Studying and New Desk

Chance was always interested in reading and writing but since he started school he has been extra into both. Everyday he is drawing and writing notes as soon as he gets home from school and on weekends. The fridge is full of wonderful drawings and sweet notes that he has written recently. Between this and his homework we knew it was time to get him a desk. Luckily we found this awesome old school desk for a great price at an antique shop. Also, I just snapped this photo of him reading his Knuffle Bunny book in bed.

First Fieldtrip

Last week Chance had his first fieldtrip ever! how exciting is that? I am super excited about it and so was Chance. For the last five weeks of school the Kindergarten classes had been studying fairy tales and so at the end the section they took a trip to Storyland and I volunteered to chaperone. Chance was as excited about riding the bus as he was about going to storyland it seemed.
Storyland is a pretty neat place in City Park, a play area build around fairy tale stories. It was great because we could play and find the characters from the stories they had just been studying.
I had a group of three kids in my care for the trip and they were great. if you look in the previous picture That is my group, Renai on the slide, then Chance of course and Leah behind him. Chance and Leah are good friends in school, more on that later.
 Above L-R: Chance, Leah, Renai
The kids had a great time playing and to fuel all that play we had to stop for lunch. We all sat down together and ate the great lunch that the school packed for us. I have been so interested to see what the school gives Chance for lunch I was really happy to get the opportunity to see for myself. (ham and cheese sandwich, carrot sticks with Italian dressing, a peach, grape juice and animal crackers fyi) So we have heard a lot about Leah recently, Chance and Leah have become good friends in school even his teachers say they stick together during class. Chance talks about her a lot when he comes home, she is in a lot of his stories. One day last week Chance pulled this little bead out of his pocket and said is was a gift from Leah.

Ice Cream Sundae Celebration

Every friday at Chance's school they have what is called celebration. Parents can come for the last hour of school and we bring treats or celebrate holidays or sometimes we will take walking trips through the Quarter to historical places and galleries for fun. This is a great time to see what is going on in the classroom and to spend some time with Chance in class. This first celebration was last friday and it was an ice cream sundae celebration. The parents all contributed something and I got to head up the sprinkle station. When Chance came by he was so cute like he didn't know what to do since we were blurring the line between mommy time and classroom time. I may or may not have given him an extra shake of sprinkles. When I first showed up they were all standing on their big carpet (where they each have their own square, that they are supposed to stay in) singing a little song it was super cute. After that we all ate ice cream sundaes and then all the kids went back to the carpet and Mrs. Gidney read a book for some end of day story time. While Chance was listening to the story I took a moment to sneak around the room and snap some pictures of his artwork hanging on the walls. I am so looking forward to the celebration coming up tomorrow, we are all bringing different types of muffins to celebration. The muffins go along with the story they have been studying all week. Have I mentioned that they are studying fairy tales for the first five weeks of school? I am not sure if I have or not but they are, last week was 3 billy goats gruff and this week is Little Red Riding Hood.

Chance Drawing 3

The other day I was in the bathroom and I could hear Chance just outside the door doing something. When I stepped out there he was doing a little dance. He handed me this picture then ran in the bathroom and shut the door. Hilarious.

Walking to School

We walk to and from school each day as long as the weather is good. I thought it would get old after a while, that it would get too tiring or something, like the novelty would wear off but turns out I love it and I think Chance does too. It is great being able to talk to him about school and whatever else comes to mind as well as seeing people and lots of other interesting things along the way. Yesterday on the way home from school we spotted this caterpillar crawling up a tree in a car we would miss things like the coffee shop and this little guy.

Stopping by the Coffee Shop

Yesterday we stopped at a coffee shop on the way home from school. Chance had a hard decision to make between chocolate milk or a chocolate chip cookie. He chose the cookie and I ordered an iced mocha then we sat down for a while and talked while we ate, drank and looked over his folder. I love that we live in a place that we can do things like this on the way to and from school. It was great sitting in the coffee shop just hanging out with Chance. Since I got a kinda sad looking face in the first picture I asked for a happy face and this is photo below is what I got.

Learning New Songs

Yesterday Chance came home from school singing a new song about bananas so we made this little video to show all of you.

