One Down....

Today was a bittersweet day. It was the end of year celebration at preschool. Sweet because it was neat to have accomplished a year of school. My little boy is getting so big. Bitter because we loved his classroom, friends and teachers so much and they will never all be together as a class again. We're hoping he'll get one of his teachers next year, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Austin had so much fun this year. He branched out in so many ways. It was wonderful. Let's look at some of the differences:

Before:
He hated me singing. He refused to sing. Ever.
Didn't like being messy. (I can't figure this one out. I'm not a neat freak by any sense of the word.)
Wouldn't try anything new.
Couldn't write his name. No letters or shapes. Drawing was scribbles.
Knew some of the letters of the alphabet by sight.

After:
Sings all the time. Likes changing songs and playing with the words.
Actually started asking to do art at school, and by the end of the year *gasp* WORE A SMOCK!!! (He staunchly refused to do this all year long and wouldn't even do the art project if anyone holding a smock looked like they wanted him to wear it. I have a couple stories about smocks.)
Has begun self initiating. This is a something we will be working on this summer as well.
Writes his name, has begun drawing shapes and people with facial features and arms and legs.
Knows all his letters, upper and lower case.

I'm sure there's tons more, but that's all that comes to mind right now. Miss Jill always had all kinds of glowing reports on Austin's behavior and progress at every conference, but I don't want to go look up the reports. Besides, I should probably get back to supervising my children.

I do want to send out a special thanks (even though they don"t know about my blog) to Miss Jill and Miss Kelly. They were (are still) amazing. Thank you for making Austin's first year of school so successful, fun, welcoming, wonderful.... You name it. Austin is sad his first year is over and I hope he keeps his love of school forever, just like his momma.

And can you see how excited he was about the pencil? When he saw the first person get one, he asked if they all got one. He could hardly wait for his turn.