Parenting: 4 & 5-Year-Olds Community
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The Nursery School does a $25 per family donation and the class parents get gift cards for the 6 Pre-K teachers (36 kids in the class). I love this.
I actually buy the elementary school teachers each a gift card or gift from our family. This year both DD1 and DS have 3 homeroom teachers...so I need 6 gifts. I usually ask the kids for ideas but boy do I wish, we did a class collection.
DH gives bonuses to his 3 employees, our gardener and our nanny. We also leave something out for the mailman and garbage guy who have both served us for the entire 12 years we've live here.View Thread

Him also loves to play card and board games like: Apples to Apples, UNO, Skip-Bo, Battleship, Creationary and Clue, put together puzzles and play with a Rubix cube, which is the "it" thing at his school right now.
His favotite books right now are the A-Z Mysteries, the Diary of a Whimpy Kid books and the small series with that starts with Mrs Dole is Out of Control (or something like that).
Hope this helps. I actually like buying for this age as it seems like the stuff is so much more purposeful.View Thread

Then, this morning, we taked about all the things we were thankful for as a family (good health, our home, food, our pets, our family members, etc.) and wrote each thing down on a leaf and taped it on the tree. Then I asked each of them to come up with 2-3 things that pertained only to them that they were thanksful for. They then added those things to leaves and put them on the tree. In the end it looks great, will be a great conversation piece for tomorrow's dinner and really got the kids thinking about Thanksgiving.
Oh and my items were: My iPad, Amazon.com and all the kids art work. I especially loved DD2's as well: the toothfairy, chocolate and her toy jet plane.View Thread

DD1 got her first report card with letter grades and did very well. Her academics are very strong. Both Math and Social Studies were A's (as were Spanish, Mandrian, French, PE, Music, Drama, Art, Computers and Library. Language Arts and Science were B 's noting she could improve by participating more in literary discussions, handwritting and listening (last period Science is tough for her). I'm thrilled for her to find out she'll make the honor roll.
DS was solid in all his academics (Math, Lang Arts, Science and Social Studies) as well as PE., Art , Music and Drama with "excellent" and "good" ratings across the board. He still struggles with effective listening, self regulation and sillyness and received 6-10 "satisfactory progress" ratings for related components. Our big success from him was bringing up all his Library components to "good" from last spring's "experiencing difficulties".
DD2 got her first report card ever for her first trimester of pre-K. She's doing well and received "age appropriate" or "above average" in letter/number recognition, phoenimic awareness and social interactions. She is "emerging" with her writing, effective listening and abilitiy to remained focused. She is "exceptional" in coordination, balance, strength, sportsmanship, sharing and compassion for others.
I'm taking all three of them to Disneyland this weekend for a celebration on all their hard work and dedication to both school work and their extra curricular activities. It will be a complete surprise for them and I can't wait!!View Thread

How is the week going for you and your kids? The week is going well for the "bigs". Soccer season is over so DS had an extra free evening and weekend day to play golf with DH. DD1 is finding her homeowork/studying more manageable and the weather has been perfect for tennis. DD2 is fighting a cold and is missing some of her activities so she's grumpy and under exercised. She did however perfect her backbend kickover while stuck at home yesterday and is over the moon with excitement.
Any fun weekend plans? DH and I get to be the "mystery readers" in DS's class on Friday and we have a date night planned as well. Saturday we have tee-ball and a birthday party for DS to go to. Sunday DD1 has a party to go to and the boys will go out for a cub scout meeting/activity while the little one and I get mani/pedi's.
Biggest challenge at home/work or with the kids/SO? I'd have to say DD2 being under the weather. I rarely have sick kids so it's tough on all of us. I also worry it will spread through the house and hit me right around Thanksgiving. View Thread

My elf is the same elf that has been coming to my house since the year before I was born (my parents got it the year they got married). It's over 40 years old and I can't imagine a holiday with out him although he freaked me out until I was at least 7, maybe older. LOL! Long live Mr. Jingles!View Thread

I started working on some Christmas plans last week and felt pretty good about getting going. I ordered some of the more expensive gifts for the kids a while back (just before Amazon started charging sales tax) and now have them wrapped and stored in the basement. The kids have their lists going and have already asked if we can put the tree up right after Thanksgiving. My oldest is 10 now and still a solid believer (knock on wood) so we will go all out again and allow her another year of childhood Chriatmas memories with the Shelf Elf, Santa letters and a visit to Santa with the little ones.View Thread

Once we get home they'll weed through everything and seperate out the hard candy and taffy stuff that can't be eaten due to our orthodontics/missing teeth along with the things they don't like and bag it up to go to the Orthodontist on Friday. The ortho gives the kids $ per pound and last year they were quite pleased with the outcome.
The rest of the candy (usually almost all chocolate bars, peanut butter cups and candy corns) goes into our "treat basket" and will serve as dessert each night until it's gone.
I don't stress too much over inspection. Sure, I look at the packages but given we only hit one long neighborhood street and know every homeowner, it's pretty unlikely we'll ever encounter anything but sugar and coins (for Unicef).View Thread

We've watched The Witches and Hocus Pocus and the big kids are reading some of my old Goosebumps books at night. DD2 and I have been reading from the dozen or so Halloween books she selected from the library plus the ones we own.
I have all the costumes and accessories except for a pair of red tights and a tiny "hot dog" costume the kids want the pup to wear. I also have some Halloween perler bead kids for the kids and those sticky gel cut-outs for them to stick on their windows. I think I'll pull those out Saturday morning before we head out for a weekend of events. We have 2 parties this weekend (one with a Haunted House) and a Harvest dinner party at a winery in Napa for DH and I.
On Halloween day, Coco's school has a parade in homemade astronauts costumes and the big kids get to dress up for school. I'm just crossing my fingers that it won't rain...View Thread

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