School Daze...

Kalissa attends the BEST Preschool in town and has been a student there for about a year and a half now.  I loved it when she first started and still love it today.  Her mind is exploding with knowledge and she can't wait to get it out to whomever will listen!  The academy not only excels in teaching academics with 1st class equipment (including touch-screen computers), but they do fun things too.  Over the past month, I attended a couple of events that the kids were oh-so-excited about...

First up was the Build a Garden event.  The kids got to plant different herb seeds and vegetable plants into class gardens.  Candy and I volunteered to help out by lending our brawn for the job!  ...lots of heavy lifting went on while taking these pictures :  )

The next event was the Trike-A-Thon where the kids brought in their tricycles & helmets from home and raised money for the Center.  Helmets?  She needs a helmet to ride her trike?  Well I guess that is the law but we have not been abiding by it!  Sooooo, I had to go out and buy her a helmet.  She was more excited to wear that thing than she was about bringing her bike to school.  She would put it on and wear it around the house for hours leading up to this event! 

This was officially her last ride on the ole Schwinn...it's time for a two-wheeler and she just  might get one for her birthday this year.  NOT looking forward to that chapter!

They also do lots of art projects at school.  I think Kalissa is going to have Daddy's artistic ability.  Just look at the Picassos she's been bringing home lately : )

She has the cutest way of drawing her family!  LOL!  And once she explained who's who...now I can always at least pick out Daddy in her drawings.  Daddy is always the figure with the horizontal line under his face -- because that's his BEARD!   The two family drawings are Mommy, Daddy, Candy, Kalissa and Graham.  She never forgets old man Graham.  Awwww.  The top right drawing is me and the circle around me is supposed to be my car (see the 2 wheels on each side?) and she is in the back seat of the car.  LOL!

Here is the upper left drawing diagrammed as she explained it to me:

LOLOLOL!  Gotta love her!  In addition to freestyle drawing, she been working on writing words and numbers too.

This was one of her first writings that she brought home almost a year ago. I thought it was soooo good for a 3 year old!

As long as she's loving school, then I'm a happy camper.  Right now we're working on spelling.  She loves to play the "what-letter-does-this-word-start-with" game.  She goes around the house saying, "Mommy...b-b-book starts with the letter B!" and "t-t-table starts with the letter T!"  She mixes up C & K words but that's to be expected.  We were all at Seaworld the other weekend and we were watching Shamu the whale behind the glass.  Then out of the blue she started to play the "letter game" and said, "g-g-glass starts with the letter G and w-w-whale starts with the letter W!"  She also said that Shamu is black and white.  I decided to mix in a Spanish lesson and asked her how to say black and white in Spanish.  Kalissa thought for a second and responded, "blanco and negro!"  A woman a few feet away came over to congratulate her and to compliment me for "being THAT mom"...she told me that she's a teacher and was impressed at Kali's young age.  The best time for a learning lesson is when they're having fun!

Kalissa's teacher has recommended her to advance to the Pre-K class next month.  That would mean she's skipping a step and will be in with the kids who are going to Kindergarten in the fall.  We have mixed feelings about that.  While it will probably be more in line with her learning ability, emotionally she still behaves within her age group.  Additionally, I don't want her to be behind the other kids with what they've already learned that she hasn't.  I think what we'll do is let her go forward but if it's too much then we can always put her back in her rightful class.    Either way, we're so proud of her!