Happy FOURTH birthday week: School, Friends and Activities

This year John is in Mothers Day Out at Stonebridge United Methodist Church (where we got married) 3 days a week. There are no tears this year at all, he loves school so much. His teachers are Ms. Kindra and Ms. Lia; he has taken to them both pretty equally. His best buddy is in his class and lives around the corner from us. This is SUPER convenient for everyone.
I think the main new skill from this year is writing his numbers and letters. He loves to practice writing and is really good at it. He has some "learn to read" type games and books. Think he is still pretty far (and rightly so) from reading, but he is building the foundation. He can spell John, Matthew, Mom and Daddy with no help. He will go upstairs and come down with a drawing of some kind that always has at least one name, if not all four of us on it. He surprises me sometimes with new words I didn't know he knew. For example, he came down a few days ago with a drawing of like 10 birds and the word "Rio" under it. Have to wonder if he saw the DVD up there? But either way, I like the effort. :) He likes to write EVERYTHING on his own and just asks for help in spelling it.

He is super social and talks about all the other kids all the time. They have a system that the kids have to move their name down to a different color if they do something outside the rules, or they can move up to a different color if they do something extraordinary. John says he has not done either, and I can believe it. I think he is a rule follower when I am not around. His teachers seem to think he is about the sweetest boy that there is (or at least they make me think that :)). Not sure what their trick is. :)

He made a pretty special relationship with this little girl named Isla. I am so sad that she moved to Hong Kong during the year. I went to a birthday party with all of the classmates and saw those two in action. I can't quite put it into words, but they were beyond sweet and super good friends, holding hands, being so gentle and friendly. There is a picture of her in the slide show below.

Of course Garrett is top on his list. They like to be "copy brothers". Most all stories about recess involve Garrett. :)

Outside of school time with friends, we still have large play dates with the neighborhood kids at least once a month or so, and then small ones with my friends and their kids every now and again. The moms are still there for these, but typically the kids do their own thing for a couple of hours while we talk. The big change in play dates for John this year is the drop off play date. This is super fun for everyone. I like having them here and watching/listening to the boys interact and play. When I drop John off he is perfectly fine with it and tells me all about it when he gets home. He is such a big boy. And then there is always the random meet ups in driveways or at the park that are frequent in good weather.

We tried T-ball and swim school this year. Although it took some major warm up time with T-ball, he ended up liking it. Not sure he learned anything or picked up any skills for that matter, but I suppose it was an introduction to team sports. We were all ready for it to be over by the end. He loved swimming school. We went everyday for 4 weeks when Matthew was an infant. It drastically improved his skills and confidence in the water and I would recommend to anyone. Oddly enough, he says he wants to do T-ball again, but not swim school. So T-ball it is, and we are going to try a martial art in the summer and soccer in the fall.

a few pictures: