Spring Recital

 Andrew had his spring recital in May.  Every year, Ms. Pam goes all out for the spring showcase.  She chooses a different theme each year.  This year's theme was "Circus of the Animals" and it was great!  The students learned several pieces and songs that went with the theme and each student played and sang a song from memory that they chose.  When we arrived that morning, the small auditorium was decorated like this:

 Earlier in the spring, the students were assigned animals to dress up as for the recital.  Andrew was a lion!

 Here are the other animals.

They started off with a class rendition of "If We Could Talk to the Animals" from the classic movie Dr. Doolittle.  There were lots of words to the song, and we all worked very hard for several months on it.  

 Then each student played their solos and sang with Ms. Pam accompanying them on her piano.

 They finished up with an ensemble playing "Songbird's Band."  Andrew's part was to play the melody on his keyboard.  Other students played the left hand part on the keyboard, the bells, or  another rhythm instrument.

 Here's our boy with the fabulous Ms. Pam.

 Gigi and Papack and Nana came for the day.  Pop-O had to work. Immediately after the recital, we headed to the ballpark for his game.  It was great that the grands could make one trip for two events.  I forgot to get a picture of us with Andrew at the recital, but we grabbed one after the game.

 From the ball fields we headed to The Collegiate.  It was a super morning.

Here are a few videos from the recital.  First up is the class singing "If We Could Talk to the Animals."

 Andrew played "Mr. Moon" and he sang "Big Truck."
 

 And here is the ensemble performing "Songbird's Band."

 We are so excited about what all he learned this year with Ms. Pam, and can't wait to continue in the fall. 

The End of Tee Ball

Tee ball season ended on June 2nd with our team party.  Here are a couple of pictures from the last game.  It was a hot one, so we made sure the kids drank plenty while they were in the dugout.

Here's Andrew on first giving his favorite base coach five.

 Our party was on a Sunday afternoon at a local park.  Joe and his wife did a great job planning it.  The kids played on the playground and ate pizza and cake.

 Here is Andrew with Coach Joe, Coach Tavares and Coach Rodney.

And I have finally learned how to upload our movies!  Turns out it's really not that hard!  So here are some videos from the season.  First up is Andrew playing pitcher.  In tee ball, the pitcher's main job is to tag the runners out at home.  You can see he took it very seriously.

 

The only problem is that the other team's pitcher took it very seriously too.

And here's his last bat of tee ball.

We are so proud of the progress Andrew made this year, on and off the field.  Next year he moves up to coach pitch.  But we're far from finished with tee ball.  We have a little blonde haired fella who is rarin' to go!

Graduation Day

We celebrated Kindergarten Graduation at Archer Academy on May 22.  It was a super fun day.  The night before, after they went to sleep, Brent and I decorated Andrew and Coleman's room with streamers, balloons, and a Congrats banner.  When Andrew woke up the next day, he came to our room where we were getting ready and said, "I would like to know what in the world happened to my room while I was sleeping?!"  He was all smiles and I could tell he loved it.  Here are a few pictures we made before breakfast.

At the table, there were decorations, a "genius" hat as he calls it, and the red plate for breakfast.

We got dressed and gave him his diploma.  He's wearing his Archer Academy field trip shirt Gigi made for him this year.  Coleman was very proud of his big brother.

And his teacher was super proud of her favorite student!

We had told Andrew we were going on a surprise field trip for his graduation day.  We took Jonathan to spend the day with Gigi and Papack.  He was very excited and not a bit phased that we left.  I think he loves having his grands to himself!  Then we headed downtown to The Varsity for lunch.

Back in the spring, several things happened at once that led me to the idea of a unit study of the Titanic for our end of the year finale.  Andrew has really loved all things history related this year, and since it was the 100th anniversary of the sinking, it was a great last unit for us.  We read lots of books, did lots of research, and learned a lot about the ship, its structure, the passengers, and the tragedy of the sinking.  One of the reasons we did the study was so that we could take the boys to the Titanic exhibit at Atlantic Station.  And that was our surprise field trip for the day.  They were both super excited!

Inside the exhibit we weren't allowed to take pictures, of course.  As we walked through and saw the artifacts and displays, Andrew surprised me with how much detail he remembered from our study.  He knew all about Molly Brown, the ship's captain and designers, the band, and so much more.  It struck me as we looked at the artifacts, that those things belonged to real people long ago.  People who were going on a huge adventure, and had no idea how horribly it would end up.  It's easy to forget how real it was.  Coleman's favorite part of the exhibit was a large iceberg they had with finger holes you could put your hand in.  You could easily understand how no one in the water survived longer than twenty minutes.

After the exhibit, we found an ice cream shop and the boys got a scoop. 

It was a perfect day for our outing.  Great weather, a fun activity, and great memories.  It was a great end to our first year of school.

Wordless Wednesday: Edition He Meant Well.

The End of Kindergarten

 Our last day of Kindergarten got here much faster than I thought possible.  We finished school at Archer Academy on Friday, May 11.  It was a fun morning finishing up our last few things for the year.  Here's a picture of Andrew from the first day of Kindergarten.

 And here he is on the last day of Kindergarten.  Grow much this year?

 On August 1st, we made a time capsule.  Andrew had been looking forward to opening it for weeks!  Here he is peeking inside.  We found a tracing of his hand, an interview about his favorites, and a sample of his handwriting.  On the table you can see his homemade cherry Coke that was a special treat at snacktime.

One of our novels this year to read aloud was The Wizard of Oz.  I had never read the book, and he had never seen the movie.  So after we finished reading, we let the boys watch the movie.  They all three loved it, and Jonathan asked to watch it again for weeks after!  We made a Venn Diagram comparing the two versions of the story and found them to be very different!

Then we spread out all the books we've read and studied this year and made a picture.

That night we started our summer with a trip to Bruster's for ice cream!

We did more celebrating later in May with a big graduation day.  Stay tuned!

The Academy

 Way back at the beginning of the school year, I decided to do a monthly post on our progress at Archer Academy.  That went great until Christmas.  Things got really busy around here, and I never could get back to that monthly newsletter idea.  I posted our big events each month like field trips and science club, and I gave semester end co-op updates.  I guess I realized that while I'm teaching, I often forget to stop and make pictures of what we've done.  So that will be one of my goals for next year.  We had a lot of fun, and Andrew learned A LOT.  Here are pictures of some of our activities that I haven't posted yet.

Completing a book was always a big deal for Andrew.  He's very goal oriented (like his parents) and it feels great to get things checked off our list.  Here he is with one of his phonics practice workbooks.

 Math this winter introduced two column addition with and without regrouping.  To practice this in a fun way, we had a grocery store.  We saved containers for several weeks and then one fun morning, he got to organize everything and set up his very own grocery store.

 We used the store for several weeks, with each of us taking turns at being the customer and the cashier.  It was great addition practice and a lot of fun.

We made snowflakes and hung them on our windows.  They did not inspire any wintry weather however.

Jonathan loved for Andrew to read to him.

For Presidents' Day, Andrew decided to build Abe Lincoln's homeplace.  Complete with a woody and a hotrod. 

Somewhere in the winter, Coleman had pajama day at preschool.

In March, we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday all month long.  We did lots of fun stuff, but the cupcakes were the only things I got pictures of.

I think I've posted about our other big events previously.  We had a really fun end of Kindergarten and graduation day.  Stay tuned!