Yesterday morning I walked my daughter to her first grade class for the last time. When she walked out three hours and fifteen minutes later, she was officially a second grader, and darn proud of it!
Kids learn a LOT more in first grade than we did as kids. By the end of the school year she was learning fractions and probability - meaning that I'll be of no use to her in the math arena somewhere around Thanksgiving of 2nd grade. Thank goodness math is something she does in her head, skewing her face and looking upward as she works the little calculator in her brain - just like her dad. Thank goodness for that!
So, what's the first grade experience as seen through the eyes of me watching and experiencing it with her?
First grade is amazing art work now curated and hung about the house and in my "office" at work.
It is spelling tests every Friday with 12 words in each. We started with short "a" and am, at, back, bat and finished with prefixes like "un" and "re" - refill, refund, unkind.
It is 17 lists of Dolch words and lots of tears and "persevering" until we conquered each list and got to put our name on the chart of achievers.
It is Bubbles, the classroom Webkinz fish who circulates the class and has his / her adventures documented in words and pictures.
Calendar books and telling time (with hands on a clock, not a digital clock!)
Mad minute math - cranking out a target of 10 addition or subtraction problems as fast as you can!
First grade is field trips and fun Friday's and assemblies and fun.
It is 26 letters home on Friday's with mom and dad responding - all compiled into a nice little binder that I'll keep, and re-read and probably cry over every once in awhile.
It meant meeting new friends and missing old ones. It also meant lots of friends who were boys as Katy is the perfect tomboy - into bugs and Baukegons and batman - as well as Barbie.
It was working through things with our first bully - a girl. While mom and dad wanted to arrange a visit after hours on the playground, Katrina was patient and now considers her a friend. (I still might work out the meeting on the playground.)
First grade was two more stamps in her passport - one to China and one to Turks and Caicos islands.
It was her first sleepover without mom or dad. (Note, neither mom nor dad slept that night.)
It was a lot of "MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!" and "What the..." (which she gets from me) and "Are you KIDDING me!" (which she also gets from me.)
It was an end of year assembly with Katrina front and center and showing better dance moves than anyone in the class to their modified version of the Black Eyed Peas, "I've got a feeling..." Jazz hands, baby!
First grade was a lot of growing up - and I'm not certain that I'm ready for it, even if she is!
We celebrated her achievement with lunch at Whippi Dip and an afternoon playing with Lego's. Today we'll celebrate the start of summer when I bust her out of "summer camp" at noon along with her BFF Sam to have lunch and whittle away what little money I have left at Chuck-E-Cheese. As long as they share their tokens, there will be no issues!
I am pretty amazed by my daughter. She is a really great little person, and while I'd like to give a majority of the credit for that to John and I, I suspect that it's more her than us. We are only here to clear the path for her to greatness.
So - with 1st grade complete, we now look forward to a not-so-bummer-summer (with blogs galore) and 2nd grade, where I'm hoping to finally be able to read Captain Underpants and other cool books that I've been waiting for! I'll leave the 2nd grade math to her father. I'll bet it's calculus!
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