Kindergarten

Scarlet really had the best Kindergarten experience.  I was so afraid to have a child in the Clark County School System, but I am very happy with her Charter School.  She was challenged, they did a lot of fun things with the kids, she made some great friends and had some great experiences.  

Sadly, she does not have a great kindergarten mom that does a great job capturing all of those great moments... so this will be way too much writing and not nearly enough pictures.

Scarlet auditioned for the school's first musical and got a main part!  She did a fantastic job memorizing her song and performed it with supreme gusto (I'm told, I wasn't there) and also remembered all of her lines.  Unfortunately, her nerves kicked in as rehearsals started and she had a few days of not doing her part.  After some very frustrating conversations with her, I realized her big problem is she didn't really like her character.  She didn't really get that it was a big deal to be a main part and that is what people wanted.  Her character was sad most of the play and didn't get to sing any of the fun, dancing songs that the ensemble got to sing.  

So I swallowed my pride and pulled her from the part.  She did a great job as a werewolf (the play was called We are Monsters) and I tried my hardest not to envy the understudy and wish Scarlet was up there.  I succeeded most of the time... 

I was one of the choreographers for the plays and it was fun to be really involved with the school and with Scarlet.  

Most of the kids at school now call me Miss Kacey or "Scarlet's mom that helped up with that dance thing."  Unfortunately when you are that busy helping, picture taking goes by the wayside... sorry Scarlet.

Her last project of the year was a science experiment.  I had all intentions of hopping on pinterest and letting Scarlet choose between all of the fabulous ideas floating around there.  But dad got to her first, talked Scarlet through the Hypothesis creating process, and before I knew it, she had come up with a project.

Her question: What is a hummingbirds favorite color?

She thought it was probably red, because her friend Bennett had told her that once, as had the show Max and Ruby.  But she decided to test it out.  She made the birds some nectar.

Gave them some color choices

And then put us all on shifts to watch the feeders 24/7 and record how many birds came and to which color.  We appreciated her willingness to do her own work... to a degree.  And after only a little hinting and one extremely boring 5 minute session staring at bird feeders, she decided measuring the liquid would probably be a better method.

And that is where things didn't go as planned.  We had ZERO hummingbirds!  We get hummingbirds all the time, especially when we have a feeder.  But we were off season or something because there were no birds.  Scarlet and Jon decided to enlist some help, so Grandpa Bert set up the same experiment in Gridley, CA.

Grandpa's feeders were so popular he was having to refill them every other day.  We spent 4th of July with them and the feeders were still up.  We watched hummingbirds zoom back and forth constantly the entire time we were there.

With the combined effort of Grandpa's measurements and Scarlet's measurements, she determined that hummingbirds did seem to favor red over the other colors.  She created this beautiful display board and gave her presentation to the class.

Her presentation was phenomenal, by far her best of the year.  She discussed everything she had done and even came up with details we hadn't even practiced.  Her teacher was so impressed she asked Scarlet to keep her project at school so she could give her presentation to the older classes.

I videoed the entire performance with a smile in my face and happy mom tears in my eyes, and then cried devastated mom tears when the video failed during upload and erased itself off my camera... still stings a little.

It was a pretty busy end of the school year and when they announced on a Monday there was going to be a talent show... I was a tad bit burnt out.  Scarlet really wanted to sing Call Me Maybe with her friends for the show.  I put it in the back of my mind and figured we could think about it in the week or two before auditions.  

Another great kindergarten mom moment, Scarlet didn't have two weeks until auditions, she had two days.  So she showed up on Thursday with absolutely nothing prepared.  Luckily, the school was putting on a few group numbers for the kids who wanted to participate but didn't get something together in time and, as luck would have it, Scarlet was put in the Call Me Maybe group.  Can I tell you how awesome it is to have someone do the talent show work for you?  

I showed up to the performance expecting.... well honestly not much.  But boy was I surprised.  My video is terrible (thankfully someone filmed it well and I have a good DVD copy) but Scarlet was AWESOME!  The number was so cute and Scarlet just sang and danced her little heart out.  It was so fun to watch.  

And before I knew it, it was graduation time.  She sang adorable songs, walked down the row to get her diploma and it was one of those awesome moments to be a mom.

There are the three girls from Homework group 1.  They spent a LOT of time together during the school day, Sofia, Leila, and Scarlet.

And the sweet Ms. Kritzler.  She really is the cutest thing alive.  Scarlet and I love her to death.

Scarlet has spent the summer racing through her 1st grade summer workbook telling me,
"Mom, I already learned this stuff in Kindergarten!" She reads about a chapter book a day, her favorites right now include Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, Junie B. Jones, the Weird School books, and what seems to be a neverending supply of fairy books (animal fairy, dragon fairy, rock fairies... turns out pretty much everything has a fairy).  And now it is the end of July which means 1st grade approaching much, much too quickly...