Caitlin's Last Day of School which is her Bday!

Caitlin and the wonderful Mrs. Cameron! Caitlin has been crying every day this week because she does not want school to end. When I asked her why she told me she was going to miss her teacher. As a mother what more could I ask for a teacher, to love my child and make her feel successful!

Today was the last day of kindergarten for C and it was her birthday!

I came in to help out and celebrate. Below is C with 2 girls from her class, Jewel and Rana.

Caitlin and Bella. I went in every week to help Mrs. C, I did it because I know she needed be but I realized how much I loved it, I miss being in the class!

Below is Caitlin and Hanna, who C was with when she was in the 3 year old class.

C, Shirley and Samantha.

Then there is Braden! He can't just go with the flow, love that little boy!

Caitlin trying to trace Kai's outline.

Caitlin wearing her Bday hat, well she wore it all day!

B playing with the C's classmates.

He likes playing with the hula hoop, he can't do it like his sister though!

Mrs. Cameron is calling the kids to have a hula hoop contest.

The class getting ready.

My 6 year older!

Mrs. C had 5 groups of students do a hula hoop contest to see who could keep it up the longest. Caitlin won in her group.

The girl can Hula!!

Caitlin and her friend Shirley ended up doing the run off for the hula hoop contest. They lasted a long time!!

But Caitlin was able to hold on the longest, I think she could have lasted all day! She makes it look so easy, I think she could have done it all day!

C's Award Day

This past Tuesday Caitlin had her first awards ceremony at school for kindergarten. Both James and I were able to go and we are both so glad we did, she did well! The first award she received for an AR award for participating in AR. For those of you who do not know what AR is, it is a reading program where the children read books on their level then answer a series of questions. They have to be able to read the book on their own and read the test on their own. Caitlin started taking the tests at the very end of the year. She loves to read and is doing so well at decoding new words and remembering her sight words.

The next award was called a Super Reader Award for participating in Book it. This is where the children record what they read each month, they have to read a minimum amount, then they earn a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.

The next award was her favorite, READ to Succeed. This is where the children record what they read for a few months and if they read for a total of 360 minutes they earn a free Six Flags ticket. Caitlin is so excited to use this, she has never been.

Caitlin then earned the Super Speller award. Every week they took a pretest on their spelling words, if they did not know them they had to take the post test on Friday. The children earned this as long as they got a 90% or more each week. Caitlin had to take the post test once and then she got a 100%!

The green award below is for completing homework every week the entire year. To be honest, I never thought there was a choice! Caitlin is good about completing her work, we usually did it by Tuesday. She loves doing class work and usually asks for more.

Mrs. Cameron paired the children up and they earned a special award. Caitlin earned the "Always Being Helpful" award. She is a good friend and is always willing to help out her peers.

Below is her friend Jewel who earned the award with her.

I love the next award the most. Little River, her school, started a program this year that is all about filling people's buckets. Basically, when you say nice things to people you fill their buckets, when you are unkind you are dipping into their bucket. The kids all got it quickly and would talk about it at home. Caitlin and her sweet friend AJ earned the Filling my Bucket this year award. Which means she filled Mrs. Cameron's bucket and her classmates bucket throughout the year.

Below is Caitlin's kindergarten class with their diploma's!

B did a great job watching his sister. He told me he was ready for kindergarten. I guess if we were up North he would be starting but since we are not he is entering Pre K next year.

Below is Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Goodrich (the parapro). They are awesome!

For those of you who saw my post from the beginning of the year, you will notice that you do not see the same teacher. Just in case you did not know, we were blessed about 6 weeks into school and were given a new teacher for C. I say it was a blessing because Caitlin was having an extremely hard time with the first teacher, she was extremely hard on the kids and not very loving. Mrs. Cameron came in and was amazing with Caitlin and the entire class. She has taught Caitlin so much and is an amazing teacher and person. I personally have gotten to know her and think our family was lucky to have had her. Braden actually told me he wanted her when he got to kindergarten. She does not have a job next year, she was on limited contract, but I believe she will get something, for it would be Cherokee's loss not to resign her!

C's Field Day

This past Tuesday Caitlin had her first field day. The week before we were in the 90's and now we are back in the high 80's, but that day we were in the 40's and it was windy! We all froze!

I met up with the class when they got outside. This is AJ, C has sat next to him all year and I love him! He is such a gentleman, always looking after Caitlin and is very sweet!

They are both very competitive too, which was good for this!

Caitlin decided to put her jacket on after a few minutes of being outdoors! She was still cold.

The classic potato sack race! She did really well with with this.

They had to carry this ring on their heads down and back, I think she used her hoodie to help!

On this race they had to run down, do 5 circles with the bat on their forehead and then run back.

They are playing capture the flag above. Caitlin was one of the last ones left.

Kick the BIG soccer ball!

At the end of Field Day, AJ and Caitlin.

Braden Playing Hockey

Braden is playing little kid's hockey, it is call Cross Ice. They kids are split up into appropriate age groups and they work on drills. Then they play different types of games. It is 90 minutes long and Braden is on the ice the entire time.

The first drill they do it push a tire across the ice with their hockey stick. Braden has gotten really good at this, he is the quickest in his group.

Then they have to push it with their gloves.

The next thing they had to do was to pull their team mate across the ice with the hockey sticks. Braden was able to do this. Though the above picture shows how they stopped!

Below is Braden pulling someone across the ice while they were sitting.

Braden loves to slide across the ice. We also realized that as the class goes on they don't get up as quickly, we think they are taking a breather!

Below is B doing the Kovalchuk move after scoring a goal! Every time he scores he shows his daddy with his fingers how many goals he had shot.

Braden has been working on his stick handling. He practices at home and it has improved drastically.

Braden counts down how many days until he plays again. He loves it!

Caitlin's Recital

Caitlin had her dance recital today. She was super excited. She was sick yesterday so I was not sure how she would feel today, but she was doing better.

This is Caitlin and Ellie. They were in PreK together and have become good friends.

Caitlin, Ellie and Jessica. Jessica and Caitlin were in dance last year together and again this year.

Caitlin and her friend Hannah, they were in preschool together and now in kindergarten together.

Caitlin did so well. Her group did a tap and a ballet performance. She had so much fun.

My beautiful princess!

Proud Daddy and Caitlin!

There are not any pictures from the actual performance because we could not use flash. We did get it on video though!

Park Day

This past week we finally had a free day, which is very rare recently. The kids asked to go to the playground and since it was so nice out I decided to go.

Braden went around the playground finding places for me to take his picture.

They had fun playing with some neighbors and worked up a sweat!

They like this playground because there are ducks for them to feed. The ducks are very use to people and can get aggressive.

They had fun getting out and enjoying the day!