Ella's exciting week

Ella has had a very busy and exciting week. Monday night we worked on a project for her to turn in for the Environmental Learning Center's Ecofest competition. Kindergarten had two choices, make a collage of things you find outside your home or in your neighborhood or cut out a hand print and decorate it like an animal you might find in your backyard. I confirmed that we could use multiple hand prints so we thought we might attempt a raccoon. Of course I waited until the night before and the raccoons weren't as cool looking as I thought so we flipped through a hand print craft book I bought in Boise and settle on an owl. We then researched the owls and narrowed it down to the Great Horned Owl. Why did I wait until the night before? Did I not learn my lesson from the vest episode?? Anyway, after dinner Eric and Ella went for a scavenger hunt. The boys finished dinner and went to help. I think they just played outside. They found all kinds of wonderful items. It didn't hurt that the area around our house is a conservation area full of trees and other goodies. We mixed paint, she hand printed, cut out, glued on wheat put it together. Used seashells and seeds for eyes, leaves for horns and pine cones for the feet and beak.

It was really cute and her daddy was proud too.

She turned it in Tuesday at school and when i was picking her up her teacher came to the car. I asked if the owl was okay and she said it was great. She also wanted to tell me she they had placed Ella in the Accelerated Reading Program at school. This program will allow Ella to (with the assistance of the librarian) pick a book from the library and bring it home she can keep it for a few days until she feels she knows the book. When she returns the book to school she will take a test and earn points to later spend in the Accelerated Reader Store. Not sure what cool stuff they have but Ella was just happy to bring home a book. :) She also had her first Level 3 gymnastics class. It was advanced. The other girls are much larger than Ella. They had been working on their beam routines. Did i mention Ella is scared of the high beam? She worked on the floor beam. :) She'll catch on. Wednesday she brought home her first book. She read it three times when she got home and said she was ready to return in on Thursday. I told her i thought she should give it another day but she said she was ready. She took her test. 4 out of 5. They lay out parts of the book and leave some words out and she has to fill in the blank. She put slick instead of sick. She get'em next time. There is only one other girl in her class in the program and her teacher said this was the first time she had ever had students that qualified for it. Yea Ella! She also brought her progress report home and got S's in everything. That was as high as you could get on the progress report. Finally, Friday. I get a call from the ELC and Ella's teacher.....Ella won First place in the Creature Cut Out! Out of all the schools in the county and homeschool students that chose to participate, they chose Ella's! I asked how many entries they had and the lady said "last time i counted there were one thousand..." i didn't hear anything after the thousand. Not sure if that was all for Ella's creature Cut Out or overall but we were super proud of her. Sunday we are going to the EcoFest for the presentation of awards. When we told Ella she said "YEAH YEAH YEAH (with arms "raising the roof") I KNEW MY GREAT HORNDED OWL WOULD WIN!" Nothing like a little confidence. :)