Category Archives: Schoolwork
Katie’s Pre-K artwork!
Oh jeez. I thought I had posted this a looong time ago… Better late than never!
I always wondered why she rarely brought home artwork…and then it all came home on the last day! It took me awhile to get the energy to take pictures of it all, but here they are.
Homework time!
Then I was helping Owen with his homework and Katie took our picture.
We have our own little Rainman.
Tom brought home his whiteboard from work and left it in the living by room. He walked by later to see this—Owen had completed a bunch of addition problems:
By the time I got home, he had done more:
He kept adding sums…and did them all in his head. Once I started going through them (which I told him I had to do for it count as his nightly math homework), there were a few errors, but really still impressive. I’m not sure if you can see it, but he went all the way up to 16001664 + 16001664 = 32003128 + 32003128 (which wasn’t the right answer but it was close).
Sometimes he just blows our minds.
A quick visit to Owen’s classroom.
I needed to surreptitiously give his teacher his end-of-year book to sign so I made an excuse to pick him up. He was excited because they’ve been studying monarch butterflies and they are hatching some in class and he wanted to show me.
Other stuff from his classroom:
Artwork projects in the hallway. I asked him what pieces he drew.
The corn, apples, and pumpkin section:
The horse (which Katie said did not look like a horse):
And this—which I’m not sure what it is, but he was upset that someone scribble-scrabbled on it.
He did the red ladybug on the far right.
Katie’s new chair
We picked up this chair today from a yard sale and Katie immediately used it for her homework.
With an assist from big brother…
Happy Mother’s Day 2017
Katie pointed out that she gave me chicken hands and high heels. 🙂
Valentine’s Day Cutie
Owen’s Special Letter
The second day of Owen’s “Me Museum” week was a sealed letter written by someone else about his special qualities. This is the letter I wrote.
Owen has many special qualities and continues to amaze us with his abilities.
Owen didn’t really start talking until age 3, but once he did, he never stopped! We were worried about him learning how to read, when one day he came home from Pre-K and just picked up a book and started reading it to me! He still impresses me with all the words he knows!
He got his first Lego mini-figure at age 3 and has never looked back. He can follow directions on sets above his age level and then tears them apart and builds his own super cool creations. He is our own Master Builder.
Owen has always been super nice and polite and makes friends very easily. Friends, family, teachers, and even strangers comment on how sweet and polite he is.
He is the best big brother to his little sister—he plays with her, gives her piggy-back rides, reads her books, helps get her breakfast, and makes her laugh.
He is very loving with all of our pets. He takes good care of our dog and gives cuddles to the cats.
Owen is good at swimming, baseball, and soccer. He is a Shark 2—the highest level of swimming (and I know he could beat me in a race). He always gives 100% at every lesson, practice, or game. During his first soccer season, his coach gave him the “most improved player” award.
Owen is a great kid and we couldn’t be prouder to have him as our son.
Love,
Mom
2nd Grade Scientists
I just saw these on Twitter from last Friday (1/28/17).
Our 2nd grade scientists observed first-hand how wind and water erode soil. pic.twitter.com/0lkc8h0nz6
— HalleyES Grade 2 (@HalleyESGrade2) January 28, 2017
Our scientists created a model of weathering by breaking up "rocks" the way wind, water, temperature, ice, and plants do. pic.twitter.com/IpxRGfPfKC
— HalleyES Grade 2 (@HalleyESGrade2) January 28, 2017
Owen’s “Me Museum” Poster
As with the past two years, each kid gets a week to share things about themselves with the class and we picked his birthday week again. I tried to keep my hands off his poster while still managing to give some gentle guidance. He did pretty good.
A visit to Owen’s classroom.
Since I had to take Katie in for her field trip in the morning, I also took Owen. Since we still had some time before school started (and kids can’t be in the classrooms without a teacher or parent), I stayed in his room with him. I took the time to look around and take some more room pictures.
Owen wanted me to see if I could pick out his drawing without looking for his name.
I guessed it on my second try! My first guess was the bottom row, second picture (white) and his response was “Mom, it’s missing arms. I never forget the arms.” 🙂 It’s him helping Katie (notice the yellow pony tails?).
Two panoramics of his classroom.
The weekly reading chart. It’s so complex it needs a key!
This is the original chart.
Just a few glue sticks. 🙂
These signs are in the hallways and stairwells.
Owen’s teacher says he’s all-around awesome.
This morning was the first P/T conference of the year. We were a bit early so I took advantage and got some pics.
Overall, Owen is doing awesome. She said he’s advanced in reading, ahead in math, and is probably the most respectful kid in class! She also has no concerns with his spelling—he got 95/100 on sight words (the ones he missed were words like WHERE and WHICH [forgot the h] which are very common)—and he behaves in class. What blew me away is his writing assignment—it was done over a few days, but the handwriting was excellent and the story was involved (it was about one of his xbox games)…and he wrote SIX PAGES! It doesn’t all make perfect sense, of course, and there are some errors but WOW. JUST…WOW.
