Curriculum Night 2012

E. Stands for "Excited" About Curriculum Night

Thursday night was "Curriculum Night" at my R. and S.'s elementary school.  I don't even remember having such an event when I was growing up, but let's face it--that was a long time ago.  Basically Curriculum Night is like Back to School Night, except that it's in the middle of the year so you can see what your kids have been working on all year.

S.'s was first.  I got the night off on the wrong foot when I went to the wrong classroom.  I went to S.'s class from last year!  Oops!  Sometimes having a good memory can cause those types of problems!  I walked into the classroom and found absolutely no one there but the teacher!  Turns out J. got the time wrong and I was a half hour early.  

I put the time to good use by taking E. to play on the playground.  She was so cute about doing the swings and holding my hand as we walked back and forth.  Confidentially, that may have been my favorite part of the evening!  (What can I say, I think she's totally adorable!)

"Donde Estan Los Animales" - S.'s Masterpiece

S. was so excited to have us there.  We got to check out his standardized test scores.  (He passed!) And he had a little packet of work for me to do.  R. and S. are in a Spanish immersion program at the elementary school, so basically they have 5-6 hours of Spanish language instruction per day and 1-2 hours of English language.  Their teachers are native speakers and the boys have really enjoyed learning a foreign language.  (They started in kindergarten.)

S. gave me a Spanish spelling test and he was so excited to mark me down when I missed two words (out of 10).  One of the words was "wrong" only because I didn't put the accent in.  I thought I should have gotten credit for it!  ;)

I Think J. Needs To Clean The Lens On Her Camera...

E. thought it was hilarious to steal the pieces of paper that made up the "Accentos" game that S. had me play. Can you tell how excited she is?  (Sorry for the blurry picture!)

E. aka "The Giggling Bandido" Strikes Again!

 Rex's classroom was just as crowded.  And Rex was just excited to quiz me on all of the work they had been doing.  thankfully, he also passed his standardized tests.  :)  And sadly, I didn't fare so well on his classroom version of "Are You Smarter Than a 4th Grader?"  I had no idea that California had 21 missions (my guess was 30).  And I had no idea of the names of the two main rivers in the Central Valley (Sacramento and San Joaquin--in case you were wondering).  Fortunately, I knew that California's nickname is "The Golden State"--but who doesn't know that??

A Job Well Done

In case you were wondering, J. came but somehow managed to avoid all the quizzes and tests.  Just because she doesn't seem Spanish doesn't seem like a good reason for making me carry the whole load!  But you know what, I wouldn't have it any other way.  What a fun night and one that reminded me how much I love being a dad!

Back to School

We had Back to School Night ("BTSN") last week. J. couldn't make it, so I had to fly solo. That definitely put a little more pressure on because normally I can sit back and let J. take in all of the nitty gritty details. Here are a few of the things that I noticed during my "exciting" night out:

1. The rooms were decorated like crazy. I don't think I could ever be a teacher because I would flunk whatever course teachers have to how to decorate a classroom. To be a teacher, you have to cram stuff into every square inch of "real estate" on the walls of your classroom. Take a look at the picture above: In this small section of wall, we have numbers, the alphabet, the State Flag, world map, visual display of the school's goal statements, and a couple vocab displays. You can barely see the wall itself. And yet it all looks so good! My hat is off to Ms. V. (S.'s teacher)!
2. I love how the teacher managed to incorporate a basketball into her classroom decorations. She gets extra credit for that in my book! (Notice how none of the important details escape my attention...)
3. I was surprised at how many dads showed up. I wasn't expecting there to be that many, but I think it's definitely a good thing.
4. I panicked before I arrived and had to call J. to ask her what I was supposed to ask the teachers.
5. We got to sit at our kids' desks during the presentation. Their desks are much cleaner than my desk at the office!
6. I really enjoy seeing the projects that my kids are working on displayed in the classroom and at their desks.
7. The teachers gave us all of the materials for the kids' classes in English, in Spanish (this is California after all!), on the overhead projector, and then went over them orally.
8. Even so, I'm glad that I didn't have to take a test on the materials at the end of the night!
9. I dutifully took all of the materials home for J.'s file. Even though she couldn't make it, I know she'll know what to do with it!

All in all, I'm excited for the new school year. I have a 4th grader and a 2nd grader this year. I still have fond memories of my 4th grade teacher (Ms. Finney) and 2nd grade teacher (Ms. Cadenhead). I hope that this is a great year for my kids and that they too can have fond memories of this school year 30 years from now.

How did your BTSN's go?

(Mom, you don't have to answer...you have earned a well-deserved rest from having to attend this event!)

On Butterfly Wings and Answered Prayers...

So E. had her second day of pre-school earlier this week. She has been a little hesitant to leave home and go to pre-school (and also to go to nursery during church) for some reason the past few weeks, so we were worried about how she would do. We were worried enough that we prayed that E. would able to be happy and make friends at pre-school.

I told J. to let me know how E.'s day at school went and, in response, I got an email from J. containing this short video clip below. E. has the cutest pre-school teacher and she was kind enough to send this to us so that we would know how E. was doing:

(Sorry if it is a bit distorted, the video was shot sideways, and I had to figure out how to flip it...)

I have never thought that butterfly wings could look as cute as they do on E. in this video...and I don't think I could possibly watch this video enough!

Looks to me like E. is doing better and we are really grateful that our prayers were answered and for great friends and neighbors like E.'s teacher, among others, who play a role in having them answered.