Kudos all around...

It is mommy brag time. I am so proud of the effort that all three of the kids put forth this last term.

Aliza wins the greatest improvement award from me! She worked really hard on her math grade and only missed an "A" by 1%. All of her other grades were good solid "A's" qualifying her for the Honor Roll!! Good job, Liza...We are happy for you and glad that you were able to see the fruits of your hard work! At the awards ceremony at the school today, she was also recognized for 100% attendance (including no tardies) for the 2nd 9 weeks as well as the whole semester!

Parker received the Soaring Eagle Award from his teacher for Loyalty. He also received 100% attendance for the 2nd 9 weeks. He did exceptionally well on his Iowa tests and with straight "A's" on his report card made the "A" Honor Roll for his 2nd nine weeks in a row (and therefore the semester!)

Tyler is also doing a fantastic job. He received recognition for no tardies. He missed a day of school when he visited Utah at Thanksgiving, so he feels like not getting 100% attendance was well worth it. He also scored high on his Iowa tests, and once again made the "A" Honor Roll for straight "A's" for the 2nd nine weeks and the semester. He works especially hard and does a lot of homework for his 2 pre-AP classes. His teachers have said that the first year of pre-AP classes usually finds kids getting lower grades because of the increased work load and difficulty but he has managed to keep up with it all very well!

Six Flags offers a reading incentive for the kids in North Texas, if they read 6 hours outside of their regular required reading before February 16th, they will have earned an all-day pass to be used this summer. Tyler has already earned his. :) Aliza wasn't sure if she wanted to do it, until I told them that I would take whoever earned them to Six Flags and those who chose not to would stay here with a babysitter.

It worked. At Young Men/Scouts on Wednesday, she read for an entire hour. She read a biography about George W. Bush. We learned that he grew up in Texas, that he was a cheerleader in prep school (Aliza thought that was hil-ar-i-ous!), what a prep school is, and that he won the election for president in 2000. She retains a lot of what she reads, which is great.

Parker has a weekly paragraph (PAW) he has to write to prepare them for the TAKS test in the spring (4th grade's test is on writing), so his theme for this week was "New Year's Resolutions." They were supposed to pick a couple and then explain why they chose them. One of them he chose was to work harder on his school work. (Things come quite easily for him in the smarts department, so he tends to get frustrated with things that require more effort.) I proofread it and asked him to change some of the wording/punctuation, and he started to argue (who? Parker?) and it gave me the opportunity to point out that working harder on his PAW was fulfilling his resolution. He sighed loudly and sat back down to fix it. Sometimes those teaching moments come so easily!