holly) that they would probably be good for each other - Madison might help Guess settle down and focus in the classroom and Guess might help Madison come out of her shell a little bit. She mostly talks about how they play on the monkey bars every recess. Neither of them can make it past the first bar but they're determined to keep trying!
- She loves to collect rocks from the playground, as if we need more rocks! I actually can't believe they have the kids playing outside as hot as it is. There have been some heat advisory days when they stayed inside but most days they're outside. One day Madison told me she spent recess digging in the sand underneath one of the benches because she was trying to stay in the shade :(
- She brought home two quiet critters in the first five days and another prize she won in a game for being quiet. She's got that part down :)
- Mrs. Barnes told us at Curriculum Night (after five days of school) that Madison has already demonstrated that she's a pretty smart little girl. She joked that she's the only one in the class who already has all the rules memorized and follows them to the T. She also said that they were still in the process of assessing all the kids, but that they would definitely be starting Madison on an accelerated reader program in the next couple weeks.
- She also said that while it's obvious that Madison is quiet and shy, she raises her hand and participates in class all the time, which was good to hear.
- The kids got to vote on a name for the class pet, a stuffed dog. Madison was very excited about this and suggested the name Uno. Her name didn't win; the dog is named Sandy, but Madison is still very excited to get to bring him home when it's her turn
- They started a science unit this week and got science notebooks. Madison told me that all the science stuff they've been doing has helped her finally decide what she wants to be when she grows up - a scientist :)
- Funny story - During music class, they played a game called rocks and trees. Everyone had to dance to the music like trees swaying in the breeze until the music stopped; then they had to freeze. Anyone who didn't freeze had to drop to the ground and be a rock until the game was over. Madison said she liked the game at first but then she got very tired of dancing and wished she could just be a rock so she could take a break. I tried to tell her that she could've just dropped down and been a rock anyway or that she could've kept dancing after the music stopped so she'd have to be a rock, but she was appalled at those suggestions - the rules of the game said you had to be a tree and you had to stop dancing when the music stopped!
- Mrs. Barnes sent home a list of the 75 sight words all kindergartners have to be able to read by the end of the year. Madison can already read every single one of them.
- Even though so far she's already known everything they've done, she loves it! She loves all the coloring pages and worksheets they do, all the little art and craft projects, all of it. It's just so HER!
- She does have to work on eating lunch faster though :) She's always been a slow eater and is struggling having enough time to eat!
- The social part is still hard for her. Aside from Guess, she hasn't made any other friends in class yet. We try to give her "school work" like asking the other girl who sits at her table what her favorite color is but it's tough for her. She even told me one day that she just knows someone will come ask her to play sometime. I tried to tell her that she could ask someone to play, but we're working on it. She also told me one day that there wasn't any room to sit by Guess at lunch so she had to sit all alone. This kind of stuff breaks my heart. We've talked about being able to pray anytime and ask Heavenly Father to help her feel better, and she still wears her necklace that I gave her. Honestly, these moments are fleeting and she is really happy at school. I just hate thinking of her ever feeling that way even for only a moment.
- UPDATE: she came home last Wednesday and informed me that she has a new best friend named Ansley!!! She said that Ansley is in her class but sits at a different table. But they dug in the sand together all during recess and gave each other a hug when they were in line to go home at the end of the day. They also said "Bye Bye Crocodile" to each other :) The friendship has continued all week, and I even got to meet Ansley and her mom when I picked Madison up on Friday. Ansley's mom said that Ansley has been talking all week about Madison! I can't even tell you how grateful I am that Madison found a friend! I've gotten to see them together a few times now and they are so cute! Yesterday Mrs. Barnes had everyone in the class change seats (except Madison actually - she said she didn't want to change seats so she asked Mrs. Barnes if she could stay at table 5 and Mrs. Barnes agreed). Evidently even though Madison and Ansley still sit at different tables, they can now reach out and touch each other, which is so exciting according to Madison. They also spent all of one recess chasing a boy around the playground ... and so it begins!
- We also got to watch Madison play with some of her classmates at a school fundraiser at McDonald's and she fits right in. Her and three other girls - Ava, Ansley and Emme - were playing hide-and-seek and tag and just having fun together for almost an hour! So it looks like everything is smooth sailing in kindergarten land!
- I always ask her every day if there was anything that happened that frustrated her or upset her that she wanted to talk about and there's been a couple times she's told me about random things like someone stepping on her shoe and not saying sorry. She always says "But I was a big girl and didn't cry." :) She's very emotionally sensitive so we worked a lot this summer on not crying when things happen that upset her, and I guess she's taken that to heart. 
- She loves the notes in her lunch and has even written two notes back to me. Funny story though. She likes to save the notes and one day when she came home, it had gotten wet in her lunch box and was ruined. She was upset but I told her that it was okay because I would write her a note every day. Her response was "Well what about the first day? You didn't write me a note that day." Of course. As if I didn't already feel horrible about that.
- I'm so glad she's going to this school, but pick-up and drop-off is a giant pain in the butt. It's about 10 minutes away, which doesn't seem like much but when you're fighting with 500 other parents trying to do the same thing it gets hairy. We originally thought it would work to have Jordan drop her off but the amount of time it takes to make it through the drop-off line made that a no-go. So now he takes her on Mondays when he doesn't have to work until 10 and Thursdays, which he has off. We call it the Daddy bus since she was so disappointed that she couldn't ride the bus. I take her the other three days. Then I pick her up after school everyday. Pick-up is even worse. She gets out at 3:30 but in order to jockey for position I have to get to her school no later than 3:15 and then just sit and wait. Consequently, not a day goes by that I don't have to wake at least Reagan and sometimes McKinley up from a nap to drop off or pick up Madison. It's tough, but totally worth it. We really do love the school!

