Our First Graduation.

It's hard to believe that it was 9 months ago that we walked our little girl into a classroom and left her in the hands of a wonderful teacher. Wow! That was probably one of the hardest weeks of my life. I still fight the urge to keep her home with me because I miss her so much (so does her little sister). In 2 weeks, Lindsay will be graduating from Kindergarten! The girl has grown so much in the past 9 months and is learning like crazy. Her favorite subjects in school are reading, math, art and music. Music especially, and she has received complements from both teachers and fellow students on her natural talent in music. Her teacher went as far as to say that in her almost 30 years of teaching she has not seen another student so naturally gifted in music. We are hoping to get her into some sort of music lessons next year, hopefully piano.
In reading she has blossomed. She is about in the middle of her class (a great place to be!) in her reading level. Her struggle here has been confidence. Lindsay does not like being wrong so that holds her back from trying and being OK with making mistakes. When I work with her at home I am trying to really let her know that it is OK to make a mistake because sometimes you have to make mistakes first, so that you can learn. I think this is going to be a struggle for the rest of her life- she is a bit of a perfectionist.
In math she has completely surprised me- math was never a good subject for me. I vaguely remember counting apples on trees in Kindergarten- they are doing full addition and subtraction. The other day she wrote a number down and asked me what she should subtract from that number. She wrote 10 I said, "subtract 5." She said "that's easy, 5" Then she wrote 6, I said, "3." She just gave me a look and said "mom!" It so easy all I have to do is do it backwards and I know that 3+3=6 so 6-3=3. Well, excuse me, doing it backwards???!!! I guess I need to be a harder quizer. :-)
So now she is at the end of Kindergarten, I'm glad that we didn't wait another year to put her in. At almost 6, she is more than ready for first grade and is excited about the coming year. Though she will tell you she wants to stay with Mrs. Merchant forever, until she graduates high school (to tell the truth so do I). I don't think Mrs. Merchant would go for that. You can almost see the change in her pictures. The one at the top is her original school picture 3 weeks after school started. She was still to shy to smile for the stranger behind the camera and was dealing with an eye infection that makes for a bit of a heartbreaking picture. By Spring though we have a very confident little girl. And her graduation picture, taken last week, shows how much she really loves school now. I think she might pull a muscle with that smile. You should see the other pose, the smile is even bigger, if you can imagine.