Kindergartenorama, or All Good Beginnings Must Come To An End

 The morning carpool. These three kept their parents in stitches most mornings on the way to BYU. One of my favorite stories about them involves their imaginary friends. K has had an imaginary friend, Nadine, for a long time. Nadine actually sickens and dies each month along with the waxing and waning of the moon (you guessed, it. At BYU kindergarten, all of the children are above average, aka quirky). L joined in with two imaginary friends, Nobody and No One. Not to be outdone, Joss cooked up Bob and Hobo Joe pretty fast. One day, in what I can only assume was a waning crescent phase, K and Joss were already loaded up in Rob's truck when Nadine threw up all over the only empty seat. The kids informed L when she climbed in that Nadine had vomited on the upholstery. L was beside herself. "But I don't waaaant to sit in imaginawy bawwwwf!" she wailed. Never underestimate the real chaos that imaginary friends can cause.

 Joss on his last day of BYU preschool

 Signing in. Each school day there is a question for the kids and they have to sign their name and then place it on one side or the other in order to answer the question.

 Joss and L measuring their height. L's dad is 6'8" and she's six months older than he is, so she could easily pass him up. We're learning that kids who are tall early, are not so crazy tall later on. Rob found that unlike last year, the kids were much better readers this year and he couldn't switch their name tags around. They were on to his game.

 This was at BYU from his term on books. Each kid had to learn about books and make their own book. The culminating activity was to have a book signing with family and friends.

 Joss wrote a book about the time his mother let the boys have a marshmallow fight down in the basement with super sized marshmallows. Doesn't he look natty in his authorial duds?

 And here is the whole BYU crew. In the afternoons, the two on the left went to kindergarten at Westridge, and the two on the right went to Wasatch. One of my favorite things this year was to have Rob imitate lunch times with Z and Joss. How they would torture each other in the elevator. How they would try to finagle more dessert. How Z would try to cram all the vegetables in her mouth at once so she could spit them out and move on to the more fun parts of their multi-course meal. The time that she put all of her baby carrots in her mouth and Rob made her chew them up, but she wanted dip, so she kept sticking her fingers with hummus and tzatiki in her mouth too. Really, it was the best thing ever for Joss to have these three other youngest children to hang out with this year. They all kept each other in check.

 You can see he needs some keeping in check. Here he is trying to smash up rocks at the culminating activity for rock term.

And here he is showing off his Cookie As Big As Your Head; this was a prize for passing off all the letters in the alphabet and many other sight words. It was a big achievement and really launched him into reading. He has had such a fabulous experience in kindergarten, I don't know how first grade will ever measure up.