Another milestone crossed - off to middle school he goes !
In our school district pre-K, K and 1st grade is a separate school from the 2-5th graders, which means Jasiu is now in the same school as Emily for one year while she goes through 5th and then moves on to Jr. High, which is in another school. This means that next school year both kids will be in the SAME school. This is huge for this mama.
First grade went great for John, we now know he is excelling in math and it comes quite easily for him, even his timed addition and subtraction facts (with some extra practice at home) has been awesome. He has not struggled with the clock, fractions or anything particularly, though he could benefit from slowing down and organizing his work a bit more. His penmanship could use some work, but we are all working on that.... aren't we. Reading and writing are his weaker areas and he does not enjoy reading as much as his sister. As creative as he is, he does not want to put pencil to paper to write and express his creativity in writing. Bummer. However, this too we will work on over the summer. He does extremely well on his standardized tests and for a kid who was on bypass three times as a baby, that is awesome. Sometimes mama has to remind herself to be patient as we do homework .... (let's just leave it at that... teaching is not my calling... ) Favorite subject, John will say is gym followed by recess and math is a close third. John enjoyed his classmates and generally likes/ tolerates school.
This winter we went skiing a few times and this year Jasiu really liked it, didn't seem to be too tired and went on the bigger bunny hill instead of the nearly flat one. He said he is ready for the large lift but I am not ready for him to go on that yet, maybe next winter. Emily went on the large hill green trail this year for the first time and she is 9. Here is our little skier.
The last post said we are looking forward to LEGOLAND in October 2017... well it took us until March 2018 to finally plan it and go, so we took a week off of school and went to Florida early this spring. We took our homework with us and enjoyed some sunny FL, while Chicago had temps in the 30's. Jasiu was in LEGO heaven. He loved every aspect of it, he loved the room, the LEGO play area, the cafeteria, theme park and the LEGO figures walking around (though we didn't see as many as we thought we would). After LEGOLAND we went to Treasure Island FL to the beach for some relaxation after LEGO mayhem. It was a great vacation for all of us. Next stop Gatlinburg, TN in July, stay tuned.
Next week we have our annual cardiology appointment. I will post a quick update as soon as I have time.
At home and school John has been feeling great cardio wise. He is stronger than ever, now that the weather has gotten really nice, the kids have been on their bicycles and I have been running behind them with Dominik, now 2, in the jogging stroller. I'm proud to say John can bike ride 3 miles with no problem, except for the large hill on our way home, but even I can't bike ride that hill all the way up. We did the 3miles at least 4 times in two weeks. Emily can almost get all the way up that hill by the way. Speaking of bike riding, this spring is the year that John finally learned to ride 2 wheels. Since dad was suffering from a knee problem, mom taught John how to ride the big two wheel bicycle. It only took him about 3 days to get the full swing of things. Now this summer mama can get in shape while running after the older two on their bikes. We have also been really impressed with John's upper body strength. apparently he has been practicing monkey bars at school and showed me how he can do them every time we go to the park. I am attaching a video to this post for all of the readers to see. This too is proud mama moment.
Well, we bid 1st grade farewell and off on summer vacation we go.
