Posts tagged ‘elementary school’

January 20th, 2012

spelling is in his blood

okay, that title was a bit dramatic, but boy was i one happy mama when i received a letter from dutch’s school stating that he was one of two students in his 1st grade class who qualified for the school spelling bee!

woohoooooooo!!! i was in a couple spelling bees in elementary school and won ribbons so i was pretty dang proud.

then i saw the list of words. since this was a school spelling bee the words weren’t just for 1st graders. in fact, they were 5th thru 8th grade words! the school sent home a list of 450 words to study and it included words like expressionism, extemporaneous, circumloctution, dramaturgy, slantindicular…

what the hairy heck?

we had less than a month to prepare for this thing and honestly, i didn’t even concentrate on the tougher words. for goodness sakes, my child is 6, what does he know about slantindicular?

so we practiced and practiced and initially dutch was excited about the possibility of winning a ribbon, but as the spelling bee drew nearer he said, “mom, i’m not going to win this thing.” i told him that i was proud of him for even making it to the spelling bee at all! my husband and i just wanted him to do his best and to have fun.

the day of the spelling bee, dutch said he wanted to wear his bowtie. and this is not just any ol’ bowtie. it’s a black velvet bowtie, but i love that he wants to do his own thing sometimes and not follow the crowd so i just went with it. we took tons of pictures and he videotaped himself. he was super excited about the day.

as if you couldn’t tell by the pictures. :)

my husband and i went to the spelling bee and we were nervous as heck as he stepped up to the mic to spell his first word.

s-c-o-o-p

whew!! they started off with the easy words. i was hoping that he’d at least make it through the first round. score! then came the second round and honey, it was a beast. wiped out most of the 1st graders. dutch stepped to the mic once again…

t-u-r-k-e-y

boom!! all i do is win win win no matter what… yeah, i was dancing in my seat!

there were only two 1st graders left for the third round and dutch was the first up…

t-h-u-r-m-u-s

as if my child knows what a daggone thermos is, but hey, he sounded that sucka out and did the best he could. we were mighty proud of him and his school principal said the same.

and can i just say everyone loved his black velvet bowtie? one teacher said to me, “he might not’ve won the spelling bee, but he definitely wins for most fashionable.”

all i do is win win win no matter what…

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October 5th, 2011

hopes & dreams for 1st grade

when dutch went to kindergarten last year his teacher had them write their hopes and dreams for their first year of school. dutch said he wanted to make new friends. not necessarily an academic goal, but okay. it’s his first year. whatever. so when i went to back-to-school night recently i saw that his 1st grade teacher had them do the same thing. some kids said they wanted to learn to read better, write better…here’s what my child wrote:

there you have it. my child hopes to have electronic day which happens about twice a year in his aftercare program (not in class) when the children get to bring in their leapsters, nintendo ds’s, etc.

was i disappointed? hecky no! because my child did a mighty fine job sounding out electronic, even though he totally missed the “e” in electronic. who knows, maybe he’ll be an engineer someday or something.

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September 11th, 2011

yeah…1st grade!!

1st grade. can’t you just see the joy on his face?


he was actually totally excited about his first day of 1st grade. what he wasn’t excited about was holding the green “speech bubble” i made five minutes before this picture was taken.

oh whatever.

so anyway, today he says to me…

“mom, you know if you make yourself invisible in class you will get in trouble and get sent to the principal’s office?”

yep, he came up with that one all on his own.

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March 4th, 2011

sick again? well, not quite

>kindergarten is making my child sick. literally. he first got sick just a couple months after starting school.

he had a nasty little bug otherwise known as strep. so we got some antibiotics (and tons of popsicles) and knocked that sucka clean out.

only to have it come right back after two months.

my child has never been this sick…ever. i feel like i need to send him to school in one of those all white germ free suits with a mask and four cans of lysol. i mean, really, school = cess pool of icky germs. and the kids just pass it back and forth and forth and back like a game of hot potato.

so anyway yesterday around 3pm i get yet another call while at work from the clinic at dutch’s school. yeah, they don’t call it the nurse’s office anymore. it’s now called the “clinic.” dutch had a temperature of 101. come get him now, they said. good thing his dad had taken off early for an appointment so he was able to get him right away.

sidenote: my child must’ve really been out of it because he thought that the nurse said it would take me a while to get there to pick him up because i was coming from africa. yeah, africa. is this what a fever does to a little child’s brain?

but back to my lil’ story. when the husband got there he was told there was a nasty bug going around (no kidding) and that in order for dutch to return to school he would have to be feverless for 24 hours. “he won’t be coming to school tomorrow,” said the nurse to the husband.

so now i’m here with a feverless child who is trying his best to keep himself occupied while i work from home. he decided to check out the balance of his piggy bank account and surmised that he has enough money for us to go somewhere. “let’s go!! we can go anywhere!!”

anywhere? not quite kid.

and the only pain he now feels is in his foot. from jumping around playing wii.