 This first song is the new one:
Peel Bananas, Peel, Peel, Bananas
Peel Bananas, Peel, Peel, Bananas
Go Bananas, Go, Go Bananas
Go Bananas, Go, Go Bananas


The second song is one he learned last week:
10 horses came to town
5 were black and 5 were brown
they galloped up
they galloped down
they galloped out of town I cleaned out the videos from my phone and there were actually quite a few videos that I hadn't uploaded to youtube and so haven't shared here. You can check them out by heading over to my youtube account http://www.youtube.com/user/qemorio/videos

Chance Drawing 2

Here is another drawing by Chance. He did this one the other day after he got home from school.  For the first five weeks of school they will be studying (not sure if that is the right word) fairy tales.  This week they are reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They acted it out and his teacher sent a note home on his weekly report saying he did a great job acting. They used puppets on another day and drew pictures of their favorite part of the story on another.
You can see the three billy goats going over the bridge and the Troll underneath in the lower right hand corner of this drawing. There is a fan in the middle/left. He wrote the words 'good' and 'by Chance' without any help. He has been writing word bubbles like a comic book on a bunch of his pictures. In this one the letter 'O' is saying "We do D" (though the W is an M) and the 'D' is saying "We Do ?" I am not sure what the other two little yellow things are.

Chance Starts School

So on August 7th nearly two weeks ago now Chance started school. He is officially a Kindergartener. he was way more prepared than I was. He got up before the alarm went off (7am), got himself dressed in his uniform and proceeded to play a concert on his little piano:



After his concert and I packed him a few snacks (he will be eating breakfast and lunch at school) and made him a pop tart (his choice for quick breakfast snack) We had timed out how long it takes to walk to the school (23 minutes) so we made sure we left a little early for the first day and took off for the first day of school.




Chance looked so cute walking to school with his backpack on in his little uniform. The walk to school isn't that bad as a matter of fact it is a great time to get to talk to Chance about all kinds of interesting things.





When we got to school All the Kindergarten classes (there are four) were lining up by class in the little courtyard just outside the kindergarten hallway.  We found Chance's teachers and then gave him a big hug before he got in line with his class.




His teacher Mrs. Gidney gave him a sticker with his name on it. There were no tears from us or from Chance he was very brave standing in line by himself, well with his other classmates, waiting and then walking into the building with his class.  Scott and I waited just outside the gate watching him till he went inside.




We picked him up after school, he was in a good mood and seemed to enjoy his first day so even though it was really hard to spend the day without him and to go from being the one who makes all the rules and is always there to help him to having to trust teachers we barely know it makes it that much easier when he comes home having had a good day.




This last picture was actually taken on his second day at school which we also stayed just outside the gate waiting to watch him walk into school. He is so strong and confident with himself he turned around and blew us a kiss while he was going into the building. I love that little guy.

Cowboy Boots

A few days ago Chance came home form School (yes I promise I will post about that soon) to a package just for him. He spotted it immediately and wanted to open it of course but I gave him the line I got as a school kid "business before play" and so we sat down on the couch together and did his homework first. Which is super easy and actually consists of one workbook page that we did nearly two years ago on our own but that is a subject for a different post.





When he finished his homework he ran right for the package, as soon as he saw the note on top he handed it to me and asked me to read it to him, he sat and listened while I read waiting till I got to the end before going through the rest of the box. When he pulled out the cowboy boots he said "Nana and Grandpa Von must really love me because these bots are cool" He is super cute.






He put them on and started running through the house. It was hard to get a good picture of him where some part of him wasn't blurry from the movement.  He ran to the back of the house then came back without a shirt and asked me to help button up his new cowboy shirt then spent the rest of the night running though the house in his new boots and shirt shooting bad guys with his nerf gun.




The day after the package arrived, I went out to the Melting Pot with the ladies from the playgroup and so Chance spent a couple hours at Kidutopia,  He has a great time there and insisted on wearing his new boots and shirt to show Life (the owners daughter who is just a little younger than Chance). This last picture is of his boots hanging where the kids put their shoes when they are playing in the soft rooms (with bouncy padding on the floor) at Kidutopia.