Gabe's Christmas Kindergarten Party

In typical sickie season fashion, the week of Gabe's party we had several variations of sickies. Pink eye, stomach viruses and colds were all running through our house plus one confirmed sinus infection. I was hoping Gabe could avoid any condition serious enough to keep him home and amazingly he did. He had a pretty nasty cold, but that didn't keep him from enjoying his last day of the first semester. I came down with a fever on the day of the party and had to close the daycare. Casey was on his third day of sick leave from the severe sinus infection he had. He wrapped Gabe's gift to contribute and sent him on his way that morning while I stayed in bed incoherent to most of what was going on. That afternoon the fog lifted some for Casey and he decided to join Gabe at school for his party. Gabe was so disappointed that I couldn't join him for the party so I was glad his daddy could be there in my place.

And, of course I asked him to take the camera and take some pictures for me, and he obliged.

Playing a musical chair style game of pass the gift.

Gabe with his gift.

That's Mrs. Lang there in the back.

Need to get a picture of those two together.

Bubble Guppy sticker book!

And yes, the stickers are all over the house in completely random places now.

Also, we have reached the age of drawing on walls.

Barrett started it with scribbles.

Then a few days later a stick figure person showed up.

Both boys were in hot water over that one.

Gabe's friend John Sand sitting next to him.

John's daddy and Gabe's mommy went to high school together.

Cool Mr. Fernkopf on the sax, Gabe's school principal.

Mrs. Jones, music teacher at the piano.

And, on the guitar Mrs. Woodruff, or Sandra to us since she lives across the street.

School wide Christmas sing along.

Gabe has had so much fun this first half of his kindergarten year making friends and playing at recess. I've been amazed at his progress with reading. And, this isn't so much a brag on Gabe as it is just the amazement and wonder of how a child learns to recognize words and begin to put them together outside the context of a classroom. As an avid reader and lover of all things book related it's been a delight to see that come alive in my child.

Kindergarteners have 40 sight words to learn hopefully by the end of the year. Ten new words each nine weeks. Gabe has already learned all 40! To treat him for reaching this goal we're taking him to his favorite restaurant (sans siblings!) on Friday evening.

The librarian told me the benchmark for kindergarten is to get everyone to be able to count to 20 by Christmas...when Gabe was tested he counted to 102. He loves to count aloud. He also loves to drive me crazy. On the back of some papers that come home he practices writing numbers as high as he can go. Like this one.

His 9's are consistently backwards, but I'm seriously impressed he can do this.

Things he's still working on include handwriting (it's atrocious...even for a kindergartener), and keeping his volume to a minimum. He's only had to move down on the behavior chart once this year...and it was for yelling out "Does anyone know how to tie shoes?" while changing shoes after PE class.

Gabe makes sending a kiddo to school fun. We will be lucky to have two more students just like him. :)