P.E.

Robert came to me this morning, feet dragging, shoulders down, and said in his why-me? voice:

"Mom, this is the day. It's the one mile run. I need a protein bar or something to get me through this."

I gave him a Clif bar which he promptly flipped over to read the nutritional information on the back. With relief he said, "Thank goodness. 10 grams of protein." Then he shuffled off to the bus stop, resigned to his fate.

... and beyond!

Colleen showed me a new trick - pinching a rubber band in half. I said "Great fish, Colleen!" to which she replied,

"It's not a fish, Mom. It's infinity!"

That'll teach me not to underestimate a kindergartner. I asked her what infinity is and she told me that "infinity is a lot. It goes on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and evvvvvvver." Yep, she knows what she's talking about. What are they teaching kids in school these days?

I think we have a problem

Setting the scene, Colleen and I are in the kitchen on Saturday. Colleen comes in to look at the calendar.

She asks, "What day is it today?"

I told her it was the 18th.

She said, "What regular day?"

I told her it was Saturday, Sept. 18.

She said, "OK," and left.

Two minutes later she comes back into the kitchen and says, in a voice worthy of a confessional: "Mom, I think we have a problem. I forgot to go to school yesterday."

Colleen stayed home from school on Friday because she was sick. But we had never told her she wasn't going in to school.

I gave her a hug and told her she would go back to school on Monday.

More about Dimensions Academy

We've raved a couple times about the school experience that Elizabeth has received here in Bloomington and ranted (more privately) about the poor experience we had in Minneapolis public schools.

Minnesota Monthly magazine caught on to all the fuss about what's going on here in education in Minnesota, and specifically in Bloomington, writing about Dimensions Academy, the gifted program Elizabeth spent her past year in in sixth grade, and Elements, which Robert will be joining next year as a third-grader. Many people commute their kids from our former Southwest Minneapolis neighborhood to take advantage of the program, and in fact, Robert has a friend with an older sibling who gets driven in from Prior Lake to attend Bloomington schools for the DA program. Even not in the Elements program this past year, Robert received just a fantastic education from his second-grade teacher, Mrs. Evans.

I shudder to think of where we might be living and where the kids would be attending school if the gifted and talented coordinator at our Minneapolis school hadn't told us, off the record, about Dimensions Academy.

I recommend reading the article.

Robert's journey continues

I really should let Cate write this blog post, since she has worked very hard on this all year, but we only have a few minutes to blog today, so I'm here to report that Robert got into the Elements program for the Bloomington schools for next year.

After a disastrous first-grade year, we weren't sure if Robert was going to realize his potential, but he's really blossomed at Ridgeview and with Mrs. Evans as his teacher.

Elements is the relatively new second- and third-grade version of the Dimensions Academy (gifted and talented) program that Elizabeth is in. Cate has been painstakingly collecting Robert's work and tidbits for this program ever since we found out we couldn't apply for the program last year. (We didn't have the test scores and Minneapolis Public Schools was extremely unhelpful. We were glad to commit to leaving MPS for Bloomington even though we didn't have a house here at the time.)

We are so psyched. He is going to do great.

Robert's turn

Robert got all dressed up for Picture Day on Wednesday. With his fresh hair cut, church clothes that Nanny got him for Christmas and a clip-on tie, he was ready for his close-up.

When I picked him up from school he said, "Mom, I think I attracted 10 girls today. I looked really good."

Not expecting such a sentence from my seven year old son, I sputtered, "What?!" He confidently replied, "Girls like when guys dress up. You always say I look cute."

True.

You can NOT be SERIOUS!

Colleen got into the car this afternoon after preschool, and immediately said, "Mom, I have a problem. Mrs. Carr said to bring boots and tennis shoes to school tomorrow.

"But I don't have boots. And I don't play tennis."

We'll have to see what we can do. Been a fun day here with the snow. The kids loved playing outside in it yesterday. It's been prime hot chocolate weather.

Hooray for a new school year

Yesterday was Day 7 for Elizabeth and Robert in their new schools. I picked Elizabeth up yesterday and asked her what she did in school and got a 20-minute explanation of a really cool project they did in their science class.

Beats the heck out of fifth grade. She's really fired up.

Almost-reader Colleen

Colleen has been making leaps and bounds with her pre-reading skills.

