The world keeps spinning and Josie makes her sixth trip around the sun! And what a trip my lovely first-born child has become. She continues to have lots of opinion on how things are going in her world, lots of thoughts about them and how she wants them to go. She is a non-stop talker ready to engage with her world all around her.

We’ve had a busy spring with her staying at home for the rest of her kindergarten year. She’s been working hard and learning many things about the world around her. She’s been interested in cooking, the planets, the amazon, penguins, the arctic and butterflies for some examples. We do art projects with those ideas, science experiments and all the field trips we can make applicable. We read many many books each week and Josie has become a voracious reader herself. Her favorites right now have been the Ramona series that we all know from our childhood and she’s also been a huge fan of listening to the Penderwicks series which is more recently written. She also reads Celia many books and even works to teach Celia her letter sounds plus math skills. She reads everything written on signs everywhere we go, so we have fun explaining things like ‘dead ends’ and ‘blind drives’ and why ‘rockland trust’ isn’t a rock climbing gym, but a bank. Some weeks she was not so fond of a subject we were working on, but then often a few weeks later that would be all she wanted to do, like math. Some weeks she was excited, others she was not. So I try to adjust to her likes and ideas while still covering all the important skills. She’s adding multidigit numbers, subtracting them as well and even doing some small multiplication problems even if she doesn’t know it yet. She did a great project on plans this spring as well documenting a plants growth over a week and graphing it.

Josie likes to spend her days playing pretend games with Celia, reading, playing with other friends, hanging out at the park and generally making a mess whenever possible. She likes to sing and dance and make her own plans. She just finished up two sessions of swimming lessons and is down to only using one bubble in swim class. Her teacher says once she can drop the bubble she can move up to another level. Hopefully by the end of summer she’ll be ready! She’s gotten so much braver and stronger in the water from all her hard work.

Another activity that she loved this spring was a six week program at a local farm for homeschoolers. She learned about the different animals and how the farm works. She helped to plant, harvest and take care of the animals. We even got eggs from the farm and some of our plants. She’d love to do it again in the fall if it ends up working out.

Josie continues to love to do art, painting is a favorite as well as drawing and we’ve even made some sculptures from wood and recyclables.

She’s a slow riser in the morning, she needs some time to get up to speed like her dad. She likes to read in bed for a while before getting up, and we all appreciate her getting that time to center herself ready for the day. Wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world and she’s a great big sister, helping Ewan, teaching Celia and holding doors for me while I carry all the stuff!

• Size/weight: 7, 48.5″ tall, 51 lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, pasta, dessert
• Favorite toy: art supplies
• Favorite book: Ramona series
• Favorite activity: playing with her friends, pretend games
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: jokes
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: reading chapter books for 8-12 year olds

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2014 at 10:21 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.