A Fine 5th Grade Finish

The last week of school was a lot of fun for our daughter.  Monday was Memorial Day, so there was no school.  Tuesday consisted of Field Day in the morning followed by a pool party where U2 Games was hired to offer additional fun amusements.  With 12 hours of training a week (when she wasn't injured, we expected our girl to bring home lots of first place ribbons at Field Day, but she was in the most athletic class (they got 1st place in ever single class competition) with girls over a foot taller than she was, so she had much more competition this year.  Still, she brought home individual ribbons as well.  She was less competitive this year as she has become more comfortable at school and is not as stressed or tense as she was last year.  Her facial expressions during field day last year were so intense the other parents could not hold back giggles at her determination.  I ran back and forth between her events and her brother's, but here are some photos I took or collected from other parents from Field Day.

Individual Events

Team Events:  The blonde she's with in these pics is the sister of one of my stats students, Blaine.

Siblings were invited to the after school party, and our son is so glad!  My son especially enjoyed the laser tag course, and we both took a spin in the hamster ball.

Mother/Son Hamster Ball & Laser Tag Fun

Since I was watching my son while my older daughter was off with her school friends, I did not get a single picture of her in the pool, and sadly, out of the 174 pictures another parent shared with the class, not one included a photo of my girl. :(

 I was a bit embarrassed to see one of my stats students at the pool (he brought his little brother who is a fifth grader) as I was in my (albeit modest) swim suit.  Of course, I was mostly unrecognizable since I had the frizziest hair ever after spending the morning helping with field day in high heat and humidity.

To add even further to my embarrassment, my daughter asked me to a flip off the diving board during adult swim time.  I looked around to see if anyone was watching, and since no one seemed to be looking my way (and thankfully, my former student was over in an adjacent field), I did a quick flip to please her.  Then other parents joined me, and the kids called out different dives and rated us like a real diving competition. It was hilarious and made a memory for those kids who never expected to see "old" women flipping off a diving board, but I'm still a tad embarrassed over how many faculty, parents, and students saw me having fun and acting goofy.  The things we do for our kids....but a board member did tell me that it's important for students to view their teachers as real people, approachable without a wall between them. 

Teacher/Mom Diving Competition

On Wednesday, our daughter got to help me take care of Muffin during her brother's Pet Day presentation, and then she joined him at his 2nd grade end-of-year party.  She chaperoned the water balloon fights and enjoyed hanging out with many of her classmates who also have siblings the same age.

 

On Thursday, her foodie teacher served all the students lunch.  Her teacher is super special to us as she really helped our daughter achieve her goal of making the all A honor roll this year.  With 12 hours of gymnastics a week plus Tae-Kwon-Do, Access Ministry, and other church commitments, she never had time to study outside of school except during "study center" which is an after school program for teacher's kids that is not conducive to study at all as the kids are loud and rowdy with taking, board games, hide-n-seek, etc.  So, this teacher would voluntarily help our daughter with math when she really needed it while I tutored high schoolers in math upstairs. I could tell she was passionate about her students as I am.

Her awards assembly was held the last day of school followed by an early release.  Her dad joined me for the presentation.  We were so proud of our girl for staying focused on her goal of making the all A honor roll, for going to her teacher for help when she struggled, for learning to balance a crazy schedule and her school work, for keeping the main thing (God) the main thing which required putting others before our her own goals, and for overcoming so many obstacles last year to make this year her best school year ever.  Another mom tried to assure me that if she could survive 4th grade with Mrs. Mitchell, she would be over-prepared for 5th grade and indeed she was. Now our daughter loves Mrs. Mitchell and lights up whenever she sees her for she knows now that Mrs. Mitchell was hard on her for a reason and for her long term good.

I am very impressed with our school's Latin teacher.  She bends over backwards to help each student, and she teaches every 3rd through 5th grader in the school.  She writes the lengthiest comments of any teacher about each student on their report cards, yet she has 9 times more students than regular grammar teachers.  In 5th grade, each student takes the international Latin exam which is predominately taken by high school students.  Two students in our school made perfect scores.  Our daughter only missed three questions, so she was recognized for her high score on the Latin exam as well. Way to go, girl!

When we came home, I had to take an end-of-year of photo to put  beside their 1st day of school photo.  She moves up to the Logic school and he moves up to the Upper Grammar School, so it was a big day indeed for our kiddos.