School's Out!

Villanova's Commencement exercises were held last weekend, the residence halls on campus are empty... and Liam successfully completed his first year of preschool today!  For our little family anyway, school is now officially out for summer.

Liam and his teacher, Mrs. Tenney

Liam absolutely loved his first experience in school, and his teacher, Mrs. Tenney, was definitely a big part of what made his experience so positive.  We are so grateful to her and the rest of the staff at Valley Forge Presbyterian Nursery School for taking such good care of Liam and giving him the structure and tools to really grow this year.  He has learned so much about letters and numbers, taking a recent interest in spelling and trying to figure out what letter comes first in each word he hears or says.  ("That's a cool toy!  Tuh, tuh, tuh... toy starts with T, right Mommy?!")

Now, when I was a kid, you got one school picture a year.  And that seemed adequate, right?  These days, they get their school pictures done in both fall and spring.  Good grief!  Here are the best of Liam's spring preschool photos; we liked the fall ones better, but they're still better than most pics I get out of him at home!
 

This next photo was sent to us just the other day from Liam's teachers.  The 4-day teacher, Mrs. Trumpler (who will be Liam's teacher next year), has a nephew serving in Afghanistan, and they got all the kids in the school together to take a photo to send to him overseas.  Liam is in the top left corner.  Especially with Uncle Tim in the military, we just really appreciated that the kids are learning to say thank you to our servicemen and women!

The other thing that preschool has really inspired in Liam is an interest in writing and drawing. He likes to sign his name (and is starting to use lowercase letters instead of all caps) on everything and his drawings are getting much more detailed and fun!

Liam writing in his new book of tools from Uncle Sam

Liam drew this  next one as as 30th birthday present for Uncle Tim before my trip to Charleston, and it is without a doubt one of my favorite drawings of his so far.  Any guesses as to who/what he drew?

Why it's Goofy, Minnie, and Mickey Mouse, of course!!

He drew that picture in early March, and this next one is from early May.  You can see that his people now have pupils, fingers, and some sweet, sweet toes :)

Liam will be off to 4-day preschool (same school, different class) in September... it's going by too fast!