You may recall from reading earlier this summer that I’ve been counting down the days til school started up again since it ended in June! What can I say, having three kids in my face all day is not my strength. And yesterday I sent my big boy off to 2nd grade! He was just as ready as I was. He was super-cute, as you can see, and really excited. I was really proud of him because despite the fact that he and his two BFFs are all in separate classes (three 2nd grade classes, three pals, go figure!), he was cheerful and excited about his teacher and he had a great day.
Sophie doesn’t start school until next Monday, and she missed Joshua sooooo badly today. She told me at least three times, “I can’t wait for Joshua to get home!” and when he did get home she was all up in his biz-ness wanting to know what he did all day! It was pretty sweet. She missed her brother but she’s dying to start herself. Cute pics of that to come next week!
And even though I adore those big kids, I am looking forward to having 2.5 hours a day, 4 days a a week with my little guy. He deserves some mommy time, the poor neglected third child!
So the other day I was looking at Facebook, like I do eleventybillion times a day, when a comment on my cousin Shelby’s status caught my eye (Shelby, or, “the Shelb” as I like to call her, is my much younger cousin, the daughter of the illustrious UP of Redneck Latte, and is a cute little RN living in the great state of Georgia who wants to meet a nice boy from OHIO who wants to live near his mother so she can settle down near ME. But anyways.) Here’s what I saw on Shelby’s status:
It wasn’t the status itself that caught my eye, but her commenter. Now I’ve used my advanced Photoshop skills to blur out the commenter’s last name, so we’ll call her Amy Snickerdoodle. Seeing her picture and her name, I thought to myself, “I wonder if she is the sister of Maria Snickerdoodle that I knew in college. She has a sister named Amy. I remember she came to visit Maria once when she was maybe 15 or so. That picture looks like it could be her. I think they were from Virginia though, so it would be weird if it was her since she is apparently now in Georgia.” My old college pal Maria was a couple of years younger than me, but I met her because her brother was married to my suitemate Angie’s sister, so Angie took her under her wing when she came to our college. Anypoops – Maria is one of my Facebook friends. So I clicked over to Maria’s profile to see if Amy was her sister. And YEP, sure enough – same Snickerdoodle!
So, I messaged my cuz the Shelb, and I’m all “How do you know Amy Snickerdoodle? Cause I know her sister from college and her brother is married to one of my good friends.” And the Shelb wrote back and she was all, “She’s my ROOMMATE.”
Crazy, right!? Then I have to message my friend Angie and tell her that her brother-in-law’s sister is my cousin’s roommate. And Angie and I were like, suitemates in college. I mean we shared a BATHROOM! And they share an APARTMENT! It’s like history is repeating itself! Or something.
So, it’s a small, small world. Made smaller by teeny Christian colleges and social media.
Have you had any wild six-degrees-of-separation Facebook moments?
Last week I told you what I learned on my summer “vacation” – how to French braid Sophie’s hair! Well, I wasn’t the only Rapson who wanted to learn something this summer. For a long time, Sophie has been able to recognize a lot of words and in the spring I noticed several times that she was really trying to read. Not just books, but road signs, cereal boxes, what I was looking at on Facebook *ahem* – you know, anything with words.
So, at the beginning of summer when I received a pitch from School Zone Publishing asking if I’d like to review their “Start to Read” series of phonics readers, I was all, “Why not?” They arrived just as summer began and we got started.
The set comes with 5 readers, a comprehension workbook, and a CD. At first I thought listening to the books on CD while looking at them was going to be weird and unnecessary(I mean, after all, can’t she listen to ME reading them?) but she LOVED listening to the book being read on CD while she looked at it. And then, loved reading along with the CD. After that, we progressed to where I’d read a page, then she’d read the next page. Soon she was reading on her own. We went through all five books like that and then the workbook, which she ADORED. Sophie loves a good workbook! There was a good variety of comprehension activities in the workbook and she really had fun with it. I had to stop her from doing the whole thing in one sitting like she wanted to do.
We went on vacation July 2, and we were done with the series by then. Since then, we have not picked up any of those books to read, so last night, I got out Sophie’s favorite from the series, Get Lost, Becka and bribed her with a piece of candy to read it on video. So, again, she hasn’t read this book for 6 or 7 weeks – I think she did great! What do you think? (Oh, and um, sorry about all the snot wiping, she had been crying a few minutes before over something I was denying her because I am SUCH A MEAN MOM, I can’t even remember what. Oh, and then sorry also about Joshua’s BANSHEE yelling in the background, he was entertaining Jonah while Sophie and I made the video!)
What do you think? I think she did a great job! We’ve since moved on to an Usborne Books phonics set and she is doing great with those as well. I am proud of my little reader!
Thanks, School Zone, for letting us try the books!
