bits to remember

Mark said yesterday Esme received her first grade letter in the mail, telling her who her new teacher is and all the times for the first day etc..  Esme ripped it open in the middle of the street and read every word to him out loud.  She read it for me again, when I got home.  Too bad it didn't come by owl, we said to each other, out of her earshot ;)  But, it is amazing to hear her read that well.... and as I watched her build her Minecraft tonight when a two story house, haybarn, cow, pig and sheep fences and a chicken 'coop' complete with wool square nesting boxes... I wondered just how first grade is going to measure up to her expectations, or ours.. or if it will be just another repeat of 'sit in your desk and do as you are told.'  We will see....

On the bright side, she loves going to the library, and reading books.  We read a Magic Tree house book together last week - which was long and I did most of the reading while she tried hard to keep paying attention and begging me not to stop...  and her other five books she read very well partly with me, partly by herself.  She truly enjoyed several of them.

We have rewatched through all of the HP movies in order... so I told her the other day, in her Minecraft, I was giving her 'first level OWLs - or tests, to see how much she knew.'  I  put up signs with questions all over her castle room and she had to answer them for me.  She has been reading and rereading her Kindergarten readiness brain games books Grandma gave her, so these were in a similar line.  They were questions like 'What color is a ruby?', and 'What is 3 times 3', and 'fish', 'dog', 'cat', 'umbrella', Which one doesn't belong?  She had to read the question herself, and try to answer.  She did really well, and enjoyed that - and built several hidden rooms with signs spelled out for me to find.  I am glad to see her taking more of a stab at writing things out, and trying to spell words.  She spelled DAV and GEF for names of her (Minecraft) animals on nametags... which she can't remember seeing the real names - but she sounded them out well.

Tonight she built a rainbow garden before she went to bed - to add on to the rest mentioned above.
 

 House with porch swing, tire swing outside, gardens, animal corrals and 'egg nesting boxes' the green squares in the fence in the back.

"Rainbow gardens":

Tomorrow we go to the library and hopefully sometime later in the day I can start to think about and work more on the last dress and matching pants I want to make her before school starts.