End of 5th Grade

Greenland display on International Day

The school year at last came to an end.  Anna if officially a "rising 6th grader."  There were a lot of lessons from 5th grade - mostly involving be responsible for your work and yourself.  There was the brand new 5th grade teacher (so new that it was his first teaching job), which came with its own set of lessons.  Mostly we are just glad the year is over.  Fortunately there was ample opportunity to celebrate the completion of some major milestones.

Each year there is a major school project that the students spend the year working towards.  This year's project was international day.  Social Studies this year focused on regions of the world.  Each student picked a country and did a series of smaller projects about the country throughout the year with the grand finale of international day.  Anna chose Greenland (this is still a mystery to her parents).  One of the projects was cooking a recipe from the country.  After much reading about whale stews and other exotic fish dishes, Anna managed to find a sweet bread recipe, which turned out quite tasty (much better than whale).  For international day, in addition to their display board each student was to dress up as a famous person from their country.  In another stroke of good luck, a pop singer who was also an American Idol winner happens to live in Greenland so Anna dressed up as her (it should be noted that 75% of the fifth grade girls dressed up as either a pop singer or actress).  The project concluded with international day, in which the entire school was able to view the projects and each of the students gave a 1 minute speech on their country.  The students got to celebrate with an international lunch (it should be noted that we opted to contribute an Italian main dish for the lunch- baked ziti). 

Bridging to Cadettes

Anna celebrated her bridging ceremony for Girl Scouts.  She is now officially a cadette and is looking forward to all of the new opportunities that come with being part of the senior girl scouts.  Her core troop remains together and they have a good time.  The troop leader did a survey of the girls to see what activities they liked most and what they they like least to help guide the planning for next year's events.  The top vote getter:  white water rafting.  The least favorite:  "talking about emotions."  What do they want to do next year -  more white water rafting, zip lining, camping, etc...  The troop leader is a bit panicked about her high adventure group, but she is going to roll with it.  In the meantime, Anna is looking forward to Girl Scout sleep-away camp in a couple of weeks.

Anna also celebrated the end of the spring soccer season.  This is her 11th season with Coach Tom (along with Coach Dad).  They had a good season and won their final game in overtime.  Next season it gets a bit tougher with a larger field and more practices.  We will see if Anna sticks with it.  A big kudos to Coach Tom for his dedication to the girls and for keeping the team together.

Spring Soccer with Code Red

Finally, the school year would not be complete without the end of the year pool party.  Anna celebrated with her 5th grade friends on the last day of school when they took over a local pool.  This is a tradition with her class.  Her favorite moment:  doing an actual dive off of the high dive at the pool.

Speaking of swimming, swim team has started.  The good news is that Anna is at the top of her age group for the team.  The bad news is that the team moved up to Division III in the Northern Virginia Swim League, which means they will be swimming against teams that are training for the junior olympics (you must be in Division II or I to compete against those training for the Olympics). 

Let the summer games begin!