And then a few pics from around the classroom:
And as I was taking pictures I was telling the teacher why (because I make a Shutterfly book each year) so she told me to hang on and she’d stage the Class Jobs list for me (it needed to be done before class anyway). 🙂
And then I took Katie to the playground for a few minutes since she always begs to go there but we’re usually there during school hours. She says “Mama? You remember the last time we were here and Gramma Jean was swinging with me?” 🙂
Owen was poetry helper this week.
Heading back to class…on the second floor!!
Katie doing homework
Homework twins
Owen was doing homework so Katie had to get her “homework” book out, too!
Summer Slide Worksheet? CHECK!
He finished his Summer Slide stuff a few days early (280 second grade workbook pages, ~700 pages of reading, and 70 pages of handwriting practice!) so guess who’s starting his Lego reward right now?
Overall it was more of a fight than I thought it would be—he’s a typical kid who never wanted to spend the 20-30 measly minutes a day to do what he needed to do, so when it compounded and he’d have to work for 2-3 hours to catch up he became a hot whiny mess. And this was even after I put the Lego reward on display! The only time he got really excited about “doing homework” was this week when he saw how close he was to the end.
But, he now knows how to do 3-digit addition and subtraction (along with lots of other stuff) and his handwriting is MILES ahead of where it was. We still need to work on reading comprehension and composing sentences, but overall, he did a great job! YAY OWEN!
Catching up on his summer reading.
Owen isn’t great about keeping up with his Summer Slide reading, so we’ve had to have some days where we read 40-60 pages to try and catch up. (It’s not as bad as it sounds—it’s not like he’s reading full chapter book pages. Some of them are, but some are also books for Katie with one sentence per page. So it averages out.) Notice he had a buddy today, as well.
Owen’s pinch pot octopus
I forgot to post this when it first came home. I love it. I wasn’t quite sure what it was until I flipped it over and counted the legs. 🙂
Katie’s doing workbooks!
I cleaned out the coloring books and whatnot and found Owen’s old pre-K and kindergarten workbooks…and she was somewhat interested! Yay!
Katie’s first art folder!
Her folder was made from the artwork she did a few months ago.
It came home Friday but I didn’t get around to taking pictures of everything until today. 🙂
Owen’s life timeline
This is so simple but I just love it.
He just had to do his weekend news!
Owen’s class does Weekend News for classwork and I absolutely love reading them when they eventually come home. But today he told me he really wanted to do his weekend news so I had to find a template for him! Off he went and came back about 10 minutes later with this.
And then I was trying to get a picture of him beaming and of course he was a silly goose and gave me this face instead.
Showing Gramma Jean her classroom!
Happy Mother’s Day from Owen
You can tell we just had chicken pot pie at home because his answers are VERY chicken-pot-pie related. 🙂
My mom’s name is Jennifer.
She is 42 years old.
Mom and I like to play xbox 360/to help me on my Lego to get me red bricks.
Mom likes to say “I love you/respond.”
My Mom really loves playing with me.
She likes to eat chicken pot pie.
She likes to drink energy drink. [Our Naturally Slim H2OJ.]
My Mom’s job is taking care of me.
If she had time, she would like to watch Ellen DeGeneres.
Mom is really good at making pizza.
If I could go anywhere in the world with her, we’d go to Florida.
I love my Mom because she is nice.
A Mothers Day surprise!
Katie kept telling me the present was for her, even though it had my name on it! She didn’t want me to wait to open it (she’s definitely my daughter!).
Katie’s pizza!
This was Katie’s first pre-k art project from her first day—it finally came home Friday and it got hung on the art line today!!
Owen’s class being scientists.
When I arrived to pick up Katie, I saw a class of kids heading inside. I thought the teacher sounded familiar and it was—Owen’s teacher! I heard her say something about being scientists and they all had notebooks. Mrs. Talley waved and Owen happened to turn around and saw me. 🙂
I didn’t get to ask him about it after school since it was a mad rush to get him ready and out the door to baseball with Papa and Grannie (Tom and I had a retirement dinner to attend) but these pics were posted on Facebook!
Finger painting at school!
When we got back from the field trip, Katie got to create her artwork folder…which necessitated finger painting. She had a blast! And I’m glad she gets to do it at school because the thought of that mess at home makes me cry. 🙂
Then we saw Owen coming back from recess:
And just because there wasn’t already enough paint…another color!
And then I made the mistake of telling her to make a handprint. Well, she smacked her hand down and this happened (except about four times as many dots):
Anne (our friend who works in Katie’s class) assured me it was washable, but when a baby wipe—generally known to clean most anything—didn’t work, I got concerned. I found the label:
You see that? Washes out of most surfaces and fabrics. Egads. Of course that would be my luck with my brand new coat. (That said, I washed it as soon as I got home and thankfully it did come out.)
And the final product! I can’t wait to see the finished (dried) folder they make out of it!
Owen reading his homework!
