Last day of kindergarten

I'm a little late with this post - Annika's last day of kindergarten was last week Friday, June 27, but we left for an extra-long weekend at the lake right after that, so I haven't gotten around to posting until now.

This is Annika on her first day of kindergarten and her last day.  I think it's just about time to hand that red sweater down to Emmett - look how short it is on her arms!

Even though it was a little drizzly that morning, the kids still wanted to walk to school (I think they were just excited about using the umbrella because they kept using it even after the rain stopped!). 

Emmett and I went back to school later that morning for the last day of school assembly.  The whole school learned a dance to the song "Happy" and it was really neat to see everyone getting into it (except for this girl at the front left!).  Annika is in the front row, towards the right, in the purple dress.

Annika has done really well this past year.  She really liked her teachers, and even adapted well when she got a new teacher a month and a half into school (the regular kindergarten teacher was finishing up her mat leave, so there was a different teacher for the first 6 weeks of school).  She made a bunch of friends, and even a "best" friend.  She's learning to read and can read simple books by herself.  She can count up to 300 (I'm sure she'd go farther if I didn't cut her off there!), and she's good with adding and subtracting simple numbers.  She still loves doing crafts and drawing/coloring, and judging by the stack of pictures she brought home at the end of the year, she often would draw or color during "choice time" at school.  Being one of the "quieter" kids in school, I know she found it hard at times in her classroom, as it sounded like there were quite a few kids who didn't always listen or were being noisy.  Next year she'll be in a grade 1/2 split, and since there are actually three grade 1 classes (two 1/2 splits and a k/1 split), she'll only be with 3 other kids from her class this year (although her best friend will be in the same class, so that makes it better).  She also knows one of the girls from the other kindergarten class, since they happened to be on the same soccer team this year, and she will also be in that class.  So there will be lots of changes for next year, but I'm pretty confident she will be able to handle them.  But first, to enjoy the summer!