Last day of school

Yesterday was Emma's last day of school. After quite a rocky start the year turned out to be a good one, and I'm amazed at how Emma progressed. They had a little book that they had to journal in all year. They started out drawing a picture and then "writing" what the picture was. Her teacher told us about how kids learn to write. When they start out they know words are made of letters, but generally only write the letters they are most familiar with and not letters that would correspond with the words they are trying to say. So Emma's first page is a drawing of her and dad, but the word is her name with the letters in the wrong order.

Then they had to tell their teacher what was going on in the picture and the teacher wrote that out. By the end of the year the pictures were completely gone and Emma can write several sentences that are completely understandable. The spelling is phonetic, and so not everything is spelled the "right" way, but you can definitely read it now.

Emma can also read really well now. She loves Dr. Seuss books, which is great because those are ones I don't mind listening to over and over. I'm so glad she had such a fantastic year and I'm hoping when she has to go back to school in the fall things will go smoothly.
Here is Emma on her first day of school:

and here she is on the last day of school