School's OUT!

Another school year is over, and while I am having difficulty holding back tears at the thought that Audrey is DONE being a kindergartner, I am so grateful for the great year both of the girls had. On the last day of school, VDM holds a little awards ceremony outside. The kindergartners each get an award, and Audrey was thrilled with her "Most Improved" one...
We were really proud of Lili, too, who received the award for Academic Achievement for her class. This year was really challenging, but she learned so much!

Here she is with her BFF and their matching awards...they are truly a match made in nerdy heaven...

I took some videos of the kids today showing off a little bit of what they've learned this year:

On the car ride home, Audrey was telling me how much she loved this prayer, and as she read it to me I found myself blinking back tears again. Is this the kid who a year ago wasted no opportunity to let me know how boring she thought Mass and the Rosary were? Now, she is usually the one to ask if we can say a family Rosary, and during Mass, all of those fierce whispers of "when will it be over?" seem to have vanished. Is it just that she is a year older? Is it the influence of her walking-saint of a kindergarten teacher? Is it just a phase? I don't know, but I'm grateful for it. It has been kind of a crazy year for our school, with a lot of transition, but sometimes seems that the task of raising kids in this crazy world is just too daunting, and moments like these make me so grateful for our little school. We parents need all the help we can get.

Untitled from Allison Speier on Vimeo.

Lili's fabulous teacher had the kids memorize a poem every week to recite in front of the class. I'm going to try and keep up the habit over the summer. This past quarter, they memorized Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe in its entirety, which was too long to upload, so here she is doing another one of Hopkins' gems. This one was actually extra credit, but I convinced her to learn it anyway, amidst visions of her twelve years from now cramming for her English comps at UD and feeling a surge of gratitude for her awesome third grade teacher (and equally awesome mom) who made her memorize all those awesome poems all those years ago... ahem...I may have been projecting just a tad...

Untitled from Allison Speier on Vimeo.