Last Day of 3rd Grade

Today was the last day of school. 

Beanie is done with 3rd grade. 

She got a great report card and wonderful comments from both her homeroom teacher and her enrichment/gifted teacher.

She nailed the Milestones test in both ELA and Math, scoring a Distinguished Leaner rank in Math and a Proficient Leaner in ELA.

I am so proud of her. 

Not only has she done well academically, but she has matured in her thinking and become more assertive.  

It was a socially a tough year for her in terms of "friend drama". One of her BFFs is very bossy, and the other is very meek. But Beanie held her own and was able to stand up for herself to the bossy one. There was a lot of "M is my friend", "M does not want to be my friend" etc all year long. The girl M is a nice girl but prone to emotional outbursts and cannot handle her feelings, so she can be very bi-polar. Nice one minute then not nice. I could see it was affecting Beanie, who is very even-keeled, and was confused by this "friend, not friend" craziness.  Beanie and I had some good chats and I gave her some tools to handle the situation which she did very well. M too realized her crazy bossy behaviors and apologized to her Beanie and the 3rd friend and has since been acting better .  On my part, I put in a word with the administration to not put Beanie in the same class as M next year. They have been together since Pre K and need to get some space between them.

The past month has been busy with lots of end of school activities - End of year bash, 4 and 5th grade chorus concert, art show, field day and class parties.

I attended all the activities.

This week has been very difficult given the sad situation in Uvalde. It was difficult to attend the field day on Wed and class party yesterday,  knowing that so may families who should have been celebrating like us, are grieving instead. And so many beautiful kids, close to Beanie in age went though something so horrific.

On Wed morning as I was dropping Beanie to school, the principal and a member of the BOE were at the front entrance showing solidarity and offering reassurance with their presence. I could see the unspoken sadness in every parent's eyes. We were all acting normal, but everyone had the same thoughts and fears. I came home and sobbed for the poor children and teachers who lost their lives, the survivors who will be mentally scarred for life and the families they left behind.

It is so very sad and hits so close to home.