There is a large children’s museum in Olympia WA that I had heard great things about. We’ve had a rainy June so one Saturday we decided to drive up and spend the night in Olympia.

The children’s museum was huge! Two floors and a large outdoor area. The kids explored and didn’t get lost once. Sloane’s favorite room was the pet hospital with many stuffed animals. I think Soren’s favorite was the vacuum tube wall. There is a hole to put scarfs and large pom-poms in. Then they get sucked around a maze of tubes and come flying out from exits.

We stayed in a hotel for the night. It was disappointing because they listed an indoor pool on the site, but they did not have an indoor pool. The exciting thing was they had Disney Junior! We had a take out dinner in the room and let the kids jump from bed to bed. Soren perfected his Spider-Man roll.

On Sunday morning after some breakfast sandwiches at a cute coffee shop, we walked around the capitol building. It was quiet and lovely. We explored the outside of buildings, monuments, and gardens. Sloane did slid off a tree branch while I was trying to get a cute picture of her. It was her 7th injury of the trip- 3 scratches from a fall running at the rest stop, walking into a parking meter, bashing her butt on the armrest of her booster seat, and hitting her nose on the back of the car.

This year has been pretty amazing for Sloane. The combination of full in person learning, her teacher, her classmates, and her school has lead to explosive growth for her.

Sloane’s reading skills are incredible. She’s reading road signs, instructions, packages, close captioning, and our texts messages! In the past month, she has read almost all of the DogMan series. She also knows how to search for and download Kindle books to her Kindle. At Christmas, I was surprised she read a book before I read it to her. Now she is reading a few books each week I haven’t read to her yet.

Over the year, her class has done different writing units- personal narratives, opinion writing, book reviews, and teaching books. They are encouraged to draw illustrations to add to the story and add speech bubbles. Below is an example from the beginning of the year and one from the end of the year.

There was a district art show at the library in May. Sloane’s polar bear was selected to represent the first grade from her school. She got a certificate and was very proud to see her art work up.

Sloane struggled a bit this year with interactions with some classmates and some nervousness. She was able to talk with the school councilor who helped her with strategies. It helped so much and gave Sloane some skills to move forward in the world of interacting with a wide range of people. Overall the school seems to emphasize social-emotional learning and it creates a great environment for Sloane.

Sloane’s class was able to take 2 field trips at the end of the year. I was able to chaperone both. First, we went to the high school to watch Act 1 of Cinderella. Sloane loved it- from the bus ride, to having me there, and of course watching the performance. She and I went back on the weekend to see the whole performance with our neighbor friends.

The second trip was to Lacamas Lake in the next town over. We went on a little hike and looked for native wild flowers and plants. It was part of her class’s plant anatomy unit. Then we had a picnic in the park and they were able to play at the playground. Both field trips and the performance made us feel like part of the community which was welcomed after these isolated pandemic years.

Sloane’s school does move up day where she found out her teacher for next year and spent some time in her new classroom. It has helped her to feel confident going into 2nd grade in the fall. Sloane has asked if she can go to school all summer, but I think once she gets into some fun summer activities, she’ll be happy.

We had family haircuts recent. I told this to some one who thought maybe we all gave each other haircuts in the round- like a shoulder massage circle. I am not sure who I would have picked to do my cut! In the picture above, I think the kids look like little Cali surfers. They had long flowing locks on our Mother’s day walk as well.

Every time we bring up haircuts, Sloane would say she wants long hair and doesn’t want a cut. When I made the appointment, I told her she could chose what length but her hair needed a trim. I bought hair cutting scissors to cut out knots we couldn’t untangle. Sloane decided on shoulder length and it is super cute.

Soren has been saying he wants a haircut like Adam’s. So that’s what we told our stylist. I couldn’t be in there. I would have been white knuckling the chair watching his soft blond baby curls be cut. We did get to keep two little ponytails of his hair. He came blasting out of the salon and is even cuter than before.

Adam and I got haircuts too, but not earth shattering when it is your 100th one.