More Fun at School

So we've been horrible about taking pictures, but even when you get one it looks like this:

This is a picture of one of Adam's performances with the first grade. Some other fun school events--Adam was one of the two finalists from his class to go to a 1-3 grade spelling bee in the school. He worked hard and was very disappointed he didn't win. You see, we practiced the spelling words during Christmas break, and with relatively little preparation he was able to "win" in his class (the top two advanced, he was second). So he figured that since we REALLY studied for the school wide bee, he would have a good chance.

I remember him saying with tears in his eyes "There were words I didn't even know. There's no way I could have won--why would they have me compete if I have no chance of winning?" The logic is sound. Why would you ask first graders to compete with third graders, when no matter how hard they studied, it would be almost impossible to win?

We talked about how in other schools, they don't even invite first graders to participate, and how being the the bee helped him learn and understand what it would really take to win it. So first and second grades are a good chance to practice and learn how to do it.

The latest school event was a speech festival. Adam chose to do "Your Town" (another Grandpa Headlee poem). We kept encouraging him to do it with expression and sort of "perform" it. He REFUSED and got really mad when we tried to show him.

Similar to the spelling bee, the top two students in each class competed school-wide. Then they picked one winner per grade. Adam performed for his class on Monday. Tuesday when I picked him up from school, he did the entire poem with all sorts of enthusiasm and inflection. When I asked about it--some of the other kids in the class had really performed their speeches, and it inspired him. Suddenly, doing it that way was cool.