Spirit Week

Mismatch Day

Twin Day (Hannah was twins with 4 other 3rd grade girls and Olive matched them, too)

Crazy Hair Day

Fall Soccer

This fall only Hannah played soccer.  It was much less hectic with only one practice a week and one game on the weekend.  In third grade kids start playing competitive soccer, but we still wanted to play in a recreational league.  So part of her team switched to Leawood rec league (others went competitive or stopped playing altogether.)  Her old team won just about every game the played (by a lot), but her new team only won one game all season.  I asked her how she felt about it.  Hannah shrugged, "Eh.  I was tired of winning all the time.  It's nice to do something else."  I love this kid.  She always looks on the bright side.  They tied their last game and Hannah said,"This is great because both teams are happy!"  With a smaller team (and all of the best players playing competitive soccer), she got a lot of playing time.  She still likes playing defender the best.  I only took pictures of her last game and it was the only one that was cold enough to wear pants.

Cold Olive.

Showing off her soccer trophy.

Team party at Dewey's Pizza!

First Grade Update

Olive is having a great time in first grade.  She has the same teacher that Hannah had (well, one of them) and they get along great.  There are 19 kids in her class- 11 boys and 8 girls.  One of her best friends from last year is in her class again and she has made lots of new friends, too.  She is still in speech class and after school she does tap and ballet once a week.

Her favorite special is library and her favorite subject is math.  Her reading has really taken off and now she is reading chapter books!  More surprisingly, she is really into math.  She has never shown much interest in it before and was more of a reading/writing girl.  She has memorized all the addition/subtraction math facts (on her own) and her number sense is amazing.  The math series this year is very difficult and she is one of the few kids that understands it.  She also really enjoys science and engineering projects.  She is always designing something!

From her first quarter report card: "Olive has a happy and cooperative attitude.  She is progressing nicely in all academic areas.  She is beginning to include more details to her daily journal writing.  Olive has a strong number sense.  She is quick to see patterns and does very well in math.  Olive is a good listener and works well independently.  She gets along with others and I am happy to have her in my class.

Third Grade Update

Hannah has 18 kids in her class this year- 11 boys and 7 girls.  The bad news is there aren't many girls, the good news is they all stick together in one group.  Her best friend from last year is in her class again, plus she has bonded with the girls, too.  They are a really sweet group.

Her favorite special PE and her favorite subject is reading.  She devours huge chapter books now!  She took her first standardized assessments this year and did amazingly well. This year she is excited to learn how to write in cursive and do multiplication and division.  She is most excited about third grade because the kids get to take their school ipad home each day.  Usually it is just to charge it, but it still makes her feel grown-up.  This year Hannah is doing soccer and girl scouts for after school activities.  I'm her girl scout leader. :)

On her report card her teacher wrote: "Hannah is off to a great start in 3rd grade!  She is wonderful to have in class.  She is very caring and respectful of her peers and always willing to help.  She is an avid reader and has tremendous comprehension skills.  She readily understands and is able to apply new math concepts.  She perseveres to solve more complex math problems.  I am providing her several enrichment opportunities each week to give her the academic flexibility to stretch her abilities and take her learning to a deeper level."

Halloween

Halloween parties, parades, and trick-or-treating with my little witches!  I'm room mom in Hannah's class this year so I planned her party (with the help of Halloween activities from Target.)  

All school parade.

Olive's party.

Trick-or-treating at Corinth Square.

Ready to go out in our neighborhood.  It is hard to see in the pictures, but Hannah is carrying a cauldron and Olive has a black cat and magic wand.

Sharing the wand.  It was Olive's idea to be a witch and then Hannah wanted to match her.  But neither wanted to be scary.  They are friendly witches.

We carved pumpkins with our neighbors.  I forgot to take pictures that day, so here they are on Halloween.  Both did cats to go with their witch costumes.  This is Olive's.

And Hannah's.

The bounty!

Faulkner's Pumpkin Patch

We planned on going to the Faulkner's Pumpkin Patch on the weekend so Steve could go with us.  Then we got there and saw all the people and lines (and mud!) and decided we should skip it.  So we went after school instead when the girls got the jumping pillow all to themselves.  And it was less expensive, too.  Win, win.

New this year: frog catapults.

First time Olive has ever fed a goat from her hand.

Lea McKeighan Park

What do you do when you get all dressed up for a pumpkin patch but then you decide not to go?  Find an awesome park instead!  It is Lea McKeighan Park and it is nowhere near our house... but not too far away from the pumpkin patch.  And it has the coolest swing we've ever seen!  The engineering was amazing. You could never kick the other person because when you moved forward it made the other person move away from you.  And believe me, we tried to kick each other. :)

You never see teeter totters at playgrounds anymore.  The black balls are weights you can use to balance kids that don't weigh the same.  These playground designers amaze me!

Making cattail fuzz fly.