School's Out!

Strawberry's last day of school was last week.  It was such a relief.  Second grade turned out to be a pretty frustrating year for my little sweetie and it was really hard for me to refrain from going momma-bear at her teacher.  But both of us needed to learn how to deal with this kind of situation and Strawberry managed to make the most of a tough situation. The poor girl has a well-developed sense of shame, but she is also a pretty happy little girl and just needed some reminders about what a great kid she is.

She did learn some great things this year:  all of her subtraction facts and some multiplication and division; all about Van Gogh and a few other artists--he was her favorite;  lots of vocabulary and spelling; lots and lots and lots of reading (she was at level 4.9 at the end of the year).  She has decided that she wants to be a scientist, most likely a Veterinarian who works at the zoo.  I was browsing ebay the other day and found a complete set of Childcraft books.  These were my absolute favorite when I was a little girl.  I must have read the entire thing 10 times and I was very excited to get them for our kids.  We have a ton of books, but nothing really educational (of course, any book is educational, right?) and when I saw these I had to have them.  Both girls were really excited when they opened the box and Strawberry has been reading all about dinosaurs and is becoming more and more positive that she wants to be a scientist.  I was letting her stay up reading them the other night and she kept bouncing in the room to tell me how awesome the book was and how excited she was to be a scientist.  She was giggling and dancing around.  I was so happy. 

Of course, so far the summer has been filled with cartoons.  All three of the girls have been pretty sick since school got out.  It's just a terrible cold, but nobody wants to go do anything and Mango is taking all of the attention when she is awake.  :(  I have been having them do writing assignments and some math stuff.  Strawberry and Apple are going to swimming lessons and just that wears us all out.  Hopefully, by next week everyone will feel better and we will be able to get out a little more.  

Anyway, she did really well this year and I'm proud of how well she handled herself and that she learned the lessons that she did.  I'm so happy to have the daughters that I do.  This little girl has been the light of our lives since she was born and the more I get to know her, the more I'm amazed by the wonderful person that she is.  She is so sweet and caring and is very aware of the feelings and needs of others.  And she's just so fun.  I love to talk to her and learn about her perspective about things.  I love the age she is right now where she is so excited to learn and explore the world and be independent, but still loves to cuddle up with mom and wear fairy dresses.  We are absolutely blessed to have her in our family.

Here is a picture of Strawberry with her best friend L on the last day.  And then a picture of her from her second day of school.  She's grown so much!