Don't look at the Camera or Smile

From one of our trips to a playground this past week:
Try as I might, I can't get them all looking the same way much less looking the same way and not looking like they're sitting on a cactus (Joey..) or goofing around with their hands or making faces (girls..)

But there they are, on a Big ole rock..

because I take them to the playscape with the soft-for-falling ground under it and they think the gigantic granite landscaping rocks are more fun..




On another note- the kid's one-day-a-week-when-it's-not-a-holiday-or-teacher-confrence-day-charter-school teacher sent out a mass email asking to send our kids a "HEALTHY SNACK" for school. I wonder if that's directed at the oreo's I'd been sending.. hmmm.. I should send her an email back and tell her the oreo for snack is my kids' favorite reason to GO to school..

What's you're favorite part of school?
"the snack you send"
what else?
"uh, I dunno"
Do you like the kids?
"I like one, but [2 boys' names] are rude and mean, they [fill in the blank- called names, pushed, took their lunch...]
Do you like recess?
"no, they make us go outside and the balls are all lost, so we don't have a game to play, only freeze tag" (their "playground" is the parking lot)
Do you like your teacher?
"yeah, she doen't make us do school like you do"
huh?
"she makes it fun and we don't have to do the hard stuff"

Common, it's kindergarten. Hard stuff? You need the translation.. here it is-
Hard stuff in Sonia language is sitting and writting a letter more than 3 times or writing more than 3 letters a day. In school they write a letter 3 times and are done. Period. For that letter. Granted I do not have a early elementary education degree, but I'm pretty sure it takes doing something more than 3 times for them to do it right. Especially when they let them do the first 3 times however they want to...

Maybe I should send the artificial color laiden fruit snacks.. those are always good for my kids' concentration..

Counting the days here...