Many, many times in the past couple of months she has asked us "how do you spell... [insert any random thing within her sight line here]?" but she's branching out on her own now. She's taking her best guess from a few letters.

Today on a trip to the zoo, we had some funny ones. We parked in front of a sign that said "Remember you are parked in the Gibbon Lot." Well, Colleen told me she was glad we were going to get Dippin' Dots (that really frozen pellet ice cream). I told her not today. She angrily pointed, "But that sign says Dippin' Dots!!" There was some foot stomping and hrmph-ing. She certainly likes her sweets.

And later we stopped to have a snack at an eating area and she asked me, "What's a zoo coffee?" She was reading the "Zoo Cafe" sign.

This reminds me that we need to find her a preschool for this fall.

Where did everyone go?

It's been kind of a quiet June on the blog, and for that I apologize.

Currently, Cate and the kids are visiting Patty at the Jersey Shore. I hear they're having a good time and loving the water. They also visited the Philadelphia Zoo and the Franklin Institute.

I'm still in Minneapolis. I auditioned for and got into the Minnesota Chorale, which sings with the Minnesota Orchestra in Orchestra Hall downtown and all sorts of good stuff, so if I had gone, I'd have missed the first two or three rehearsals for our Aida concert in August. I'd have been pretty royally screwed. Luckily, there were good airfares and they could fly instead of us all driving.

The kids spent their last days in Lake Harriet school a couple weeks ago. We'll be putting both Elizabeth and Robert in Bloomington public schools next year. Elizabeth got into Dimensions Academy, a gifted and talented program that is at one of the junior highs. We feel pretty fortunate that she got in, since the program starts when kids enter fourth grade and there aren't many spots that open up after that.

Hope you and yours are doing well and enjoying the beginning of summer.

Dutch ... and Farsi

Those were the two other languages Robert could name. This was after Nonna mentioned that the directions for a new cordless screwdriver were in English, Spanish, French and German.

Robert has fellow first graders who speak Dutch and Farsi. Guess Mandarin isn't taking over the 55410 any time soon.

Try it, you'll like it!

Our oldest daughter is adventuresome in some areas, hesitant in others. And that's OK. She's done some things in the past couple years that I wouldn't have anticipated, trying new foods, for example, and she's enjoyed them more often than not, of course.

This week we nearly had a throwdown over Elizabeth's participation in chess club at school. Robert has been enthusiastic throughout (I mean, come on, it's a club!), but Elizabeth wanted no part of it. And with Cate out of town this weekend, I was jumping into an already-existing conversation without much of the background. But I had my orders: on my to-do list was writing a check for their enrollment, and the prescribed amount covered two.

So that was it. She was going. Even though she got all dramatic and scratched her own name out on the enrollment form.

This was Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I sent the form in -- with Robert, not with Elizabeth -- and asked Mom to check Robert's bag right before they went to the bus stop to make sure Elizabeth hadn't sabotaged it. Wednesday and Thursday night I heard nothing about it. And today she sneaked into the room behind me after I dropped off Robert. So I gave her her space and didn't embarrass her.

My theory? She found out exactly how many kids actually take part in chess club (there were about 40 today) and who some of them were and she realized that it indeed was going to be pretty cool.

After I said good-bye to Robert, I hung around upstairs and watched. She had a great time.

To nobody's surprise.

Elizabeth goes green

Elizabeth has taken the fate of the earth into her own hands... er, feet. She will be joining her friends on Monday as they bike 8 blocks to her school. As long as the weather stays cool instead of frigid, she'll get plenty of exercise and fresh air.

Don't ask about No. 3

Robert, of course, has been adjusting not only to a new home and a new school but also going to school for the full day for the first time, going from half-day kindergarten to first grade.

When you ask what his favorite part of school is, the answer is what you'd expect: recess. But his second-favorite?

"Nothing."

Oh well.

Going to school

One of the first things we (read: Cate) did after we got here was get the kids enrolled in school. I think we knew that coming into a new school system in August was going to leave us behind the 8-ball; we just didn't realize how far behind.

But we got a piece of good news yesterday, and parlayed that into a second piece today: The kids got into our No. 2 school choice here in Minneapolis.

First choice was a magnet school, and we knew that was a long shot. But there's a perfectly good school about nine blocks from us, that we thought we would get into. Instead, that school had a waiting list in both fifth grade and first grade and we were assigned to a school three times as far away, with a bus pickup time of 6:47 a.m.!

