Two weeks down.

This week at Big School:

Josh drew a self-portrait while observing himself in the mirror. I think (of course) that his was one of the best in his class! His teachers put copies up on the wall outside the classroom. I will try and take a picture tomorrow so you can see that I am not completely biased about that. 

EDIT: Here is his finished portrait

And these are some of the others:

They made a class graph of everyone's names organized by the number of letters in each.

They read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. It was one of Josh's very first favorites (thanks, Grandma Katie). Then they experimented with colors and patterns by making caterpillar pictures.

They learned about the number zero.

One definition of zero

Is the mathematical value

Between positive and negative values

They Might Be Giants taught me that.

They made an Age Collage. Josh chose three popsicle sticks and three blue feathers. Blue is his favorite color, by the way. And this was also picture day! Can't wait to see how they turn out.

In his Mandarin class they learned some new songs and I was really amazed to hear him randomly sing them to himself throughout the week! I convinced him to let me take a short video. I will try to link it. http://youtu.be/EWAJe_yPe5o

The newsletter this week said that the results of the previous years Mandarin comprehension exams showed that all 20 of the pre-k students not only passed - a passing grade is 120, they all scored above 166 and two students even achieved perfect scores! My suspicion is they were already Mandarin speakers though, but I am planning to ask. 

Josh also got to meet the Librarian and was excited to point her out to me the next day when we saw her in the hall. I don't know her name though, because he called her "the library guy," but she remembered his name, which I found impressive.

Friday was the first home football game of the year, so all the students and teachers wore their school tee shirts. I really wanted to take him to the football game, but kickoff was at 7, and we have been trying to stick to the schedule as much as possible.

Here are a few shots of his classmates, he is in the background of each of these:

Violet (she has a twin brother in the other class and on older brother in kindergarten this year).

Lucas

Tessa and Violet. Josh is in the time-out chair. When I asked him why he said that he was playing too rough, I am so not surprised.

Tessa again, she has the first class birthday and turns 4 this week! Josh's will be the next birthday we celebrate in the classroom.

Another photo of Laney.

Josh and Lucas on the slide.

He loves his big school! At dinner, we have a family tradition that we each get to say what our favorite part of the day was. Tonight Josh said his favorite part of today was big school... It's Sunday. I am so glad he is thinking happy thoughts about his days at school. On Friday, I said that I was going to meet him for lunch and bring him home to take his nap. He immediately protested and said that he wanted to stay at big school the whole day!  

I guess all that time worrying that he wouldn't handle a full time program was not necessary. That is a wonderful thing!

Bonus: 

For those of you who made it through that entire post, this is a clip of Josh singing his favorite new song... http://youtu.be/T0KqBpGeJzA