Year 1A (Of Owls And Piano).

Every year each class in British school puts on an assembly for the parents of that class. This is the time the kids show off what they've been working on and what they have learned. It's cheesy and cute and short. Mark's class is Year 1A.

Mark's assembly was on May 1st. He was very excited as he was not allowed to tell us what the assembly was about.

Every student took part in the assembly, although some had more solo roles than others. Mark had to say a whole joke with one other boy. 

After some dancing and counting, the kids showed us their birds that they'd made. They were studying birds for a couple of months and I believe Mark knows way more names of the birds than me. British are big into bird watching...it's like a sport...so some kids' homework that I saw while helping in his class was quite intense, unlike Mark's where he just said he saw two pigeons and a crow.

Sometimes, kids have to really squish for these assemblies. Not the whole schools gets to see each presentation, but it still gets very tight. There are a total of 400 students at the school, and I still can't imagine how they all fit in that hall. They are all used to it though-England=tight spaces. By the way, that kid in the dark blue knitted jumper is Alex in the middle of the picture.

Mark had a crazy hair day too.  He showed me his owl. 

Oh, a few weeks before the assembly, Mark brought home THIS project. It's a bird feeder in a shape of a owl! He explained he decided to do it this way because Katya's favorite bird is an owl and because Alex's favorite color is purple. Awe...:)

Oh, yay! I got a picture with Ms. Machin, Mark's teacher. He really enjoys her class and likes that she is very organized and soft spoken.

Mark is doing very well at school, reading a ton and catching all the math ideas quickly. He frequently comes home with "responsible" and "resilient" stickers:)). He loves to be helpful and Ms. Machin says that he has a great quality of being very self-motivated in learning, which she believes she did not teach him. Of course, he inherited it from ME! (right?;))

One of the latest wonderful developments is that Mark started real piano lessons. Our teacher Mrs. Eldred adjusted her schedule so she could fit Mark right in a row before Alex and Katya. So now, in our house, we have three people competing for when they get to practice the piano. For now, it's always Mark who wants to practice three times a day. He is zooming through his beginner book. 

I wanted to share this quick video. This was probably take 6. He tried to make it absolutely perfect! It's funny, his reaction to messing up was completely different from Katya's years ago. In a similar video, Katya just kept crying after she'd mess up and asked Robert to stop recording:). Mark was just cool about it, and just kept trying:). This is only after 3 lessons!

Good night, 

Lyana.