The Down. The Low

The grand march into the auditorium stalled, and this was the best shot I could get of him.

My brief post yesterday was all about cheering for Papa Bear and his being done school. We are still kind of in shock that it is all done, despite the fact he left yesterday to go to work. Papa Bear doesn't have an official title, but he does have a lot of fancy new skillz he'll be putting to work. We are excited that he was courted by 3 different companies over the past few months, it gave us the opportunity to be really picky about who he worked  for. We ended up choosing the same company he did summer work for last year, they are Alberta owned, and diversified, and encourage continuous learning. We have high hopes that this company will provide Papa Bear with advancement opportunities, and maybe even give us the chance to move back to a place we love, and miss very much. All in all we are very happy with how things have turned out for us, we take no credit at all for ourselves. The windows of Heaven have indeed been opened.

Math Project #1

Little Bear and I completed her first math project last week, the assignment was to create a pictograph showing peoples favorite days of the week. The first day Little Bear and I talked about our favorite days, and we added them to the graph, then Little Bear drew a picture showing why those days were our favorite.

I sent a quick text message to all of my siblings and their spouses, and asked them to include the children when they answered me. It was great; all of the responses came back within 5 minutes. I prepared a sheet of paper with a post it note on it for each person who sent us a reply, under the post it was the day they chose, and the reason they chose it.

I gave the results to Little Bear, who then transferred all the information to the pictograph. She worked on this project for 90 minutes straight! She took extra care to write all the names neatly, and to get the hair colour of each person exactly right, and to make sure that each person’s favorite colour was used in their picture. She took great care with her work, and it shows. The pictograph is awesome! Great job Little Bear!

Choice Made

The choice is made; the die has been cast, as they say. We have made our decision regarding schooling Little Bear for the upcoming school year. It will be at home. Papa Bear and I have been agonizing over this choice since October. Since the 5th week of the school year, the thought of homeschooling has been on my mind. I very nearly pulled Little Bear out of school that 5th week, I thought about it in November, and then again in March. This has been a long process, weighing the pros, the cons, and the stigma. We made a list of every benefit to leaving her in public school, weighed against being at home, alone. We talked at length of what was more important at this stage of her life, socialization, social skills, or self-esteem.

What it came down to, for us, was no child’s self esteem is worth waiting for the school to make a decision. Little Bear's self esteem is not worth waiting for other parents to take notice of their child’s hurtful behavior. She is our responsibility, and this is how we have chosen to take action. We did not step on this path blindly, or without thought. We do not go into this thinking it will be the easier choice, or the easier way. It is going to be a difficult road, with the majority of the work falling to me, I am fine with that. I am looking forward to it. What we hope to gain form choosing this more difficult journey is a lengthy list of attributes Little Bear is going to need to live in this world, and be happy.

Halloween

Well, Halloween was more than a month ago, but I am trying to catch up on these missed posts. So here is goes.

Baby Bear wanted very much to dress up this year, for her class party, I reluctantly agreed to let her, but with some strict guidelines regarding her costume. This is what I came up with, using only items we already had

On the day of the class party, I was running errands and planned on meeting Baby Bear at the school after lunch to help her into her costume, which I had with me. I was on my way to the school, when I got a phone call from Baby Bear's teacher, telling me the costume parade was about to start and Baby Bear was without her costume. Well, I didn't know there was a parade, I didn't make it to the school in time for her to put on her costume. I was upset at the lack of communication, and Baby Bear was fit to be tied that she was the only child who didn't have a costume for the parade.

I was able to calm down the angry little bear, and get her into her costume so she could participate in the little party. Lesson learned though, next year the costume will be going to school with Baby Bear, not to the Grocery store with me.

School Days

WHEW! It has been a crazy couple of weeks here. Baby Bear went back to school on the 31st of August, and Papa Bear went back to school on the 8th of this month. It took up a lot of my energy getting their things ready for them. We did manage to get everything, including a bag of textbooks for Papa Bear that weigh roughly the same as Baby Bear.

Baby Bear is enjoying Grade 2! (when did she grow up?) She has 2 cousins in her class, the bonus of being in a small town school! The other bonus is that there are only 13 children in the class. Yay! for small schools! Papa Bear on the other hand, is in college so his classes are huge! He is enjoying his classes so far, I believe his exact words were "School rocks!"

I don't have a first day of school picture for either of my school goers, but I do have this 5th day of school picture of Baby Bear. The fall clothes are out in stores, and the colours this year are fantastic!

Long Time...

It has been a long time since I posted, sorry about that. We are moved, we have been in our new house for 3 weeks now after spending 2 weeks at my in-laws place. Our quick renovation turned into a major overhaul overnight. I guess that is to be expected in an old house. We ran into a few problems, but after a few trips to Home Depot we managed to get it all done. Now we are on to other things, and getting ready to go back to school! We had a fun time shopping for school supplies, and new shoes. Thanks to my brilliant planning ahead, the only things we had to buy for Baby Bear in the way of school clothes was 2 pairs of jeans. It has been fun getting Papa Bear ready for school to, there is still a long list for him, but he can shop on his own.

