Kindergarten Recap

I can't believe that Sims will be starting 1st grade in a week!  I just hope that he loves 1st grade as much as he loved kindergarten.  He had such a wonderful experience with such a sweet teacher.  It was just the experience that we wanted him to have.  And, boy, did he learn a lot!

He had been learning some sight words in preschool, but we are constantly amazed by how many words Sims can read.  When he doesn't know the word, he is so great at sounding it out to get the word right.  At the end of kindergarten, he was reading at a high 1st grade level.

One of the new things that he learned was math.  I don't think he had learned too much math before kindergarten.  He really enjoys it (his favorite homework is always math), and he is really good at it.  I wonder if all of our talk about how much Jason and I love math has caused Sims to love it as well.

Dressed as the Letterland character Mr. A

His writing improved dramatically.  It's not been his strong suit, but I can see that changing.  It is getting very nice now when he puts a little effort in it, and he is starting to like to write more and more.  The better he gets at it, the more he seems to like doing it.

His class went on a few field trips, and I was happy to be able to go on all of them.  They went to the pumpkin patch, to see a high school play, and to Marbles kids museum.

On Wacky Hair Day

He worked very hard on his science fair project.  It was optional, but he really wanted to do it.  His title was When Did My Favorite Dinosaurs Live?  It was a great project for his age because he could do so much of it himself with a minimal amount help.  We were so very proud of him!  Then we found out that he won first place for the kindergarten projects, and we were even more proud!  It was a fantastic project.  The leader for the science fair told us that Sims had one of the highest scores for the entire science fair, which was for Pre-K to 3rd grade.  We were very impressed!

At the awards ceremony at the end of the year, he was given a few awards: the Kindergarten Science Award, Excellent Engineer, and Marvelous Mathematician.  He was also given an award for completing 9 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) challenges, some of which were held during school hours and some were on Saturdays. 

My mom volunteered in his class every Wednesday, and she and Sims both loved that.  She would stay and eat lunch with him.  We loved it because Mom could give us details about what was happening in the class.  Wednesdays were always special for him!

The weekly homework load took us all a while to get used to, and I hope that the summer off hasn't softened us too much!  I will say that I think he got way too much homework for a kindergartner, but he handled it fine.  I just hope that he doesn't get significantly more in 1st grade.  There are only so many hours in a day!

Photo taken the first week of summer vacation by Rich Taylor - www.richtaylor.photography

This year has flown by!  We have loved Sims' school, and we are looking forward to the beginning of a new school year.

Photo by Rich Taylor - www.richtaylor.photography