Aside from having very active days both Anika and Dante have been avid readers this summer. For Anika we’ve been sticking to award winning best seller books and for Dante series chapter books that interest him and he can read on his own. His skills just jumped by leaps and bounds from last summer and that was not necessarily attributable to his kindergarden teacher. She certainly encouraged him along the way but he was generally way ahead of the curve from what she was teaching. His decoding skills were just phenomenal and before you knew it at this time last year he was just reading. His first book was Are You my Mother by Dr. Seuss and it just went from there. It also helped that he has an unlimited focused attention span and he doesn’t give up easily. The goal has been a chapter a night but it’s often been more. Anika has been known to stay up to the wee hours reading because the book is so good and Dante can read upto 3 or four in one shot. Since Anika’s typically free to sleep in as long as she needs to we usually just let her read as long as she wants.

Here’s Dante’s reads so far:
The Search for Missing Bones

The School Skeleton

and currently on:
The Jaguar’s Jewel

and here’s Anika’s list:
Princess Academy

The Tale of Despereaux

My Side of the Mountain

Ingo

and currently on:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond

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Bubbles




Balls

Giant chess game

Go! - A Chinese/Japanese strategy game that this museum volunteer taught us to play. We even found out that there is a renown Go! school across the bridge in Jersey directed by an international Go! champion.

Finally a snack break.

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the Japanese House (it’s the real thing, was donated to the museum).

Special exhibit on China.

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ok this is the end. we spent about 6 hours there. it was a blast!

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All the class parents get invited to these publishing parties which happen twice a year.

The kids got to read their poems to anyone of their choosing and then got comments on their comment sheet.

This is Dante’s teacher Mrs. Zuniga who was also his preschool teacher and is just as wonderful as can be.

Here’s Dante reading his poem to the class.

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…ending the year with a bang.

This book contains a poem and an illustration from every child in the class.

Here’s Dante’s poem.

and here’s Dante illustration of himself in our living/dining room, brick wall, lights and of course the computer that has all those “video” games he was talking about in the poem. Most are actually learning software but to him they’re video games which is just fine with us.

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Every grade at Dante’s school does one big music show once a year. In the lower grades it is pretty much just singing. They sang, “Hello Song”, “Seven are the Letters of the Music Alphabet”, “This Land is Your Land”, “Sing a Song”, “Take me Out to the Ballgame”, “A Rum Sum Sum”, “Frere Jaques”, “Mi Cuerpo”, a jazzy skat “Jada”, and “BonJour Mes Amis.” It was quite the show with an impressive number and range of songs.

Afterwards parents and kids got together at Central Park (1 block away) for a potluck picnic.

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For Father’s Day the kids did the cutest little singing presentation of the wise man building his house upon the rock. They’re constructions workers. Get it…builders…yes…ha ha….too cute. This is pretty much the core group of regular kids at OriginsChurchNYC. No, not too many but Anika and Dante love it nonetheless. They absolutely love going to church because they have so much fun with their friends there.

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It’s an impressive physical feat to make down and back those 8 rings for a total of 16. The kids can do that. Again and Again. All the blisters and callouses are like trophies on their hands.

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