Becoming a 1st Grader

Thursday, 25 May 2006

Today was Rebecca's last day of Kindergarten. They had fun little Mexican Fiesta to finish off the year, and their month long study of Mexico and Spanish culture. Rebecca has been quite interested in Spanish for the last few months... wanting to know how to say lots of different words and phrases in Spanish - of which I'm no help, my Spanish is barely at Sesame Street level... I'm not even to Dora the Explorer yet! So this past month she's learned a few songs and words for common things... baby, hand, etc.

I was asked to come up with a craft for the Fiesta and found the directions for a Mexican Bird Rattle which looked fun and do-able with a little prep work. I started saving toilet paper rolls and found a stash of them at my mom's house Mother's Day weekend which helped me complete my set of 14 needed for the class. As the prep work, I assembled the basic rattle closed the ends of the toilet paper roll, and taped the handle to the roll. Then let the kids, color and cut out the beak and bottom decorative strip. Then all they needed to do was glue everything together. It still took much longer than I thought... surprise, surprise, they weren't very focused... but the kids enjoyed the end product - they looked so cute! - and they used them to perform the Macarena for the parents who were there to help with the fiesta.

Rebecca wrote a really cute little note to her teacher, which we enclosed with a pendent I got for her on a jewelry website I love! Her teacher always wear's beautiful sterling sliver jewelry so I've been watching the site to find just the right pendent or ear rings to get her. I ended up going with an oval pendent with a mother of pearl center. Simple, classic and would go with just about anything. Rebecca's Thank You note to her teacher, went as follows... she dictated it to me, I wrote it out for her and then she copied it onto the card:

"Mrs. C____ , Thanks for the great things you have taught me. You are a wonderful teacher. Love, Rebecca."

P.S. We just found out Emily will be in AM kindergarten and Mrs. C (who I think is the head/senior kindergarten teacher) told me today she put Emily in her class! Excellent! We couldn’t be happier.