School and Labor Day Weekend

Lauren completed a four day week of school last week.  She absolutely LOVED it.  We are very impressed with her teacher!  Lauren has learned so much in the 7 days she has been in class.  She knows all the values of coins from a penny to a dollar.  She can sing, or rap several songs to go along with that knowledge.  She has learned about periods, question marks, and exclamation marks.  She brings home a letter book for each letter they have  introduced complete with the high frequency words they are supposed to be working on this year.  She is really enjoying writing words and making rhyming word lists.  She talks about her morning message all the time and has picked up a lot of writing from that.  Is this really Kindergarten????  She has learned more words this week than my first graders learned  in a month back when I was teaching 1st grade.  I guess the new Kindergarten really is the old First Grade and so much more!  I have mixed feelings about that. 

Allison and I are adjusting to being teacher and student  on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of Mommy and daughter.  It's a work in progress.  We had a really good day today!  I am also enjoying the alone time I get to spend with Allison while Lauren is in school.     

I feel very rushed in my job, though.   I have to beat the traffic at Lauren's school when I drop her off in order to get to my school on time.  Then I have to leave my school quickly to pick Lauren up at 1:00.  I don't have any time to prepare for my class at school and that is very frustrating.  Fortunately my co-teacher is empathetic to the situation.  I don't know how Mom's who work full time do it.  I have an even greater admiration for them now than I did before I started working my two little mornings a week.

We enjoyed a great Labor Day weekend.  We went to Mom and Dad's for the weekend.  Here are a few pictures we took at the park on Saturday.  The weather was absolutely fabulous that day. 

We came back to Knoxville Sunday afternoon and got Allison's room primed and ready for repainting.  We were able to get two coats of paint on Monday to finish up her room.  Today Bill put the curtain rod up and we hung her new curtains.  I love the new pink paint and her curtains look great.  I didn't get any pictures of her room tonight, but I'll post some soon.