Fall School Adventures

School activities are always multiplied in the fall and spring it seems.  The kids seem to be having a great year.  We just got progress reports and both are doing well.  Grace likes to be a lazy student, even though she has the capacity to do knock-out work.   We try to encourage her to do her best even when lazy efforts get her much of the same results.  (that, has got to be very frustrating... for her, for the kids around her who work their tails off for much less... and it's always frustrating for me when she brings home something that is so far beneath her best ability.)

Long story short - she had major science and reading projects in October.  I really wanted her to get the scores I know she can achieve and wanted to see her very best work go into both.  So, she and I spent many many hours sitting down, poring over every detail of each project.  The book project included a lot of writing as well as a diorama.  Writing is Grace's least favorite thing.  She is incredibly intelligent and knows how to do it well, but just doesn't like to.  So often, her sentences are bare minimum with horrible handwriting and worse spelling.  It kills me when I see words she has spelled wrong out of laziness.  It was very painful for her to plow through each of those paragraphs she had to write.  She ended up handwriting a rough draft and then typing the final one so that she didn't have to go nuts focusing on her handwriting.  I knew that she had done a really stellar job and I was incredibly proud of every sentence in that project.  She truly worked for it and did it over many days so that it wasn't all at the last minute.  She also insisted on doing an extra diorama scene and did a crazy amount of work to make each scene look like she imagined it when she read it.  Here is her final result.  The book was Shadow Wolf by Kathryn Lasky.

Grace had envisioned how this scene looked, where the Owl was flying ABOVE the clouds (she could hear, but not see the wolf attack below.)  So, Grace got creative and figured out how to make the clouds lower.  Her rocky ledge made this a pretty heavy homework project.

Harriet seems to be thriving on first grade work, even if it gets a little boring at times.   She has 100% on all her spelling tests so far and is excited for the rumor that we might have a spelling bee at the end of the year.  She knows she'll rock it.  I love seeing the work she brings home.  She is incredibly thoughtful in what she writes and draws.  This is just one of many examples, but yesterday, she brought home this little gem:

I love this for so many reasons.  The picture of her in the meadow, counting, is just priceless.  I love how she drew the mountains and clouds behind her.  I think it is really astounding that when asked what makes her special, that the first thing out of her mouth (literally - in the picture) was MATH.  I wish all little girls had that view of themselves, and could keep it.  It is the latter that plagues me on a daily basis - keeping the love of math (and other nerdy things) firmly in place in my daughters.  It was such a great moment for me, that my gorgeous little girl, who loves pink and all things girly,  didn't mention a single thing about being special because of her looks, or her new Hello Kitty stuff, or anything superficial.  She's proud of who she IS.   She also writes that she is good at pictures (drawing), and video games.  I think it's funny she wrote video games.  She really doesn't play them much, but Grace just saved up for a new video game and let Harriet play it with her this week, so maybe she felt special that Grace let her play her brand new game.  Harriet did tell me, when she came home with this paper, that she wished she hadn't written video games, but had written art instead.  She really does love art and would be happy creating things all day long if someone would let her.

In other school news, I took on planning Grace's 4th grade "Fall" (NOT HALLOWEEN) party. We decided to get brainy for party activities and look at the angles and segments between stars in the Fall constellations, and then draw the constellations to "scale."  We also did some cool leaf rubbings.  I'm grateful that Grace's teacher trusts me and lets me in on things.  I never thought I would be able to be involved much at the 4th grade level, but I've spent a ton of time in there this year.  I loved doing the prep for the party, and the kids were totally thrilled with it.  I was a little worried there would be mutiny over having MATH instead of party games, but it was disguised well enough that no one even noticed.  I think it was also nice to have something really different, apart from the same old "pumpkin craft" kinds of things you usually have at school parties.  

Harriet's "Fall" party was pretty much the same old thing (no, I wasn't in charge of hers.)  David and I did go to hang out with her (Hattie was quite excited that Daddy got to come,) but it was just wall-to-wall parents and unattended siblings, giant plates of food the kids threw away, and lots of first grade rules.  Good thing they got to go on a field trip that week to the balloon museum so that they had something fun in the mix.  

 Here is Harriet's class inside the gondola of the balloon that crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

Anyway, I just wanted to pause in the middle of all the traditional travel and holiday posts to make one about the girls.  I'm totally proud of them and can't wait to see where their education and smart little brains will take them.