Chew on that, InsideOut!

But Tuesday afternoon, Cate got called by the placement office and offered us a spot for Elizabeth in our No. 2 choice. After a phone call to mom's friend who works in the school system and some researching online, we felt pretty confident. Cate toured the facilities and deemed them acceptable. And we got them to take Robert as well. Spanish classes, computers in the classrooms, etc.

And classes there start at a more reasonable hour.

I never saw the school that so turned us off, but let's put it this way: On their tour of the other school, Robert rattled off three things that he liked about Forest Grove Elementary in Sterling and asked the principal if this school had them. They were 0-for-3.

If the 6-year-old knows that the school isn't as good, what else is there to say?

Elizabeth is SOL

The state of Virginia gives standardized tests to each grade schooler annually called the Standards of Learning and fourth graders are in the middle of them as we speak. Elizabeth starts her third day of testing on Monday, with this set covering social studies.

They're multiple choice questions, so in the end, she knows she can pretty much always eliminate some answers before resorting to giving an answer, even if she's not sure. However, Elizabeth was distraught to learn that she got a question wrong on the math portion on Friday.

"How many meters are in a kilometer?" she asked us at the dinner table that night.

As I usually do when one of the kids asks a question like that, I turn it back around at them. "Well, Elizabeth, how many meters are there in a kilometer?"

She hesitatingly responds, "a hundred?"

I told her the bad news and she was visibly shaken. That's when we realized it was a test question she'd gotten wrong.

Last year she somehow got two questions wrong for the entire week, but she didn't know that until her scores came back over the summer. (Not like there is ever any danger of her not passing.)

I don't know if she was worried by the result, but tonight we spent an hour and a half reviewing U.S. and Virginia history. Thankfully for me, a lot of it overlaps what we learned in American History class since so much stuff happened here. Zebulon Pike? Not mentioned.

We'll see how she feels when she comes home from school tomorrow. The area which needed the most review seemed to be the branches of government, and that's without even talking about checks and balances or overriding the president's veto or all the fun stuff in that area.

They don't even have to know who the governor is. In fact, a study sheet she brought home from school had Mark Warner's name and picture on it under executive branch. He hasn't been governor in more than two years.

Now I guess I'd better get to sleep. I have to get up and make Elizabeth a good breakfast in the morning.

Kindergarten is such hard work

This was the scene shortly after Robert came home from kindergarten yesterday.

I've been working from home lately, so I met him at the bus. He didn't say one word as we walked up the driveway. I asked him if they took his tongue at school and he opened his mouth to show me. (Still there.)

Cate and Colleen were out getting plants for the garden. Robert crawled up on the couch and looked at me. I said, "Robert, it's OK to take a nap if you're tired." So he closed his eyes. When I asked him if he needed anything, he shivered, so I got him the blanket.

He barely got through lunch and tae kwon do. Then we gave him some Tylenol and he perked right up.

Adventures in spelling

Robert is learning to spell and sound words out both in reading and writing them, and sometimes, as you know, the English language doesn't always make much sense. Robert recently came back with a homework sentence that even he couldn't translate for us, something like, "can yous a bot." (It was "use a boat.")

Today, however, he seemed to have no problem remembering or reading what he wrote, while Cate needed help. As she related it to me tonight:

Cate: "I think he was insulted that I didn't understand one of his words the first time. G-r-i-a-backwards p-s-s"

Patrick thinks for a second, then says, "grapes?"

Cate: "Fine!" And she mock storms out of the house. (No, not really angry.)

Sometimes when he asks if he's spelled a word correctly and he hasn't, he'll say, "Did I forget a silent e? I never know where it goes. It's silent!" He throws up his hands and everything.

But all this talk of sounding out makes me think I should come clean on this infamous pair of mispronunciations from when we lived on Long Island. (Because if I don't, Mom will. Or Neil might backstab me like he did in the comments this morning.)

Undoubtedly, Mom told me to sound the word out, but it didn't quite work -- not when the word is "rough." So for me, it was the "ROO-guh-huh and windy sea."

I tried to google this phrase and find the book it was from, but came up empty. I must not be remembering it right.

The other one, of course, is "stomach," which I pronounced "stow-MOTCH."

Well, how would you pronounce these words?