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February 17th, 2011

apparently i’dda been on the bus

>this morning dutch was flipping through a book about dr. martin luther king that he had gotten from his school library. he stopped and pointed to a picture of people on a bus and here’s the conversation that followed:


dutch: see, the brown people couldn’t get on the bus. me and daddy wouldn’t have been able to get on the bus but you would. [in the book the whites were illustrated on the bus while the blacks stood outside of the bus.]

mama: well, why do you think that?

dutch: you would because you’re white.

pump the brakes. my child thinks i’m white.

i guess that when he compares my skin color to his skin color then yes, i probably do seem a bit white. or peach as he usually calls me. it’s all good. i used to refer myself to peach as a kid too. it the crayola crayon color that i matched best.

lightskinnned. red bone. yellow girl. zebra. oreo. high yella. light bright. reds. i’ve been considered it all, but never white. and i definitely don’t think this high yella lightskinned red bone would’ve been able to pass back in the day.

so yes, we’re definitely in need of a skin color conversation, but not today. i just had four wisdom teeth pulled. 

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November 26th, 2010

dutch puttin’ his arch nemesis on blast (well, sorta)…in a rap

>there’s a kid that goes to school with my son dutch and he’s been terrorizing some of the kids in dutch’s aftercare program. this kid is either in the 5th or 6th grade, and dutch is 5 years old and in kindergarten. but don’t worry…we’ve told dutch how to handle him. ;)

anyway, i asked dutch recently how school was going, and here’s his response:

there’s a video issue… trying to work it out. sorry!

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November 23rd, 2010

dutch skips art class on the third day of kindergarten?

>on the third day of school (kindergarten!) i got a call from dutch’s teacher. she said that my child walked out of the cafeteria during lunch with a few other kids and then after a fire drill he was missing in art class. check out his explanation of the day’s happenings.

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

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November 11th, 2010

gettin’ our pumpkin carvin’ on at school

>okay, so i’m not going to fake like this lovely pumpkin carvin’ evening at dutch’s school started off all honky dorey. (did i spell that right?) ’cause it didn’t. dutch got way cranky and we almost didn’t make pumpkin carvin’ night at all. but we all tucked our funky attitudes under our chins (we were a grumpy bunch) and headed over to the event.

and well…i’m glad we did. :)

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October 27th, 2010

picky grape eater…

>green grapes.

they’re pretty much a requirement in dutch’s school lunch. the same lunch that he eats every day. green grapes. peanut butter & jelly. peanut butter crackers. maybe pretzels. maybe carrot sticks. maybe a cookie or two. every day.

my child is a very, very picky eater. so picky that sending him to school with lunch money is really not an option because we knew he wouldn’t want anything in the cafeteria. in fact, one day he left his lunchbox in before care and his teacher was nice enough to buy him a peanut butter & jelly sandwich from the cafeteria (she thought his lunchbox was left at home). but dutch didn’t eat it because it didn’t look like the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches from home.

figures.

a couple weeks ago i went to the grocery store and the green grapes looked a mess so i picked up the red grapes instead. i mixed them with a few green grapes we had leftover and stuffed them into dutch’s lunchbox, but he didn’t eat them.

“i don’t like the purple grapes!!!”

yeah, yeah, yeah. i kinda figured that would be his response, but for a split second i thought that maybe, just maybe, if he wanted grapes bad enough he’d try the red grapes. but nope.

the next week. the green grapes looked great! and they were huge! i thought, oh, he’s going to love these!! but he didn’t. they came right back home in his lunchbox.

he explained, “i didn’t want those grapes because they were too big!”

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November 26th, 2007

november 26, 1983

i’ve been keeping a journal forever it seems. i have just about my entire life all mapped out in various books – my elementary years, my middle school and high school years, tales of boyfriends, the college days, mama experiences… all of it. i have formal journals, binder notebooks filled with lined paper that i hole-punched and locked up with mini padlocks, spiral notebooks… just books and books of thoughts, feelings, and life stories.

i got my very first diary when i was 10 years old and that sucka came with a key!! oh joy!! i thought it was the coolest thing ever. i could write whatever i wanted and then lock up my thoughts in my very own book.

so what the heck was mama jotting down waaaaaaaaaaay back in ’83? well, let’s take a looksy:

November 26, 1983

Dear Diary,

Today we are going to a parade. I hope we have fun. And tommorrow at about 5:00 we are going home.

so i wasn’t much of a speller and my thoughts were kinda brief, but hey, i sealed that date and marked its history forever. i had spent thanksgiving with my best friend and her family down in good ol’ sumter, south carolina and we were going to a parade. woowee!! nothing like a good ol’ thanksgiving parade.

anyway, november 2, 1983 had a far more interesting entry.

Dear Diary,

Today we are about to have music. Harold is talking. Right now Lamont is acting crazy and the teacher is getting mad. Rachel is rolling her eyes. I know she is not rolling her eyes at me because I will KICK HER BUT.

again, not much of a speller, but can’t you see why i went onto to a career in journalism? you see all that in-classroom reporting going on? and honey, can you tell that the mama is not one to mess with? oh, i was one tough cookie, baby.

what i wish you could really see (and you would if i had a scanner) is the picture i drew of me kicking rachel’s butt. there’s a foot kicking an alien/chicken looking character with a huge butt that’s supposed to be rachel and a bubble coming from her mouth that says, “ouch!” oh, it’s such funny stuff.
so what were you doing back in ’83?

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