We all couldn’t be happier with first grade at this point. Siena constantly tells us it’s “grrrr-ific” (something from Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, I believe). She gets math and spelling homework that she flies through. They’ve been doing lots of addition, such as all the ways to add two non-negative integers to equal eight, and how 4+5 = 5+4 (they call the commutative property of addition the “switcheroo”). They’ve learned about tall tales, including Johnny Appleseed. She’s started taking an after-school Chinese class, though that’s only been one lesson, and she was kind of scared and upset by it as she’s probably younger by at least two years than the other kids in that class.
This evening I was especially struck by her art class today. Not only did she remember what she actually did today (a rare feat), but she talked about how they were studying Van Gogh. They looked at Starry Night, learned that he cut off his ear (Siena explained that he cut it off and gave it to a woman to show how much he loved her; I’m not convinced that was exactly the reason, at least according to Wikipedia), and started making their own Starry Night collage, which I can’t wait to see.
We love school!