What a Wonderful Life!: He Did It!

Rylan made it through kindergarten! And I'm certain he had a pretty great year. He and Christian became the best of friends, being in the same class at school and in primary. He loved his teacher. She started out the year as Miss Miles and then became Mrs. Gunter after getting married in November. We've loved her and I'm happy Rylan was able to have her for a teacher...especially since she's not coming back next year :( Rylan was disappointed because he had these big plans of stopping by her classroom to say 'hi'.

I asked Ry what his favorite thing about kindergarten was and he said it was the games they got to play. He explained one game to me: They got to roll the dice and if they rolled a 12 then they'd color 12 boxes up. I asked him if they learned while they played games and he told me "No mom, they are just fun games"! We'll keep it a secret that he really was learning things all year while playing those fun games!

Ry has become a great reader this year. In preschool it was a bit frustrating to sit down with him to read. Even at the beginning of this school year it was frustrating. He'd just sound out the first letter or two and then guess what the word was. I'm sure that's a common thing for kids to do, but it sure did take a long time to get through a book, even a page! Rylan will still guess the words occasionally but he's sooo much more confident in his reading skills that he'll take more time to sound out the entire word. It's been thrilling to hear him read full books and sound out bigger words. He's surprised us several times by pulling out a book and saying "I can read this whole thing by myself"...and he will! I think our daily reading habits have been set so reading through the summer will continue.

Rylan seemed to develop an interest in numbers this year as well. He's often asking me what this big number plus that big number equals. The fact that numbers never end is also something that he talks about often, making up new numbers and adding one, two, three...

The kindergarten graduation was very cute. He had his part memorized: But I'll be my best friend each day of my life, because I like being me." He said it with 3 girls and unfortunately he was blocked by one girl so we didn't get to see him. But I knew he knew it! There were some really cute songs and all 3 kindergarten classes were darling! Rylan was himself, holding back a bit. I still thought he was the cutest one there :)

They received their kindergarten graduation diploma, or rather "Promotion Certificate" and then we picked him up in his classroom. He gave his teacher a little gift, including a note he wrote her, in this cute little owl bag I made (my sis saw it online and gave me the idea) that says "Thanks for making me wiser!" We took a few pictures and that was it. Goodbye Kindergarten!! Actually, he has a 20 minute assessment on Tuesday and then, Goodbye Kindergarten! :)