Literally a "budding" artist

Emily's art skills continue to wow us. Below is a recent self-portrait that she drew at school. Both the teachers and other parents commented to me about how it stood out relative to the other kids' pictures. Apparently some of the kids made fun of it because she "doesn't have hands in the picture." This was a very deliberate choice on her part, though. The teachers put the kids in front of a table mirror and told them to "draw what they see." Because her hands did not show up in the mirror, they did not appear in the picture. Very logical.

Emily has also taken to flower arrangements lately. Her recent creation involved using bigger flowers as vases for the smaller flowers. Here are a couple of her combinations. It is very delicate work, but she has the patience and the tiny hands for it!

Emily's parent-teacher conference went well a few weeks ago. In terms of her strengths, she is attentive, has great concentration, is creative, and is good-natured. As for her areas for growth, they noted that they would like to see her take more initiative to choose challenging works and to work by herself (rather than with friends). They also noted that we should be working with her daily on her reading to help her advance. Since then, we have had her read a book to us every night and she is making really great progress. I would now say that she is officially reading. :) Now the challenge will be to keep up with it over the summer.

As for other current events, Emily is eagerly anticipating her upcoming birthday. She has been asking about it regularly for about 6 weeks now! We had her un-birthday celebration on May 3rd at school. It was a very long process, probably about 45 minutes in total, but very special for her. It involves setting up months of the year around the sun, and then moving the Earth around the "sun" to mark the passage of each year, and then showing a picture of the child from each year. Here is the set up:

All of the kids in her class sit in a circle around the sun so that they can see the photos and sing when needed. Here is just a taste of the ritual, in this case showing the passage of time between Emily's 1st and 2nd birthdays. They do this for each year of her life:

As for her real birthday, she decided on a pool party at home this year. So, the date is set for the 4th of June and the invitations went out yesterday. Now we'll just cross our fingers that the weather cooperates!