Super Star

Ava just capped off the week by being Super Star of the week in her kindergarten class.  Naturally, she loved her time in the spotlight.  We got the news of her impending stardom the week before spring break and she was adamant about finishing all of her prep work with more than a week to spare. 
On Monday, she shared family pictures and an "All About Me" worksheet.  Some highlights:
I am special because:  I am an artist.
Favorite color:  pink (what else?)
Something I like to do at school is: 5 Chos Centrs (5 choice centers, which are different stations set up in the classroom)
Something I like to do at home is:  Barbies
Favorite animal:  kitin
I help others by:  Cleaning my play room, reading to people.
Favorite food:  Macaroni cheese, Tater tots
When I grow up I want to be: a techr

On Tuesday, she sent an "estimation jar".  She chose to use pennies and added 50 of them to the jar.  The students were supposed to guess how many items were in the jar.

On Wednesday, her job was to send a special toy or object and practice speaking about it (them).  She chose a Barbie doll and her Daddy doll.  I should have videotaped her talking about them, she did a great job.  She can be very serious when she needs to be :-)

On Thursday, she brought a collection for the class to graph or sort.  She chose to bring 10 of her Little Pet Shop toys.

On Friday, she got to bring treats (good thing she read the sheet to me the night before, as we had to make a quick pit stop at Rainbow on the way to school).  Her friends loved her cookie selections and she also had to prepare a survey question.  "Which TV show do you like better?  SpongeBob or Arthur?"  She predicted more classmates preferred SpongeBob.  She told me everyone in the class picked SpongeBob.

The sheet that came home explaining this activity said "This is a great self-esteem builder."  It truly was!  Not that Ava needs a lot of help in that department (lol), but she really did love having special things to do during the week to share with her class.  It was a great assignment!

While I'm on the topic of Ava and school, I'll finally report about her Parent-Teacher conference last month.  Again we got to see many samples of Ava's writing and math, which were above average.  Mrs. Lloyd noted her strengths as : reading (2nd grade level), writing, artistic, creative, handwriting, kindness to special needs students.  Because Ava is an advanced reader, she has been leaving the classroom on Mondays and Wednesdays to read to special needs students in a classroom down the hall.  We love that the teachers came up with this arrangement for her - it's definitely a win-win for everyone.   Mrs. Lloyd told us that one day in particular, one of the special needs girls was going down the hall and being fairly noisy.  Ava's class was in the hall at the same time and one of her classmates made a rude comment about the girl.  Ava spoke up and said, "Don't say that, she's my friend."  Of course all of the academic accolades are wonderful to hear, but that story truly touched my heart and made me even more proud of Ava.

Despite being a good reader, she has still seen it as a chore, but recently it seems that may be changing.  Just in the last week she has been picking up books on her own and reading them to Reese.  Finally someone is reading the Golden Books!  (When I'm the one reading, I always steer the girls away from them because they're too damn long!)  This post is getting a little sickening...but I heart seeing the girls in a bedroom reading together on their own. 

To sum it up, she's doing great in school and we were really happy with her progress.  Mrs. Lloyd probed us about a possible adventure in our future...as Ava had written in her journal about taking a really long plane ride to "Croasha" to live.  So we gave her the scoop.  It will be really interesting to see how the next 2 school years go for her in the International School.  I'm so excited for her - what a great experience it should be.

On a related note, Scot has been in Croatia all week and will get back tomorrow.  I can't wait to hear more about his adventures there!

Resident Artists

Scot and Ava have each been taking an art class this winter.  Ava's class is on Saturday mornings at Woodbury Central Park, a program called "Young Rembrandts".  Scot goes to The Art Academy in St. Paul on Monday nights.

Here is Ava's gallery so far...

And my two favorites.

It's not hard to see where she gets her talent from.  Scot's current project:

Economics 101

We had been having a little trouble with Ava's morning routine in January...well, by "we", I mean "Ava" and by "trouble" I mean she was dawdling and otherwise not doing the things she needed to do to get ready for school.  Let's just say mornings are already pretty stressful when everything is going right...throw a few kinks in the routine and the crying ensues.  And that's mostly Mom.

So we brought back the sticker chart, which seems like it would have eclipsed a 6 year old's motivation level...but nope, not yet.  It says:

1) Get dressed.
2) Go downstairs.  Eat breakfast.
3) Play quietly.

06:15 school days
07:00 weekend days (Sat, Sun, or days off school)

The times are for how long she needs to stay in her bedroom.  She loves school days so she can get up early.  Sigh.

Anyway, the genius part of this was that my idea for a reward wasn't going to cost us anything.  Ava had some money burning a hole in her pocket, various gifts from birthdays and Christmas and such.  We counted it and she had $43.  She was dying to go shopping. 

I told her I would finally take her shopping (with her money) if she could earn 5 stickers for doing her morning routine all week without any nagging from us.  It worked like a charm.  Possibly the easiest week of mornings in 6 years.

Saturday approached and she was getting really excited about spending her money.  She had some ideas and mostly wanted to spend her things on American Girl (Target version) accessories.  We took a look at the website first to get a baseline of how much various things cost and how much she'd be able to buy.  She took this very seriously.  And I tried to help her see how some things might be more useful and/or cost effective than others.

Before we went to Target, I took her to Barnes and Noble because I had a book to return.  There, she decided she needed to have a (real) American Doll hair style kit.  It was $20.   I let her get it.

At Target she found a salon chair (which we had seen on the website).  That was $20 also. 

That was about 3 weeks ago and she is still playing with both toys daily - she did a great job!