Tessa finished First Grade with flying colors! She loved her teacher, Mrs. Moreira, and all her classmates too. She was again known for being fun, happy, nice, helpful, and friendly to everyone. We took quite a few pictures on the first day, but forgot to take some on their last day, so here's the one I took of her alone on her last day and luckily one of the many I took on her first day was in the same place in her classroom!
I did not do an entry for Tessa's school year around December because all of her school activities happened in the second half of the year. Besides the first day of school picture, the next thing I have a picture of is from their spring picture day in March. So here they are. You can't quite tell, but about two days before this day, Tessa was sent home from school early because her eye was all puffy, teary, and red. We decided she must of gotten something in it because it had been really windy that day and it just got pretty irritated. She stayed home an extra day because it took that long to go away. Even on the second day, which was supposed to be picture day, she went to school but you can still kind of see how her right eye is a little bit more closed than her left because the swelling hadn't gone all the way down. This was another reason I told the girls that we wouldn't be buying school pictures, but in our own photo shoot, she still looked great!
At the Fine Arts Night, Tessa's art picture is of a fish she painted using her hand. She called it "the best fish ever."
At the beginning of May, our church holds a Teacher Appreciation Night. Anyone can nominate his or her school teacher and that teacher is given an award after a program. Tessa and Abby both nominated their teachers, but only Tessa's was able to come. Mrs. Moreira brought her baby Milo which Tessa loved; and Mrs. Moreira and I took turns either holding her baby or Tessa in our laps throughout the entire program. I forgot my phone and camera so I borrowed a friend's camera to take a picture of Tessa with Mrs. Moreira, which seems to be the only picture I have of them from the entire year so I'm glad I did.
Tessa's first grade program was in May. Each class wore a different brightly colored shirt. Tessa's class was dark blue. They sang songs about the earth, recycling, and other Earth Day themed songs. Being one of the smallest in her class has it advantages. She got to sit during the program and she was in the front row. She's the one in dark blue, front row, farthest right.
Because half of the classes are dual-language classes, they learned half of their songs in Spanish. Those were some of Tessa's favorite songs to sing too. Instead of having individual classes do different skits having some in English and some in Spanish, they all just learned everything which meant half (and it seemed like more than half) of the program was even spoken in Spanish, so us parents with English-only families barely understood most of the program. Oh well, I guess that's how it goes when you live in Texas and near the border! Tessa still had fun and enjoyed it.
Funny story about Tessa's year. At the beginning of the year, Tessa said she wanted to be tested for their GT classes. I never heard anything after that, so I actually thought she didn't qualify. Then come May I find out that she'd been in GT all year long when she brought home the paper talking about their GT Fair, where you go to the school to see all the things they had been working on during their GT time. I told her teacher, who just happened to also be her GT teacher, which was probably one of the reasons I never knew, and we just laughed. In first grade, they always called it Enrichment, so I heard Tessa talking about Enrichment all year long, but did not know it was the same thing as GT. Too funny! Tessa's big project that was on display for the GT Fair was on animal habitats. Her group did the Grasslands, and Tessa did a page on the Tortoise. Her teacher also explained that her group was a smaller group (only 3 kids) and one of them missed a lot, so she was very proud of Tessa and her partner, Diego, who did this huge 4-person project mostly on their own. Tessa liked showing us all the parts that she drew on their Grasslands portrait including some of the birds and all the mom animals that are at the bottom of the page. Her partner drew the baby animals to match.
Tessa made some really good friends this year. She went to multiple birthday parties for her friends. This was a party near the end of the year at a country club swimming pool. This was Sophia R's birthday party. (There were two Sophia's in her class this year). Sophia's in the middle and Reese is on the left. Tessa had a blast.
Tessa had an ice cream party on their last day of school. She was very excited to bring the maraschino cherries. They ate lots of ice cream, other goodies, and played a few games. They also each got a beach ball that they passed around for everyone to sign. This picture on the right is the best one I could get of her whole class since I was running back and forth between Abby's class and Tessa's class on that last day.
Some of Tessa's memories of first grade include reading a ton and taking her first AR tests (she was 2nd in her class!), counting money, telling time, and "just learning." Tessa's teacher always talked about how helpful and happy Tessa was, however she did come home with her behavior on 'yellow' a few times this year. Tessa was just so much more social and loved talking to her friends even when she wasn't supposed to be. We had many talks about this throughout the year, but by the end, her teacher still loved her and would praise all the wonderful things she did to help around the classroom. Tessa was very excited for the summer to be here, but she did like going to school and being with her friends. Asking what her favorite thing about first grade was, her answer was always "lunch." That's our bubbly, outgoing Tessa!
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