A New Year..

It's been a great summer!!! Very busy, very fun, very hot - not alot of pictures taken except for our vacation. School has started here (last week) and for the first time, everyone is enrolled! Katherine started 3rd grade, Elizabeth started Kindergarten, and Christopher started 3-year old preschool and everyone LOVED thier first week! Here are some pictures from their first days. Excuse me for them being so out of order.

Christopher on his first day of preschool! He was excited to have his CARS backpack :)

All three on Christopher's first day, Thursday.

This is Elizabeth's Kindergarten class with their teacher, Mrs. Smith.

Christopher getting down to the business of playing!

Christopher took a turn at feeding the class pet... Janie.

Christopher RUNNING to class!

Katherine...ready to start 3rd grade!

My 3rd grader and Kindergartner :)

A proud Elizabeth on her first day of Kindergarten.

Everyone is adjusting to the routine, including me, and looking forward to a GREAT year!!!

CCS Art Fest

Last night was the First Annual Art Fest at the girls' school. We went and saw all of their artwork displayed wonderfully! For Katherine, these were projects that she's been working on throughout the school year in her weekly art class. For Elizabeth, this was just one of the many projects that she had worked on in her class. In addition to the artwork, there were kids who were playing piano and other instruments and singing and reciting poetry, etc in a recital format. It was a tremendous success and the girls enjoyed showing off what they had been doing at school.

Here's Katherine with her "stained glass - type" picture of an olive branch

(the one in the middle above her head).

Here's Katherine with her mosaic. (You can blow up the pictures a bit if you

double-click on them)

Here's Katherine's picture - she was supposed to draw her interpretation of a musical piece (Bolero????)

Elizabeth's class made fish and the displayed them like they were swimming in the ocean - her's is the yellow one with blue dots above her head. Katherine's class made pumpkins and displayed them like a pumpkin patch. The main point of this exercise was that they were not given green or orange paint - they had to mix primary colors to get their orange and green. Her's is just to her right (left of her in the picture).

Last Day of School and Birthday Party

Today was a big day. Katherine went to school for her last day of Kindergarten this morning. We went to the closing chapel and enjoyed seeing her class up front with their part in the chapel. Each was to say what they want to be when they grow up, how they will serve the Lord, then recite their favorite bible verse and say why it's their favorite. Katherine's bit went like this - "I want to be an interior designer because I like designing and seeing people happy" and her favorte verse is John 3:16. After she recited it, she said she likes it because it makes her happy and reminds her of her Grandma. Sweet.

After chapel, there was a picnic. It was fun to see her hang out with some of her friends. She's really blossomed this year, especially socially, and it's really great to see.

After the picnic, we held her birthday party - a princess party. We took 5 of her friends from school to our house for the party. I think they all had a good time. They decorated flower pots and planted flowers, got candy from a pinata, opened presents, and ate cupcakes and ice cream. FUN!!

Zoo Gallery

Elinor (Ellie) the ???? Can you guess?

Last week the focus in school has been animals. Along with the trip to the zoo (see previous post) they studied animals in the classroom. One of the projects in the class was to pick an animal, collect boxes and tubes (toilet paper, paper towel, etc) and make a replica of that animal. This is "Elinor" (or Ellie for sort) the...can you guess what it is??? It's a cheetah! Katherine really enjoyed making this and learning about cheetahs. She also had to write a fact sheet with a few facts about cheetahs. All of the kids in the class made animals (some others were a bee, flamingo, elephant, butterfly) and the other kids in the school came to visit their "zoo gallery". It was really neat. They also have in their classroom eggs (hatching into chicks), caterpillers (which have made cocoons and are turning into butterflies every day), ants, and ladybugs. Katherine is REALLY enjoying this unit on animals and learning about all of God's creation!