100 days of Kindergarten!

Quinn and his class recently celebrated 100 days of Kindergarten. Can you believe it?

To celebrate, all 6 KG classes apparently did a parade around the school, for which Quinn's teacher helped them make their hat and flags. The necklaces were actually provided by my mom.

That same week I accompanied Quinn to his first school dance. Now, I was thinking "Elementary school dance. No big deal, right?"
WRONG
That dance was crazy, and way better than most high school dances I ever had. There was a DJ, and Emcee, and lots of glowsticks

The above picture is of Quinn and his friends dancing, although it's hard to tell.

Plus, lots of food in the cafeteria. Here's Quinn and his buddies chowing down.

Recently, Quinn had to do a homework assignment where he had to write sentences paired with sight words. Here are some of the sentences he wrote, with sight words in all CAPS.
I WANT cake
I LIKE cake
I want cake, TOO
I want cake, I SAID

Notice a theme?

Winter water break

To take a break from the interminable cold/snow we decided to take a family trip to the Edge water park in Duluth, MN.

The Edge is an indoor water park (obviously) with a hotel attached. There was some outdoor hot tubbing, though!

The Edge has a hotel attached to it, and the hotel is obviously geared toward children and families. The kids loved it.

We had an amazing view of Lake Superior from our room, which was frozen over! The sun came directly in the window in the morning over the lake, which was just lovely.

Quinn loved all the water slides, and everything else the park had to offer

The girls liked the water, but were weary of a giant bucket that dumped water on everyone every two minutes. Penelope especially did not like that.

Spotted - a lion, cat and dino walking down the hotel halls!

Everyone was wiped out at the end of the weekend, but we accomplished our goals of getting away from the cold, letting the kids get some exercise, and soaking up some sun - albeit, though a hotel window.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

Time for a new list of "favorites" the kids. Some of the favorites were told to me by the kids themselves, and some were determined by me.

Favorite Sesame Street character (as told by them)
Zahra: Big Bird
Penelope: Elmo
Quinn: Cookie Monster

Favorite book (as determined by me)
Both girls: Hippos go berserk
Quinn: Whatever book he gets from the school library that week. He's very proud of his library trips. On his valentine to his teacher, he wrote, "Dear Miss Jill. Thank you for taking me to the library"

Favorite food:
I asked them and they all said cornbread, but they were also eating cornbread at the time, so it's hard to say if that's an accurate assessment...

Favorite activity (as determined by me)
Penelope: blocks and dress-up
Zahra: blocks and drawing
Quinn: sorting his school valentines and playing memory

Favorite Yo Gabba Gabba character (as told by the kids - their favorites have changed recently!
Penelope: Brobee
Quinn: Muno
Zahra: Plex

Favorite color (as told by them)
Quinn: Orange (second favorites are pink and purple)
Penelope: red (second favorite is pink)
Zahra: Yellow. no second favorite

Quinn is still enjoying school. He makes me crazy every morning because he's so anxious to get there. He loves settling in with his breakfast, all of his school work, and hanging with his friends.

His teacher stuck this post-it on his homework packet last week

Isn't that sweet? It's true that Quinn is a very happy-go-lucky kid, worries about being late notwithstanding.

Today, Moin and I had a chance to see Quinn in action for "bring your parent to school day." We got to stay for breakfast and lunch, watch morning meeting and readers workshop, and attend P.E.

Here are the kids reading to their parents in the hallway

And doing literacy puzzles during "Readers workshop"

Quinn was actually proud to have Moin and I there, and even gave us big hugs when we left!