I have the best job!

May. 

School is out for summer. 

Endings.

New beginnings. 

Unknown. 

Possibilities. 

Tears. 

 Joy. 

Sighs of relief! 

A time for rest. 

Also a time for reflections. 

With all that being said....

My first group of Kinder Kids just graduated from high school last weekend!  WOW.  It was a terrific ceremony, and I was so proud of each of them.  Of course, not all were there.  But whereever they are....I hope they know how proud "Mrs. Schmidt" is of their accomplishments.


 
                               2 students from the early years!!!  Congrats you two! 

Yesterday was the last day of school for us. 

Every year I have an awards ceremony with the kids.  I invite the parents and pass out diplomas and individual awards.  We also have a Best Boy and Best Girl Citizen award.  I show a movie of all the pictures I have taken throughout the year.  This year I had a video that was 48 minutes long. 

I cut it down to 31 minutes and 19 seconds....at 3 seconds per slide, you know that I had to cut out a LOT of pictures!!!!

  

Anyhow...at somepoint in the video this year, I noticed that children were up and interacting with each other, parents were visiting with each other, one preschooler (shown below with a hilarious grin) was spinning in every spinny chair he could find after eating most of the candy in my room, and I realized that people really were not watching the video.  Oddly, this was okay by me this time because I had something important to finish our day with.  

I stopped the movie and told everyone that I had one more thing to tell them before we ended our school year.  I gathered all the children to come sit by me at the front of the room.  Parents were waiting for the kids to settle down and to hear this one last piece of information.  Finally, the room was settled and I got to announce that I had been given an amazing opportunity and that next year I would be teaching first grade.....with this class!  I will be looping into First grade and then going back to Kindergarten the following year.  Once the news hit them, there were cheers, some tears (Hoping they were all happy tears), and a whole lot of hugging going on.  It was fantastic! 

I am so excited about teaching this group 1st grade next year.   It will certainly stretch my brain after being in Kindergarten for 13 years.  I am excited about the possibilities and for the opportunity to keep these little monkeys around for another year. 

One more piece of terrificness???  I don't even have to move to a different room.  We'll all gather in Room 29 just like we did this year.  Now....do I change up the decor or not?  Hmmmmm. We'll see how much time I have left after all the reading and preparing for a new curriculum. I think they'd be happy with the same old sock monkey theme. 

These twins just "graduated" from Kindergarten.  This picture was taken just after I announced that I would be looping into First Grade with them!  We are SO excited for this opportunity!  See the little brother off to the side?  Yes...the sugar rush was BIG.


                                             

     This little man is about as hard to say "No" to ask anybody I've ever met.  Do you see those big brown eyes!?!?!????  So happy to be able to be his first grade teacher, too.  Sigh.  Everything about this new opportunity is so delicious!