We are now 3 weeks into school(!)! Cameron just started getting homework, Dylan had his first band meeting (this afternoon), I’ve started volunteering in Cameron’s class, and Back-to-School night already passed (just this past Thursday)!
In Cameron’s class, there are 23 students, 12 from her class last year and 11 from the other class. She shares a table with 4 other students, 3 of whom were in her class last year.
She is more comfortable with the language and with her peers this year, and it shows!
Each Monday (and possibly everyday, though I’m only there on Monday mornings), the students pass around a stone and whoever is currently holding it shares something about their weekend. The first time I witnessed this very sweet ritual, was during the beginning of the 3rd week of school (the second Monday of the year); I was so delighted to hear Cameron not only speaking confidently, but also in Spanish! This was notable as most of the other native English students still choose to share in English.
Just this past week, she has also shared stories of the “running club” she has organized during recess where, of course(!), everyone is invited. She tells us she’s trying to get more people involved…as many people involved as possible, but some kids just drop out! I imagine that she did not have the confidence to do this last year and, if she had, and kids turned her down, she would have probably been very emotional about it. This year, however, she seems to be displaying a remarkable resilience and good-nature about it all.
She is in a classroom with 2 very nice teachers who job-share–Maestra Jennifer is there from M-Thursday and Maestra Nancy comes on Friday. Both teachers have third graders in the program at the school (and other kids, too!).
As far as I can tell, Cameron is currently in the top-level Walk-to-Read group and she is clearly doing very, very well in math (based on my volunteer experience today where I had the opportunity to work with most of the students in class).
We’re off to a good start! And, while we are very pleased with her academics, we still feel that the effort and joy of learning is far more important than being Number One and we hope that she will value the process over overall status as well.
Dylan also has an amazing class! He starts 10 mins. earlier than he did last year and, initially, we were told that his teacher didn’t need parent volunteers, so up until Back-to-School night, we had very little contact with Ms. Butler. She has 2 sons at the school, though, one of whom is in Dylan’s grade (they were classmates in Teacher Laurie’s class!) and she recently was recognized for having served 20 years on the Sheriff’s Search and Rescue team!
On Back-to-School night, we learned all about the various interactive activities the kids would engage in — Run for CA (where they run laps at school, tot up their mileage, measure it out on CA map and talk about the historical places they pass along the way), Thursday cross-fit (woot!), Flat Stanley, Itidarods (they’ll “get” mushers later on in the year), and they’ll learn how to do rescues (she is very safety-minded!). I loved it all! They might even do some geocaching on one of their field trips (to Little Basin, no less)…!
Dylan is super excited about band, too, and has chosen to learn the clarinet.
With the start of the school year, Dylan also started Boys Ballet and Cameron started piano lessons and a Tap/Jazz combo class.
Nutcracker auditions were last week and both kids are in — this year, Cameron will be in 2 acts!
Am I worried that this might be too much? Well, yeah. But, so far, they are enjoying all of it…
