3 Year Old Preschool: End Of The Year!

Riley successfully completed her first year of preschool last week.  I'm so glad that we decided to send her to preschool this past year.  It's amazing to see how far she's come.  We had her conference a week before the end of the year and she really has come a long way.  Her teachers had all good things to say about her and it was neat to see her progression through her portfolio.  Some things her teachers said about her:

• She's able to write her name now. 
• She's picking up on all of the different strokes needed for writing.
• She is still very quiet.  They worry that she will get left behind if she doesn't come out of her shell some.
• She spend a good part of the beginning of the year following the teachers around.
• By the end of the year she would join her classmates in an activity, but was usually never the leader.
• Her favorite thing to do is read books.  She will stick to the same book for a couple weeks.
• She loves to play with the lion cub from the tub of animal toys.
• She didn't like touching the classroom pets, two guinea pigs. This was not surprising to us as she doesn't like stinky things!
• Funny story: One morning they were doing circle time and they asked her to get up to do her portion of the weather watcher activity.  She kept refusing to get up until finally she stood up and started waddling to the front.  Out of nowhere the little lion cub plopped out from her tush.  Apparently you aren't supposed to bring toys to the rug and Riley knew she shouldn't have it.  The teachers thought it was hilarious and were still laughing about it when they told us.
• She knows her letters and numbers.

On her last day (May 23, 2012) the kids had their final performance.  We all sat in the chapel and watched a slide show from the year and waited for the kids.  Then, they walked up on stage and performed all their latest songs for us.  Riley was positioned front and center, but moved to several different positions throughout the performance.  One thing she loves: Singing!!

So, next year she will move on to the 4 year old Universal Preschool at Westminster.  Her teachers agreed that she was ready to move on and felt that it was the right decision.  We still would like to hold off on kindergarten for another 2 years since she is so quiet.  We'll expore our next step after 4 year old preschool later in the year.

Sooo Big!

Look at my BIG girl.  She's so close to walking.  She's up to 5-6 steps at a time, but when she wants to get somewhere fast she'll drop down and crawl.  She's Miss Independent, that's for sure! I can't believe she'll be a year old in 2 weeks!

The Garden

Brett worked hard on the garden this year and he asked me to post some pictures of his hard work! Ha.  Brett planted 12 tomato plants, jalapenos, habeneros, cucumbers, zuchinni, and broccoli.  He have basil and green beans in a pot.  We also picked up a blueberry bush to plant.  I'm excited to see how well everything does this year!

What She's Up To: Riley

• Gymnastics.  She loves gymnastics, but we're going to take the summer off to explore some other activities.  Last Saturday she was lucky enough to be the only one in class and loved the extra trampoline (her favorite activity) time.

• Playing with water.  She loves filling up everybody's water cups, moving water from one cup to the other, giving Sam his water, playing in the water table, watering the plants, feeding us grass soup.

• Bossing Loving her sister.  She loves giving Harper food, getting in her crib, giving and taking her toys away, and "watching" her. She is proud to share when she doesn't something new.

• Tying ropes/strings into knots and onto anything.  She's tied the fireplace doors together, the hooks on the fire place, strings to toys, strings to tables, tied herself up.  It could actually occupy her time for a good hour.  I foresee a Girl Scout on our hands.  She mostly uses shoe strings and jump ropes.
• Practicing her casting and reeling with her Barbie fishing poll.  She's so excited to go fishing at Great Grandpa Melvin's farm!
• Spinning around and around and around!
• Scooby Doo, Strawberry Shortcake, Tom and Jerry, Lion King.
• Making up songs.  I have to say, she's pretty good at this.
• Writing, especially with pens.