A day at our kid's school.

Ian's kindergarten class had an assignment in which each student would pick an animal and give a 10 minute presentation to the class about the animal. Ian choose sharks. Here he is sharing with his classmates his favorite pictures from one of those wonderful Eyewitness books on sharks. Behind Ian is his poster with drawings of a shark and sharks' teeth.

It is days like these that we parents get that rare glimpse of who are children are outside our realm of direct influence.


We were so proud of Ian I think Etel started to have tears well up. I was more concerned that he would forget to mention the differences in the teeth between a Mako and a Tiger shark.

The best part of Ian's presentation was when he would call on classmates for their questions. Much like his father he would answer the insightful questions with "I don't know". Enlarge this picture and admire his drawing of the shark on the poster behind him. He drew that picture all by himself - after 2 other tries - without any help from me beyond positive encouragement and technical advice - "use crayons instead of markers".


I was very impressed with Ian's confidence and ease at which he presented his talk. Self doubt and ridicule are things he can look forward to in middle school.

Ian's teacher Mrs. Kiaha (pictured here with Ian) has the children create and tend a wonderful vegetable garden just outside their classroom. Ian really got into the gardening, telling us every week about the new vegetable he ate from the garden - beans, peas and even radishes! We will miss this great school. 

There is a big festival called May day where all the classes do performances and traditional Hawaiian music and dances. Here is Shayne's class practicing some sort of dance...I am not sure but I am looking forward to seeing the show at the end of this week.