Thank Yous

In what has become an end-of-the-school-year ritual for us, we spent the final days of school making note cards and writing thank you notes to our teachers. It was quite an event this year - in the waning days of school we sat down and Harper made a list of people from her school she wanted to make notes for. Here is the list:

• principal
• classroom teacher
• reading aide
• counselor
• librarian
• music teacher
• gym teacher
• school secretary
• school nurse

She wanted to give each person a set of handmade note cards and write each of them a thank you note. She was up until 10:00 the night before the last day of school writing!

We LOVED how the cards turned out this year; she painted/stamped a few but mostly drew with colored pencils. The following information totally falls under the category of items that probably aren't interesting to you but I want to record because my memory is so horrendous... Here are some of the things Harper drew: a girl on stage singing into a microphone, a girl climbing a mountain, wedding items (she's going to be a flower girl in July), a rocket blasting off from earth, a chick (as in fuzzy, yellow chick) going to school, and a teacher at a chalkboard saying, "Booooys..." (asking the boys to pay attention/be quiet). Many of the drawings were labeled which only added to their charm. I wish I had thought to scan some of the images...

She wrote some hilarious things in her thank you notes as well - and I hope it is clear that the messages were 100% her own. Some of my favorite quotes were:

"Thank you for teaching me to be strong in my body." (for the gym teacher)

"I really liked the song about Charlie, did you make it up?" (for the music teacher)

"You are pretty, I like your colorful dresses." (for the counselor)

"You are handsome every day. Did you know I want to be a principal?" (for the principal)

It strikes me that things I find kind of sweet from a six-year-old would be terribly inappropriate if  I'd written them... but surely no adult could be offended by a note in six-year-old writing saying they are good-looking, right? (I hope!) I hated to censor her thoughts since she did such a nice job of writing them herself (the first time it hasn't been like pulling teeth.)

*****
Michael is still pretty much in the land of scribble/doodling and not yet writing his own notes so there isn't quite a much to report on that front. His speech teacher used one of the notes he made to thank him for the notes (did you follow that?) and then he wanted to write on it and send it back to her. He still asks us at night whether there will be school in the morning.