Un-Birthday Party

This morning we are preparing for an Un-Birthday Party. We had a draw earlier this week. Everyone got to pick a meal and dessert, but only one was chosen. Chris won the draw, pizza and poppyseed cake. Nine o'clock in the morning and I already have a poppyseed cake in the oven! This is the first attempt of mine, at making Omi's muhnkuchen. Jill and I watched and helped Omi a little, last year to make one. I wrote all the ingredients and steps down. Thanks to a combined effort, involving trips to and from Canada, we got all the ingredients.

The girls are home from school today. There are Parent Teacher meetings all day at the school. Our meetings are scheduled at 2:20pm, 2:30pm and 2:40pm. Chris will be home after lunch to come along.

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Alexis is doing really great in school. She is above average in Literacy and very close to being a free reader. Don't tell anybody, but Alexis' script of the 'Grufalo play' was Mr. Long's favourite.

Alexis' Time-Line done in class

At the start of the meeting with Carly's teacher, Ms. Wakelin had to tell us how impressed she was with the effort Carly is putting into her learning. In the beginning of the year Carly was very quiet and not confident in her work. Carly was behind in her reading skills. Ms. Wakelin noticed Carly wanting to learn and found extra help for Carly. Four weeks ago she placed Carly in a one on one session with an English Learning Assistant once a week and a small work group of children in the same level twice a week. She is also working on getting Carly one more session a week with the one on one ELA. We had no idea she did this, but we did notice a big difference in Carly's reading and writing a couple weeks ago. When Ms. Wakelin told me this, I was holding back the tears and I wanted to hug her. For a teacher to take such an interest in helping Carly really touched me. Now at circle time when questions are asked Carly is one of the first to put up her hand to answer and answers in confidence. She is now very independent when it is time to work.

Shark Facts by Carly

Jill is loved by all in her class. She listens well, loves to sing and helps her peers. Mrs. Foster has a binder for each student with achievements and notes. Jill did a colour by number drawing and hers was the best, we're told. Jill helped her classmate Stan cut his mask one day. Stan's mask is in Jill's binder now, as evidence of her helping. Mrs. Foster showed us video of Jill in class. She was playing at the sand centre singing Hey Diddle Diddle. At the end of the song is "the dish ran away with the spoon". As she sang that part she ran away from the sand centre. Mrs. Foster says Jill sings all the time in class and likes to stand up in front of class to sing songs too. Jill has gotten Star of the Week twice so far. We thought it was just a round robin thing, that each child got one in alphabetical order. Mrs. Foster said that is not the case and she just can't find a reason not to give it to Jill. They want to start a small reading group to get the children learning to read and Jill will be in it. Not all the students are ready for that.

After meeting with the teachers we left the school with a very happy, good feeling. Today is a perfect day to have an Un-Birthday Party to celebrate our girls achievements in school. From the school we walked to Papa John's, ordered pizza for delivery, then grabbed a taxi home.

After pizza we sang Happy Birthday in Mandarin and blew out some candles. The muhnkuchen was really good. It was just missing the glaze on the top. Carly neglected to tell us she didn't like poppyseed cake, and spit it out. Then Alexis & Carly played the latest songs they've learned on the piano.

To top off the evening the girls had a sleepover in Jill's room. They put their glow in the dark headbands on their Build-A-Bears for a nightlight.