The End of the School Year

Zach (and myself) participated in a preschool co-op this year. The 5 mom's in the group took turns hosting the 5 little kids on Wednesday mornings for two hours. We had a cute group of little kids and explored lots of fun things: space, Dr. Seuss, noodles, feelings, etc. 

I got to host the group for the last day, and we celebrated with a letter party! It is really hard to get a photo of 5 active 3-4yr olds, but I decided to try. Unfortunately, I found out later that my camera setting was set to manual focus, so all the pictures turned out blurry! This is the best I got.

Zach, Ella, Ira, and Eden (missing Zada)

Here is a picture from a school day in April. Ella, Zada, Eden, Ira, and Zach.

Zach also got to do two weeks of private swimming lessons with  Ms. Lauren. After the first day, he loved it. She got him over his fear of putting his face in the water, and now he is a regular little fish in the water (we have been practicing a lot!). Unfortunately, he was a stinker and wouldn't let me take his picture on the last day, so no photo proof. But here is a little video.

Lily was in Kindergarten this year. She had a great teacher, Mrs. Skipper, and she made some good friends. We were really happy to discover that one little girl in her class lived just around the corner in our neighborhood. Lily and Jenna spent a lot of afternoons playing in the common grass area across from our house. Jenna also had a little brother Zach's age, so the four of them were little buddies. We were really sad when they moved away in April. :(

Lily and Jenna

When I was at the school in the last week, we were excited to discover that some of Lily's artwork was framed and hanging in the hallway near the front office. Pretty neat!

Anwyn was in third grade this year. She especially enjoyed the Enrichment Science/Math class with Mrs. Thomas. Her final science project was an experiment she conducted on nails and rust--she called it Outstanding Oxidation, and she studied which type of liquid would rust a nail the fastest (so we had a number of cups with various liquids and rusty nails sitting on our kitchen counter for a few weeks!).  She made a large poster that was on display at the school's STEM night.

This year I babysat a cute little baby part-time. Paxton was a little cutie and a good-natured child, and we all enjoyed having him around. The girls especially loved to feed him his bottle and play with him.

The girls with Paxton, our part-time baby.

Last day of school, ready for the summer!

I also finished off another year of piano teaching. I had three great students this year (Claire, Kylee, and Raiya) in addition to Anwyn and Lily (who was part-time, whenever the right motivation struck). Zach also started up music lessons, using a preschool program called WunderKeys. Somehow I forgot to take a group photo at the recital (rats!). But here are some videos of Anwyn performing, and then Lily and Zach.