The end of kindergarten.

The end of school has come and gone and I thought I'd still blog about it 3 weeks late, because that's what I do. My sister-in-law, Leah was in town for a  few days during the last week of school and I got to go to Shane's end of year kindergarten ceremonies.  It was soooo nice to go by myself. Thank you Leah!  I was able to get a few fun pictures of Shane.

Here's my little GQ guy walking into the gym with his hands in his pockets.

Where's Waldo?  Uh, I mean Shane-o.  Can you see him to the left of the teacher with the white sweater?  He looks bored.

Finally Shane's turn.  They posed for a picture looking my direction but I couldn't get my dumb camera to take the picture.  Boo hoo.

I thought this one was cute.  Shane was waving and smiling at me.  They sang a cute song about going to 1st grade to the tune of "New York, New York."

And finally, kindergarten commencement is finished.  I'm so glad he still wants to wave to his mom and yell "Hi Mom!" as loud as he can in front of his friends.

This is Shane with his teacher, Mrs. Andrea Sandmann.  The parents were invited back to the classrooms for a graduation brunch and for more awards.  Here he is receiving his award for the number of Dolch sight words he learned this year - 293!  He really is a good reader - too good sometimes.  Good job Shane.  Got the camera to work on cue this time.  Yea!

After he sat back down by me I asked him to show me his trophy and here's what I got.

Here is his beginning of the year picture.  So handsome.  And he's wearing the same thing as he did for graduation ceremonies.  Oops.  I'm not so creative in the clothing department.  Oh well.

Shane's so cute.  I love that round head.  This is the picture that I snuck.  Tee hee.  When we talked about it Mike didn't want to order kindergarten cap and gown pictures.  Can you see him rolling his eyes?  I sort of agreed but that night, I couldn't sleep and I kept thinking about it, because I wanted them.  Now I admit they're very cheesy but I couldn't resist having an end of year school picture of Shane.  So I filled out the order form while he was at work and sent it to school.  And I only got the $10 package so he wouldn't be too mad when he found out.  We passed up 6 or 7 other school photo ops throughout the year and the school yearbook so I didn't feel too bad.  It was sort of ridiculous how many school pictures they want you to order throughout the year.   They sent home order forms about every other month.

Here is Shane's class.  Mrs. Sandmann was his teacher Mrs. Jancarek was the parapro.  I think that is short for para-professional but don't ask me what that means.  The kids called her "Miss J" all year because I guess it's hard for them to say Jancarek.  I'm not really sure how it's pronounced either.  I was disappointed that there were no names on this photo other than the teachers' names.  I need to sit down with Shane and have him tell me who they all are and write their names down.  I only know one or two kids.  For some reason Shane buttoned up his shirt all the way to the top, the little poindexter.  If you can't see it too well, I think you can click on the picture and make it bigger.

 A couple of my favorite Shane-isms from kindergarten this year:

"Mom, I'm not first-grade ready yet," he tells me last OCTOBER.

One day I was helping Shane do some math homework that he didn't finish at school.  When I asked him why he didn't finish at school, he replied "I have too many friends and I have to talk to them."  This was also the reason for not finishing his lunch.  A couple minutes later he got stuck on a math problem and asked for help.  I told him he could use his fingers to come up with the answer but he doesn't like to use his fingers since Mike keeps discouraging it.  Shane says, "No thanks Mom, I don't need any manipulatives."  Except it came out sounding like this, "No thanks Mom, I don't need any ma-ni-pull-a-tives."  Since when are fingers manipulatives?  I guess much has changed since I was in school.  After a few visits to the school I realized that the teacher are ALWAYS talking grade evaluation standards to the kids.  No wonder he knows all these technical terms.

Now a funny one from yesterday, not exactly about school, but still funny.  Shane and Wyatt have been begging Mike to play baseball with them.  After Mike got home from work last night they were playing catch in the front yard.  Shane has a pretty good arm and he threw the ball to Mike.  Mike says, "Great throw Shane.  What kind of throw was that?" to which Shane replies, "That was an uppercut Dad!"  We have no idea where that came from.  Just his cute little brain I guess.

 We are so pleased with all that Shane learned this year.  He is a happy, healthy five-year-old boy who has been promoted to the first grade.  I know I couldn't ask for more.