School Holidays are here!!

I can't believe we are already half-way through PrePrimary & PreKindy!! Faaar out!!! Nothing like having kids to make the world spin faster!!

So far both girls have had a great year at 'school'.

Sasha
She's made a few solid friendships independent of us ie. not children of family friends. This is a first for her & wonderful to see. The friendships are quite symbiotic too - she contributes positively to the friends & the friends contribute positively to her development. Her writing & drawing just blows me away - the improvement in this first semester is amazing. She can actually draw recognisable stuff!! I will attempt to scan some things from her portfolio. She's certainly grown into a little girl - her demeanor around her classmates is so grown-up & has an aura of 'importance'. ROFL She's growing up so fast!
So I got her portfolio home on Wednesday & looked through it late at night. It's a much more comprehensive 'report' of her progress that what she received in Kindy & overall she's doing very well. The report sections have a sliding scale ranging from 'developing' to 'developed'. Her social & physical abilities are all 'developed', while her reading & writing (which were assessed fairly early in the semester) were all closer to the 'developing' side of things. And most importantly to me - her Values & Work Habits are all 'developed'. She certainly is a hard worker in a student situation, I hope that she continues to apply herself like this because regardless of her other results, I'll always be proud to see her just try her best.

Nikita
Different kettle of fish. Of course! Do I sound like a broken record?? PMSL. She too has made me proud, for entirely different reasons. She had to work through a difficult period of PreKindy where she was upset when we left her there, but she seems to have come out the other side of that for now. I spoke with Tracey (the teacher & owner) a few weeks ago & she said that Nikita, along with one or two other kids in the class, was one that she relied on to help prompt & motivate the other children to participate. She knows it ALL. So yesterday at PreK pickup she brought home her portfolio. Her work is beautiful too. And she looks through her book with great pride, so that's a fabulous thing to see. At the end of her Semester, there's also an assessment page.
Nikita has 'achieved' everything on the page, some things it's noted she's exceed the achivement eg. count to 10 notes she can count to 14 (she can actually count to about 29, except she misses 15 for some reason), and she knows her shapes circle, square, triangle + rectangle. There was only one item that was not achieved yet, 'developing' again being the PC term - & that was "help to pack away". Of course she doesn't help to pack away - I could have told them that!! PMSL I just had a wry smile when I saw that.
I'm so glad that we've put her in PreKindy this year. It's been a great thing for her - loads of stimulation, interaction with other children, & learning to operate in a structured environment, and obviously by her results & teacher feedback she's more than ready for it all. I just wonder if the Semester 2 assessment is on the same things, seeing as she's already achieved most of what's there.

So, hopefully later in the weekend I'll scan some stuff from their books to share. In the meantime, I'll just share this beautiful photo. We finally received the school photos back & I'm so pleased with Sasha's. In fact all of the ones I've seen so far are gorgeous - the photographer the school used was very good in my opinion.