The Last Day of 6th, 2nd, and Kindergarten

It was a good school year.  The final month nearly did me in, but I got to spend the summer with my three favorite kids, so I got my reward!  (I looked for the first day of school post so that I could link to it, but I realized that I have about six months of photos missing from the blog.  I'm about four months behind now.  Once I catch up on this five months, MAYBE I'll go back and blog about those missing months.)

On to junior high for this handsome guy!

Love these three so much!

Grace's class had an awards assembly on the last day, and Jeff and I were able to see it!  Grace's teacher recognized her for always going above and beyond. It's true - she always does more on her assignments than is required.  Of course, we are very proud of this trait!

Yes, those crazy glasses are left over from the 2nd grade patriotic performance, and she took the lenses out.  She loves those glasses.

One last picture with a little buddy.

Here is Benjamin with a couple of little buddies on his last day.  It was also the last day to use his tomato lunch bag.

Two of Grace's best friends moved away after second grade.  Here is one of them.

And this guy is just cute.  Next year he'll go to school all day long!

Pushing Hard Until the Last Day...

The kindergarten had a water day at the end of the year.

This day must have been PJ day for Grace.

I need to say again how much Benjamin and I enjoyed our reading time while we waited for Grace.  We loved the time with each other, and his reading improved so much because of all the attention we gave to it.  Teaching my children to read has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done...three times.

I think this was at the end of the day of her 2nd grade performance that I mentioned earlier.

Ready for bouncy house day!

Ready for water day!

When Jeff was out of town, I took these guys to school.  On this day, they found snails.

Bouncy house day!

Water day!

Grace's class with her teacher

And two sleeping babies.

Macbeth

Jonathan's 6th grade experience seemed to be full of opportunities to do things that he never would have done on his own.  Learning to play guitar, representing his school in the county spelling bee and math competition, and now, playing parts in Macbeth...we sat back and watched and enjoyed.

This was a night when all the parents and students were gathered, so the students took this opportunity to appreciate their teacher before he retired.  They had signed the mat around this photo of all of them on their class field trip, and Jonathan presented it to him.  Using a microphone was one more thing we would not have expected Jonathan to do before this year.

We love him and are so proud of his hard work and the efforts he made outside of his comfort zone.

Second Grade Stars

Grace's class and grade level had a patriotic performance.  Here are some photos from the day...

Kindergarten Graduation

Kindergarten graduation might be one of the cutest days of a kids' entire school career.  Or at least, that's the way I feel about this kid.

Here he is with his amazing kindergarten teacher.  He got too shy to do his own reading at the last moment, but she coaxed him to do it.

I have a video of the kids singing this song, but Blogger won't let me post it.  I have to watch it over and over when I run across it.

Big thanks to my mom for being there and making an effort to be at all the kids' big events!

We took him to Wendy's for a celebratory lunch (his choice.)

I love that this was the end of his day:  playing with wooden blocks, some of which have been mine for 40 years.  Love this sweet boy so much.