Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Start of a new school year- Venily 1st grade, Haven 4K!

My girls go to the same school now!!!!  How cool is that?!  :)

Here are some pics of my big 1st grader and big 4k-er on their first day of school!









Haven is in 4k this year, she did exceptionally well on her early admittance testing.  She has Mrs. Graham and Ms. Jill, just like Venily did.  They are phenomenal teachers, I just love them!  She goes 1/2 days, 5 days a week, in the afternoons.  So far, she loves it!!  Her teachers say she is quiet in school, but will burst out and say a whole bunch of stuff at once and then go back to being quiet again, lol.  I think she has warmed up a lot to the whole experience from the beginning of the year until now, too.  She has a lot of friends in her class!  My cousin's daughter, Ashlynn, is in her class as well, so that's been a lot of fun!  Kelli and I take turns bringing the girls to school in the afternoons and then Haven rides the bus home.  She doesn't like riding the bus very much.  I am so grateful for my grandparents, Kelli, and my mom, watching Haven in the mornings on the days that I have to work!  I don't know what I would do without them.  I am still subbing at Wheatland (I have taught both Haven's and Venily's classes on multiple occasions!).  I probably average about 3 days a week, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Haven is very smart!  She loves to read her BOB books or any other easy reader phonics books.  She has great number sense and loves to learn about things that interest her! 

Venily is in 1st grade, I can't even believe it!!  Wow, is there a change from Kindergarten to 1st!  1st grade is so academically focused and lots more homework every single night.  I am amazed at how awesome Venily does in school though!  She is a rockstar.  She has to read for 20 minutes each night, has math homework almost every night, has spelling tests each week (she has tested out of the "regular" list each time and takes a challenge list each week), and will be having her 2nd social studies test tomorrow.  

Her first s.s. test was intense!  I bet if I randomly found 100 adults and gave them the test, 95% of them would get some wrong.  It was a "maps and globes" test.  She had to know where all the continents and oceans were on a map, where Wisconsin is, that Canada is to our North, Mexico is to our South, that Washington D.C. is on the east coast, all the compass directions for various other things, what an isthmus, bay, island, and peninsula were, where the equator is, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere are, etc, etc.  And she got a 100%!!  

Tomorrow's test is on the ancient civilization of Mesopotamia.  Say what?!  LOL!  She has to locate it on a map, know that it is what is now present day Iraq, know the meaning of the name, what 2 rivers surrounded it (Tigris and Euphrates), that they flooded and left behind rich soil for farming, that the first written language was cuneiform and that only boys from rich families learned how to read and write cuneiform, that they wrote on clay tablets, that they made ziggurats, which were high temples to honor the gods, that they believed in over 3,000 gods, that the code of Hammurabi was the first set of written laws, that the world's first story was about Gilgamesh (a half god) and that he was friends with a half man, half animal, plus a bunch MORE!  I definitely don't remember learning about things like this is 1st grade, lol!

She is so smart though!  I always have teachers coming up to me saying that they can't believe that she's a year ahead in school because she's so smart.  I am so proud of both of them! :)

No comments:

Post a Comment