Of course, Madison isn't the only one currently enjoying school days. McKinley asks me every day in the car after we drop off Madison if it's time to go home so she can have school! She has loved having Mommy School! I've had a lot of fun planning different activities for her and having things to do has made our morning really fly by. She still misses Madison A LOT every day, but she loves having her own thing too. It's really cute to see them tell each other all the things they learned that day when Madison gets home! So here's a few things about McKinley's school :)
- She calls me Teacher when we're doing school activities - so cute :) She says I'm the best teacher ever!
- We do her school activities in the morning after we drop Madison off. Usually I have to feed Reagan right when we get home so she gets to watch one "learning show" - either Super Why, Word World or Reading Rainbow. Then we do her eye exercises and our school stuff. I try to have a number activity, a letter activity and a random activity - like shapes, a craft, etc. - every day.
- Some of her favorites include ABC Bingo, Letter Muffins and number sticks. She also likes to do worksheets like Madison
- She also insists on having PE on the two days a week Madison has it. As soon as she sees Madison put tennis shoes on, she knows it's PE day and she gets her tennis shoes on too. Since it's so hot outside, we usually do the Wii Fit or Wii Sports for PE
- She now knows all her uppercase letters and is pretty good with all the sounds. She just sometimes forgets that some letters make two sounds (stupid English language). She also has a mental block on the letter W - she always tries to tell me it makes a "dub" sound, I think because when you say W, you start with a "dub" if that makes sense. Obviously I correct her, but I also think it's cute!
- She can verbally spell her name now. She can also write it, but has trouble with the K still
- She counts to 15 and recognizes numbers to 12
- She's known her shapes and colors for a while now, but we still do activities to review them
- She's become VERY into reading. Madison has always loved books, but McKinley wasn't really into reading until recently. Now she loves to read to herself and often asks me to help her read things by having her repeat the words after I say them.
- She likes to point out letters she sees everywhere we go. It's amazing how aware she is of all the letters around her in everyday life
- Sometimes I look at the worksheets that Madison brings home and think they would also be perfect for McKinley. I don't know if that means McKinley is already ahead of the game or what, but she's definitely another smarty pants like her sister!

McKinley hard at work tracing circles

Letter bingo

She also likes this game where she gets to squirt the numbers

This is Madison's calendar - She wrote PE on every Monday and Wednesday because she was so excited to have PE

McKinley's name practice sheet. I had to help with the Ks, but she did all the rest

 McKinley's circle worksheet

This is a book Madison made in school. I thought it was funny because she wrote Maddie instead of Madison. I guess they talked a little about nicknames in school. She knows we used to call her Maddie when she was a baby so she wanted that to be her nickname. But it didn't stick then, and I don't think it's going to stick now. For some strange reason, we tend to go longer on names instead of shorter, like we generally call the girls by their first and middle names instead of coming up with shorter variations of their first names. Weird, I know, but that's how we roll.

For the first day of school, each student had to fill a bag with five things about themselves to tell the class. Madison included a sparkly heart that she made (pictured above) because she likes hearts and things that are sparkly, her favorite book (There's a Monster At The End of This Book), her Elsa doll because she loves Frozen and Disneyland, a rock from her rock collection and a picture of her family. I actually printed out a family picture for her to take but then she was like, "Mom, I'll just draw it!" Duh. So she did (pictured above) :)

She did this her first day without any help. I thought she did a very good job figuring out how to spell the words she was writing. It's supposed to be a picture of something she did to get ready for school so she drew "Mayli giving me a lunch box" Obviously, the spellings aren't right but you can see her thought process (like spelling Mayli "Male"), which is cool! Based on the handout from Mrs. Barnes about writing, she's at a second-grade level

More writing practice. We didn't really work too much on writing lower case letter so that's something new for her and she's doing well with!

 This picture cracks me up! It's supposed to be a picture of a meal you would make for a friend. Madison chose corn salad, which she HATES! I asked her why she picked that and she said that she knows I like to make it and that I would make something different for her! She also said that the yellow person on the right is her and that she's facing away from the table because she's in the naughty chair :) Her bowl of corn salad if pretty good though - green circles for the green onion, yellow circles for the corn and red circles for the cherry tomatoes!

I couple crafts they've made with the letters they're learning. If you know Madison, you now completely understand why she LOVES school! This is right up her alley!

More evidence of her love for PE!

Draw a picture of what you're most excited about doing at school: "I want to do PE" Who knew this girl would love PE so much?!

 Homework time! Madison reads one book to McKinley then they both read to Reagan :) Love my three cute girls!!