Not much new other than that here. Baby Bear would like to show off her "new" smile though. Happy rest of the summer all.

It's Summertime!

Not much new to report here. The sorting of the house is moving along nicely, we have several things we have decided to sell rather than haul them with us. Papa Bear is still excited to be going to school. It seems like it is taking a long time for the first day to get here, but looking back it has been 2 months since we decided to move! So I am sure the remaining time will go quickly as well.

Baby Bear's last day of grade one is tomorrow! This school year has flown by and she has learned tons! Stay tuned for the end of the year report, and perhaps a happy dance or two. We hope you all have a wonderful summer! See you soon.

The Beginning

So the news is out! The Bear house is moving. The rumor mill is running at full speed judging from the amount of corrections I have to make each time I am asked to confirm a version of the story. We are beginning to get ready to maybe think about starting to pack. The weekend was spent sorting out the stuff in the basement, emptying boxes and sorting the contents. Baby Bear was surprisingly cooperative about it too, there were a few boxes of kids stuff we decided to just get rid of and she didn't even bat an eye. This means 1 or 2 things, 1-she is growing up and showing her maturity or 2-she has WAY too much junk already and didn't really notice the 2 boxes and 1 garbage bag leave the house. I would like to think it is the first one, but I am afraid to say it is most likely the second one.

With our mind turned to minimizing this is what the sewing room currently looks like:

All the things we are trying to sell so we don't have to move them. That is nothing compared to what the basement looks like now. See for yourself!

That is the view from the top of the back stairs, I was way too embarrassed to show you Papa Bears workout space which is more heaps of stuff than space right now.

We are happy.

We are excited.

Just be happy for us.

Night Out

There was a movie night at the school today, we didn't stay for the movie part it was getting late. Baby Bear enjoyed running around with her friends, eating pizza and just HAD to get her face painted. Pretty inexpensive way to entertain a little bear for an evening.

More Changes

There are more changes happening here at the Bear house. BIG changes too! Papa Bear is going to go to school in the fall, and the school is not in our current town. We will be making a big move in late August. There is much excitement here in the Bear house about this. 

It is kind of funny though, when you have a plan and suddenly you have committed to doing something very different. You see, we had a plan. 2 Months ago we had a good plan, our lives where falling into place and we were happy and excited. Out of no were we had a thought, and suddenly we were having second thoughts about our first plan. In a matter of 1 week, we had completely changed our plans. I should say, our plans were changed for us. 

We know we are being guided and that this big change is what we need to do. We will be sad to leave this town, we love it here. I guess change in necessary for growth, so we are off to grow!

Going Visiting

It was Spring break here this past week, and I knew we had to do something! So plans were made and Baby Bear & I went on a grueling 6 hour drive to Fort McMurray to visit my older sister & her family. Our trip started out well, got to Edmonton just fine, then things got hairy fast. We got lost! Really lost, it took way longer than it should have to get out of the city. After frantic phone calls, we made it onto the 2 lane highway and it was simple to find our way after that. We enjoyed the drive after we found our way. We enjoyed the sunshine, the muddy roads, and the very dirty car we had when we got there. We enjoyed playing and singing with our family. We enjoyed some excellent cooking, and too many treats. We had a good visit and we share with you some pictures of our trip!

Report Card Time

Our school division does not give our quarterly report cards like they did when I was a kid. Now a childs progress is shown in a portfolio of work the teacher collects. Examples of all subjects are shown. The idea I am told, is to minimize comparing children to each other and I guess that is supposed to eliminate competition or something. I am not sure I understand exatcly what they are doing. I would understand letter grades much better. 

Our parent teacher interview was tonight, so we 3 Bears went to the school to look over the portfolio. Baby Bear is doing very well in school. Her teacher says the only real area she needs to improve would be less talking during work time, and being better at counting by 5's. Well the talking thing, if anyone has ever met her you will know what I am talking about. The teacher pointed out, that Baby Bear still completes her work, and does it well. My biggest concern is her talking disrupting other students. We can work on that.

 

We were told over and over how amazed the teachers is by Baby Bear's reading level,

 and her comprehension is equally as good. That I like to brag about a little bit. She is a super reader, and like me (I hope), can read a whole chapter book in an afternoon. Granted the books Baby Bear reads are about 120 - 150 pages, but I still think that is pretty good for a newly 7 year old bear. As a reward for such a great report, we visited the book fair that school was having, and bought 2 new books. I was happy when Baby Bear passed by the begining reader books and the character books to select a slightly harder chapter book. Good Job Baby Bear!