Smart girls

Rosi sings about the weather in German and Carsen learns her colors.

I hope this link works - it's a video that our school system posted on their Facebook page with Rosalyn's german immersion class singing a song about the weather.

You can see Rosalyn on the right once they pan over to the right.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1526097004294072&id=100006813612016

Push-ups

Corey was teaching Rosi how to do push ups, but Carsen didn't want to be left out of the fun!

Eating and talking videos

And here are some videos of the adorable and messy little chatterbox!

Eating and talking

With the start of Kindergarten, we've had a lot of updates for Rosi over the past few weeks. Carsen is also quite a personality, but it's been harder to get her on photo/ video. Here are a few photos of her hamming it up during dinner he other day!

Friday fun

We went to an outdoor concert after dinner on Friday. The girls had fun being silly at dinner than then dancing together.

Performing artist

We got the following info in an email from Rosalyn's teacher yesterday
"Today we read the story Something Special about a little boy raccoon
named Sam that didn't feel he was able to do anything special like the
rest of his family. Ask your child to describe the talents of the
brothers, sisters, parents and grandma...even the dog. Then ask how Sam
was able to figure out his own talent. "

And this is what we got when I asked her to describe everyone's talents from the book:

Carsen enjoyed the performance while trying on various sunglasses options:

Chatty Carsen

Carsen has been so talkative lately, in multi-word combinations too. It's been hard to get a good video because she gets so silly or quiet when I try to take the video.
I especially love her new version of "yes"... Instead of saying "uh huh," she now says something like "yesh."
I'll keep trying to get more videos.

The weather

Here's a song about the weather that Rosalyn has learned in her German class.

Update

Carsen's week has gotten much better - I think she's adjusted fine to Rosalyn going to a separate place in the morning as long as she gets lots of hugs and kisses from everyone before we part ways.  And she seems to be fine with her new class.

This morning she was excited to have a bandaid because Risalyn "needed" one for a tiny boo boo on her arm and therefore Carsen needed one too.

Rosi brought this home from school.

And we liked Rosalyn's teacher's way of helping the kids learn what they need to do in the morning when they arrive at school using photos, so we adapted it for our morning and bedtime routines.  We'll see if it helps!

More kindergarten

Here are some additional photos from the first day of Kindergarten that I just downloaded from my camera.  Rosalyn had a good second day, but she said tonight that I needed to go easy on her because she had a long day having to learn so much German.  I've also downloaded an app to learn some basics.  Gute Nacht (good night)!

Weekend

Just realized this didn't post last week...

We had a fun and busy weekend.

We spent a little time on the lake with some friends - everyone enjoyed the breeze of riding the boat and fun swimming in the water.  Carsen and Cece were so cute looking over the edge at some ducks!

On Sunday we had orientation for UpStreet, which is the name for school age classes at church.  Rosalyn was so excited!

Carsen got worn out and had a nice nap in the car.

Kindergarten

Rosalyn had a great first day of kindergarten.  We walked to school, and there were no tears from anyone.  She was excited to be there, we went through their morning process (set your lunch outside the door, move your little figure on the attendance chart, out book ag away and get pencil box, sit down and begin morning activity.  She got right to work, and we had to drag her attention back to get goodbye hugs.

She made a point of explaining the class rules - you get a sticker if you have a good day, and if there's a behavior problem, your crayon gets colored in with the color representing which rule was broken.  Parents have to sign the list of rules and then initial each night for that day's sticker/crayon report.  As expected, more homework for the parents than for her - hope we remember!

Of course, she had a sticker.

Rosi has been very excited about packing her lunch (even though she never wanted to at daycare and complained that I sent her organic milk instead of the regular kind they serve at daycare).  We were advised not to overpack the lunches because kids usually don't eat that much because they are so busy talking, especially at the beginning of the year.

So Rosi helped make a list of lunch and snack ideas, and we spent half of last Saturday running errands to be well stocked for lunches.

She also packed an afternoon snack of dried strawberries, and we got some funny messages last night from other friends who wanted to know what snack Rosi had because their kids wanted it.

Apparently Abigail wanted to eat Rosi's strawberries, and they weren't sure if they were allowed to share, so they passed the strawberries under the table. And all of this came to light when Ella reported to her mom that Abigail eating Rosalyn's snack was her favorite part of the first day of kindergarten. (Abigail and Ella went to daycare with Rosi, so they we'll prepared to make mischief together).

I think this new adventure has been hardest on Carsen.  She went with us to drop Rosi off yesterday and was pretty sad when we were leaving without Rosi, then she was upset when I picked her up from daycare and we were leaving there without Rosi.

This morning when Corey and Rosi left for school, Carsen stood knocking on the window and crying dejectedly, "Ra-Ra, Ra-Ra," then emphatically yelling "Daddy" as if he's in trouble for taking Rosi to school.  We'll see how today goes!

Carsen is also in a new class at daycare, and she seems fine with that transition, just not pleased with Rosi being in a different place!

Kindergarten open house

Here's Rosalyn in her class at open house yesterday, pointing out her name and her friend Abigail's.

She told me after open house that she is a tiny bit nervous but not too much.

She is in a German immersion program, so she will spend half the day with the German teacher, Frau Miltner, and learn science and math in that class too.

And the other half of each day with Ms. Fleming for language arts and social studies.  Frau Miltner pretty much speaks only German in her classroom, so visits with the parents like open house are a little confusing, but she gestures a lot, which helps.  Luckily, her written communications to parents are in English!

Reading

Here's an old video that I just found in my email from one of Rosalyn's teachers. She enjoyed "reading" to her class.

This evening we have an ice cream social for incoming Kindergarteners, and tomorrow morning is open house, then first day of school on Monday. Can't believe this is all happening!

Rosalyn's interview

I decided that I want to create a tradition of interviewing the kids at the beginning of each school year and saving their responses.  So I can up with 15 questions for Rosalyn and interviewed her this afternoon.  

Here are the responses.