Berry picking

Sara is doing OK at school.  She does not come home and talk about it like she did her pre-school that she loved.  However she has said that she has made some friends and her teacher is nice and says nice things to her, like that she has good handwriting.  She passed her first Core Curriculum milestone, there are 7 or 8 of them throughout the year that she has to pass.  This one was that she had to memorize her phone number, retell a story, count to 20, say all her ABC's and stuff like that.

I work with her at home every day just to make sure she's getting a little extra help and to let her know that we think her school work is important.  We usually spend 10-15 min a day practicing writing, reading sight words, and counting.  The school sent home lots of good material that helps her practice her handwriting and sight words, she has flash cards and we keep it all in a binder for her.

Dan has mostly taken over her piano practice which has been nice, he does a great job working with her.  She also passed off her first piano song this week, she had to play it all the way through with no mistakes.

For fun, last week we went to a berry farm just right down the street from us to pick raspberries.  Sara really got into picking raspberries, she carried a bucket around her waist and picked a half a pound.

Little chuck-O was walking around eating all the berries he could stuff in his pie hole (not a single one ended up in his bucket) and Sara was singing songs about picking berries.  Cute vid  Sara really loves picking berries, she still remembers picking berries in Oregon last time we went.

Also, there were lots of animals there, Sara had fun feeding them apples.

I think we might even go back to pick more berries sometime, it was so much fun.
A few days later, we made a raspberry pie from scratch.  She helped me make the dough and then she helped me weave the dough on the top and cut out the stars for the top of the pie with cookie cutters.  It was a beautiful pie that tasted great, and she wouldn't even eat it :(

Sara has been going to play with the neighbor's daughter.  She has gone over to play at her house and then this week, we had her over to our house.  They did bead and pasta necklaces.  Also, Sara has been painting lots of pasta, she mostly just likes painting it even though she did make a necklace too.

We've also been doing chalk art, she helped me draw all of this stuff :

Sara likes styling Brennan's hair and playing barber shop.

Also, Sara has been helping Daddy a lot in the back yard.  She is collecting rocks and cleaning up after the concrete people, she has actually done a ton of work.

Here is a pic I got of her on her way to school the other day, it was cute.

I was telling Dan just the other day that it is starting to feel like everything we have done with Sara is starting to pay off.  Lots of people compliment us and her on how polite she is and what a great personality and she also has great language and communication skills, she is very smart and funny and just easy going.