Kindergarten - extracurricular activities (part 3)

Okay, so turns out I wrote about the major holidays last year (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas) and there wasn't a whole lot more to report in terms of school-sanctioned celebrations.

So let's just move right along to extracurricular activities.

We made cupcakes for the bake sale at the Harvest Fest, the school's main fundraising event held at the beginning of the year. As a first-time co- room parent I felt the timing was less than ideal, but I figure I'll be less shocked when the event comes around this year, just weeks into the school year.

For this year's ArtSPARK, a fundraising event hosted by the school between Thanksgiving and Christmas (a fundraiser because they auction off artwork donated by local artists), the theme was "up, up, and away" and Elias decided he wanted to make a flying hamburger. So we did and I wrote all about it on my more crafty blog.

I guess it was kinda his first art show? I'll admit it was one of those projects that probably had way more of my assistance than is ideal, but he had such a specific idea of what he wanted to make, I just couldn't help but facilitate. For his science project, on the other hand, when he quickly lost interest, I told him we could save what we'd done for next year. So hopefully I struck a good balance of helping him realize his goals this first year of "real school" without doing all the hard work for him.

As I mentioned in one of the earlier Kindergarten posts, Elias was in a part-time after-school program for the first few months of the year, with the idea that those two days would be my solid work days once Daphne started daycare after her first birthday. Even though the kids would get outside each day, it's a mostly sedentary, indoor program, and that was one of the hardest parts about this first year of school - getting used to being inside, sitting, for most of the day after spending at least half of the day outside during preschool. He's got a lot of physical energy to burn between 3 and 5 or so. When I picked him up around 5 he'd have this weird mix of mental exhaustion coupled with a lot of bottled up physical energy. Not a good mix. But in the meantime, he made this cool superhero self-portrait for the programs semi-annual showcase!

Hooray for new friends! We only stayed in good touch with a couple of kids from preschool, sadly, considering none of us actually moved (and his best buddy from preschool recently moved back east). But man, it's really challenging to hang out with kids outside of your kid's school! Anyway, here he is with Finn, one of his best buddies from Kindergarten who will also be in his 1st grade class, which is helping to ease some of those back-to-school anxieties after what has been a pretty fun-filled summer.

This school has monkey bars, too. Phew. I think I'll wrap this one up here and save the 100 days project, Valentines, etc., for separate posts. Stay tuned - hopefully I'll manage to finish this series of posts before 1st grade starts!