Last Day Of School!

Aaaaand exhale. 

Whewf. 

They We I made it to the last day of school. 

Its been a long year, this Grade One business.   Owen in particular had a rough start, to the point where I was seriously considering pulling both boys out of public school and paying $40,000 per year for Montessori. 

Thankfully,  by Christmas things had calmed down and Owen's insane class had settled into a new, less destructive normal.  His confidence has grown, as has his french vocab, math skills and concentration.  Will has become Mr. Social.  Everytime I go into his class, five or six girls come running up to me and ask, "William's mum, can I have a playdate with William?  Pleeeeeeease?" And despite an initial struggle with the concept of addition and subtraction, both boys love nothing more than to do math drills at the dinner table.  Okay, that last one is just weird to me, but I'll find it in me to support them if they decide to become Mathletes. 

Actually, its been kind of amazing to see the jump in knowledge from September to June.  At the beginning of the year, neither William nor Owen could read very well, in either english or french.  And now they're reading Elly and me Elephant & Piggie books at bedtime and are sailing through their french storybooks.  What was a huge effort at the beginning of the year, now seems like old news.  The brothers regularly talk to each other in french and often speak franglais to me.  Owen's teacher is forever telling me how enormous his vocabulary is.  When he reads to her in class he doesn't stop at a word he doesn't know he just offers up about six other french words with the same first letter - "Manque?  mange?  marche? magazin?  motocyclette?  marsupilami?"  It might not be the word she's looking for, but it cracks her up every time because he clearly has it all in there! And Will...really, he's had a great year socially and seems to have been mostly unfazed by the academic side of things.  He's put his head down and plowed through it all. 

But its still a relief to get to the last day.  I can't tell you how sick I am of making lunches.  I did a little dance this morning because its Pizza Lunch.  Thanks to class parties, I didn't even have to think of snack.  Homework has been finished since last week, so we haven't had to go through our usually routine of nagging and crying (all me) to get things done every night.  I haven't had to shove dictee practice down their throats every morning for two weeks.  Bliss. 

And now we have a whole summer ahead of us!  I won't be rushing everyone out the door in the mornings (always harping on at William to "get a MOVE ON!" He's deaf, it seems, to the warnings that "we're leaving in 10, 5, 2 minutes so get ready"), I won't be searching for homework books and agendas to sign, or scrounging through all our coat pockets to come up with 75¢ x 2 for milk. I won't be gritting my teeth at early morning traffic or muttering under my breath as I stomp back in the house because library books were forgotten, again. 

Instead I plan to be breathing deeply and calmly, to be zen in all my interactions with the kids, to appreciate their joyful presence.  Until tomorrow at least.  Then I'll start the countdown to September.