Last day of school (!)

The Family Montessori kids (and parents) celebrated their last day of school with a potluck party this past Friday. Here's a couple of photos of Gwendolyn working off her lunch with some vigorous playing.

Swinging on the monkey bars with all she's got

Giving Anna a good spin

The end of her first year already! Time sure flies...

'Twas the first day of summer...

...and what better way to celebrate than with a trip to Granville Island on the Aquabus, with a whole wheat blueberry chocolate chip muffin to keep you company? (In the words of the muffin lady, "the whole wheat and blueberries are for your Mom and Dad, and the chocolate chips are for you!")

And yes, folks -- those a MAJOR bags under her eyes in the second photo. We had a 2:30 a.m. wake up last night, and Gwendolyn was a pooped kid for most of the day today. Hooray for an early bedtime this evening!

Hockey art

Despite her Canucks losing the Stanley Cup, Gwendolyn continues to be an enthusiastic fan of hockey. Witness her latest artwork: Zoey and Gwendolyn playing a game of hockey, with Daddy refereeing:

Note the logos on the jerseys (Canucks, of course) and the skates on the girls' feet. As for the puck -- well, Daddy seems to recall Gwendolyn telling him it's the large object underneath skater #1. Look out, goaltender!

Daddy's turn to shine

You may remember the beautiful Mother's Day memento Gwendolyn made at school last month. This week, it was Daddy's turn to be celebrated:

Under the handprint is written:

This is the hand you used to hold

when I was only 3 years old.

And here's what Gwendolyn had to say about fatherhood and her Dad in particular:

What is a Dad?

A man who takes care of people and kids when their mums are at work.

Why do you love your Dad?

Because he's nice and he loves me and he takes care of me and he's nice.

What does your Daddy do best?

He reads books to me and he takes care of me.

To Mama's Dad, Daddy's Dad, and all the other Dads out there: Happy Father's Day!

Another photo shoot

Thanks to the folks at Groupon, Daddy recently received a skookum deal on a session with a local professional photographer. Here are a few of the resulting photos, taken in April in a park near our home.

Shhhhh! It's a secret!

Ms. Chris, the senior teacher in Gwendolyn's classroom, is celebrating her 15th year with Family Montessori School. To commemorate the occasion, the children have each created a page for a scrapbook that will be given to Ms. Chris at the end of year picnic.

We're pretty sure Ms. Chris isn't a regular visitor to this blog, so we're offering this sneak peak at Gwendolyn's page (click on the photo for a closer look):

Gwendolyn's description of the drawing is as follows:

"It's about my Grandma, my Grandpa and me. And there's a flower and a little bud. And there's a sun shining in my eyes. And there's a firework sparkling, and a rat coming out of the spinning thing."

A note about the printing: Gwendolyn is confident in making her letter forms, but asks Daddy or Mama to slowly spell out the word as she prints. There are a couple of erasure marks where she realized she made a mistake (putting a "n" where an "m" belonged) or where her "fancy printing" -- adding curlicues in between the letters -- made it difficult to read the words. (you can see one of the fancy bits under the "d" in her name.)

Recent school activities

School may be close to winding up for the summer, but that doesn't mean the teachers and children are winding down! This past week, we enjoyed two school events: a tour of the trails of Stanley Park with guides from the Stanley Park Ecological Society, and an evening at the classroom for children to show their parents what they'd been working on throughout the year.

Gathering food for the trees in Stanley Park.

Looking at a (dead) little brown bat with Graham, Natalie and our guide, Brian.

Working with the knobless cylinders in her classroom. (Sorry about the fuzzy quality of this and the following photo; they were taken with Daddy's ancient camera phone.)

Mama and Gwendolyn working with a "trizzle" (triazzle?) puzzle.