Writing to Remember

It's the last day of school for Jax!  Well, not really.  They still have to go Monday, but considering that his desk is all packed up and there is absolutely nothing to do, I'm not going to make him go.  So I took a picture today of him.  

Julie has been out of school for about a month now.  Here's the picture from her last day of school.  

I did an interview video of both of them.  Enjoy!

I like how Jaxson couldn't think of anything to say about what he didn't like about school.  I can answer that pretty quickly.  HOMEWORK!  He hated the homework and spelling words always did Jaxson and me both.  I was luckily enough to find Spelling City because we both were miserable when he studied spelling.  After finding this app, it made studying much more bearable.

And Julie loved everything about preschool.  She misses her friends and still talks about school a lot.  It was her social life-she could have cared less about learning her alphabet and numbers, she just wanted to play with her friends!

And now...onto summer!

Yesterday, Jax asked if he could read me Green Eggs and Ham to me.  We've read it before and he did a unit on the book in class.  I figured he would read the first couple of pages and then want me to read the rest. 

But I was wrong.

He read that entire book!  62 pages!  Now, I know that he has some of memorized but he still read the majority of the book.  I was completely impressed!  And so happy that he likes to read. 

School was canceled today.  I woke up and saw it had been canceled and imagined that it was a winter wonderland outside.  I was very disappointed to see rain falling down in sheets instead.  I am so not used to the South canceling school "just in case."  Back in the olden days when I was in high school (in Washington State), one night it has snow 17 inches and the school district delayed our school by only 2 hours!  People were slipping and sliding cars off the roads and we still had to go to school!  So it's always weird for me to cancel school without any proof of icy/white stuff.

But by 8am, the rain had really started to turn into freezing rain mix and was icing up the trees.  

So here's my tangent:  Didn't I move to the south?  Isn't supposed to be warmer down here?  What gives?

Also, my Dark Sky app is worthless in Arkansas.  It worked great in North Carolina.  But here, it's just a mess.  There was not a point at all today when we had "heavy snow."  This is what made me think there was a winter wonderland outside when I woke up.  Dark Sky-you failed yet again.

Jaxson was sad that school was canceled and really didn't believe me.  It was only when we drove by his school while doing errands and saw there was not one single car in the parking lot.  He finally believe that he wasn't missing out on anything at school.  

Later on, the freezing rain turning into rain and instead of worry about icy roads, I was more concerned about hydroplaning!  Some roads were completely flooded!  I'm pretty sure that our burn ban is no longer in effect.  Cause my backyard looks more like a lake and if my kids want to play on their new swing set, they are going to have to swim to it!

Jaxson recently celebrated 100 Days of School!  He was so excited because they were going to have a celebration-meaning that they made a special necklace, hat, cake, and a parade. 

Now, I didn't know that parents could come to the parade but was happy that Kristi got (what seemed) like the only parent notice to come to the parade. 

So Julie and I showed up bright and early at 9am and was able to watch the kindergarteners and 1st graders march around! 


And count to 100 by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's, and 25's.  That seriously was some major excitement for the number 100. 


Well, what Jax is lacking in excitement, he is making up for in being super serious about his counting!  The celebration was the highlight of his week!

It's been a full month of school and I wanted to update on how Jax is doing.

He LOVES school.  School was made for him.  He loves the structure, the learning, and his friends.  His favorite part of school is recess.  They are already reading and he is on book 3.  I'm really proud of him.  Letters have always come easy to him so I'm not surprised that reading is fun for him.  Which makes life so much easier when he loves it.

He has a group of friends that he plays with at recess.  He plays either Chima or Skylanders.  Funny how the all the boys love the same stuff.

School here is pretty rigorous.  They only have 1 recess a day.  I'm freaked out by that.  I think Kindergarten needs at least 2 or 3.  They really push the reading skills.  The state mandates tests the first month of school and Jaxson didn't score so well on phonics sounding.  Which is odd since I've worked with him on this during Tot School.  Which shows me that these standardized testing is really just for the birds.  I took those test results and threw them away.  They weren't accurate and if my son really had a problem he wouldn't have been one of the first students to receive the sight word readers in the class.  'Nuff said about that.

I'm glad that we will be moving out of this school district this month.  I've heard the school district that we are moving into is a lot more relaxed and that makes me feel so much better.  More recesses, less testing, which in my mind, equals more fun.

Cause this was his homework one night:
Seriously.  Does he really need to do ALL this writing?  Right now?

Jaxson also had his school pictures taken.  He told Justin and I that he was going to pose like this for his picture:
Luckily, he really didn't and his school pictures turned out normal.  Whew!