Art Wall

I finally got around to fixing Sara's art wall.  She has so many art projects that she brings home from pre-school as well as the fact that she's gotten into painting lately.  We are overrun with art.  So I got some colorful clothes pins at K-mart for 99 cents and, easy as that, it was fixed and looks great.  She was so excited about it when I showed it to her this morning and helped me pick out which new pictures to hang on it.  Also we retired some of the old ones.

 I'm excited to make her a really long, wall-length art wall in her new room this summer. 

Fun with finger paints

Sara recently asked me for some finger paints since she has been having fun finger painting at preschool.  Apparently they roll marbles around on paper with finger paint and she likes that.

 She has been painting every day at home and we are going through the paint fast.   She has made some cute paintings all by herself.  She might be an artist, who knows but in the mean time she is having a blast.

She painted Mike and Sully from Monster's Inc and then wrote her name at the top.  The next thing she painted was a green cat. She asked me to paint with her and I did the dolphin and the flower at her request. 

Reading, writing, and creativity

Sara has been going to pre-school for 2 years now and we are amazed at what she has learned.  I'm almost a little worried she'll be over-prepared for Kindergarten.  I guess we'll find out.   She knows how to write her name, address, phone number, and lots of simple words.  She can count and write numbers to 30.

She practices on her math and spelling works books all the time, she even does them for "fun".  Or she thinks they are really fun.  She gets sad when we tell her it's time to put them away.  Another thing that impresses me about her is that she never turns the page and says, "Oh, I just can't do this one", she just keeps trying until she gets it.

I credit most of everything she's learned from her pre-school.  The teacher is really really amazing.  I hope I can remember to get a picture of them together on the last day.  I'm very excited that Brennan gets to go there someday too.

Sara brings home a new school book every week and we practice reading it.  She has 10 or 15 of these simple books that her teacher puts together for all the kids.  Some of them are funny and really make her laugh.  She is so good at sounding out the words, I especially proud of her learning to do this so well.  Here is a video of her practicing ready one of her simple books and sounding out the words.

Here is a pic of some of the creative things they make at school.  The were doing the letter "W" the other day so they made walruses.   I'm always amazed at the cute projects they are doing at school.

Also, Sara has really been into puzzles lately too.  She's great at doing them herself.  She says a girl at pre-school is good at doing puzzles and they play puzzles every day.

 She also really loves to dance with her Brother.  Granny Karen gave them a video when Sara was small about nursery rhymes and they both think it's the greatest, it always gets them dancing.  Here's the latest vid I have of them dancing. 

Sara is still taking ice skating lessons.  I don't like her new teacher as well as the other one, but I'm still hoping she can learn a lot and it's only for 6 weeks and then hopefully she get a different teacher.  Her speed is a little behind so I am planning on taking her extra times during the week to practice more.  I hope it will make the difference.

She will be taking swimming through April and then we'll break until next August or September.  Her swim teacher recently took underwater pics of her and the other boy she swims with so hopefully she'll get those sometime and I can post them.

I hope we have a fun and enjoyable summer, she is super excited about her new room and the new house too. She says she wants a My Little Pony room.  I asked her what if she gets tired of My Little Pony someday and she said that would never happen.  She and the little girl next door love to play and watch My Little Ponies, it's their main activity together besides playing in the yard.  I told Sara I'd check into getting her a MLP poster for her room.

We just registered her for Kindergarten this week at her new school.  Dan was so excited that he actually insisted on going to register her.  Thankfully we both got to go because there was a mountain of paperwork and it took both of us to fill it out.  Sara got to look around her new school a little, it was very nice inside.  I'm really thrilled for her.  I actually think she'll do well wherever she ends up in life, no matter what because she is genuine, confident, and extremely friendly.  She noticed that her new elementary school mascot was a bear, she liked that.

Joining the tea party

Sara has been into having tea parties every since her neighbor invited her over for one recently.  She has been trying to get Brennan to play tea party with her very day.  Today they used an unopened pack of toilet paper with a blanket on it for the table and she got him a paper napkin.  She made Brennan sit down and then she served him, he actually really liked it for about 30 seconds.  I think he could tell she was making an extra effort to do something with him and he really liked being "waited" on :)

Snowplow Sara

Sara completed her Snowplow 1 skating class last night.  She had to go through a hour of testing to make sure she had learned all of the skills.  She passed with flying colors, even doing the best in her class all except for her speed, which wasn't part of the test anyway.  She skates slower and more cautiously than the other kids, but she also falls less often, if at all during skating class.  

Her teacher gave her a patch and a certificate. She also has a neat skills book that is comprehensive through advance figure skating.  She gets to mark off the skills she has learned in the book with a gold figure skater sticker.

She was really proud of herself and she asked me today, "Mom, did I win?"  I told her she was a winner because she always tries so hard and she never once has given up or said she can't do something in her life.  What a great kid!

Her certificates and patches :