So the songs have been sung, speeches been made, munchies been munched, gifts have been given and tears of joy have been shed. What a wonderful “celebration of learning” for Miss J’s class! The kids were adorable this morning and, for obvious reasons, extremely proud of themselves! The celebration was a true reflection on what a wonderful year we’ve all had as part of the Kinder Academy family.

I’ve marked this milestone in a few ways – a couple of which I’d like to share today. First of all, in the fall, as would any parent, I took a bunch of pictures of Miss J on her first day of preschool. I picked a shaded area in front of the building near a tree and snapped a whole bunch of pics (hoping that the camera was focused because I was misty-eyed and couldn’t quite tell for certain!). Then, today, I took another picture of Jess holding the framed picture from fall. My, how she has changed and grown!

This was a pin-spired idea that I found from Call Me Crafty Al, but I changed it up a bit. Originally, the idea is that you take only first-day-of-school pictures of the child holding the previous year’s picture and this is a fantastic idea too, but I couldn’t help myself and really felt that the sense of growth and completion comes at the end of a school year rather than the beginning of the next, so I took the 2nd picture today instead. I’m not sure what I’ll do in the fall, perhaps start fresh and just do a new set each year? Perhaps continue with the new picture and just allow the photo-within-a-photo-within-a-photo to continue? Still pondering …

The 2nd thing I did to begin documenting Miss J’s school career, is take Dr. Seuss’s book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and have her preschool teachers sign it. I plan to have her teachers, leaders and other influential people in her life sign this book and leave her notes of encouragement and wisdom and then present this book to her at her High School Graduation in <gasp!> 2026!

This was also <double gasp!> a pin-spired idea from Lisa’s Workshop.

If you haven’t yet discovered the wonders of Pinterest, it’s such a fantastic way to organize your “want to try it someday” list – whether that be crafts, DIY jobs, recipes … I was a total skeptic in the beginning, but this site has become my lifeline and now actually SAVES me time rather than wastes it.

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