Kindergarten Awards

Yesterday was the Kindergarten Awards ceremony. Ethan and Emily both received their award for Accelerated Reader. They received a hat and also a pin to put in their hat. Receiving this award is a very big honor. The fact that they received a pin for their hat is a VERY big honor. Out of all of the Kindergartners, only nine students earned enough points to receive pins. Two of those nine students were Ethan and Emily. They were extremely proud of these hats and are excited to start working on earning their points for next year. They will be able to go to the library this summer and the books they read and test on will count toward next year's points. Heck, maybe they can earn TWO pins next year for their hats. :)

Yesterday morning before the award ceremony, Rob and I went to the kids' classroom so they could give their teacher her gift for the end of the year. She opened it in front of the kids and all of the kids got excited to see it because they all had a part in making it. I had gone in for several days in the past couple of weeks and had the children in the class write their names on a scrapbook page. Then I decorated the page with photos and things to represent the school year. After she was finished looking at the framed picture, I told her to reach down in the bag because that wasn't all of the gift. She pulled out a second smaller bag and read the words written in Emily's handwriting..."Roses are red, Violets are Blue, Here is movie, Special for you." She started to cry and I told her that she needed to watch it now because the children would all enjoy seeing it. She put it on the big LCD projector in the room and the kids all went crazy when they saw themselves on the screen. I had put together a video montage of all of the pictures I had taken throughout the year of all of the field trips and school events. Mrs. McFarland was very emotional during the video and it was such a joy for me to see the excitement on the children's faces as they were watching the video. After it was over, I told the teacher that the reason I wanted to give her the gift then and not the last day of school is because I wanted to know if she thought the kids would like to take a copy of the DVD home with them, too, even though there were more pictures of Ethan and Emily on it than of them. I did make sure to include every child in the class on the video, but I obviously have more photos of my own kids than of the others. She told me that by judging by their excitement while they were watching it, she didn't think they cared if there were more pics of Ethan and Emily. So last night I made 15 more copies of the DVD and delivered them to the school today. When I got there, one of their little classmates came over to me and she told me that she went home and told her mommy all about the movie I made and how neat it was. That made me feel so good that I can give each of these kids this special memento to take home with them from their Kindergarten year. Most of them didn't have their parents there at any of the events and they don't have photos or special things to remember it all by. I'm glad that I can give them this to keep forever.