Claire's Thursday School graduation

This was actually a couple weeks ago, but better late than never! Claire had a great first year at Thursday School. It's held at the other church of Christ in town, and it's a great introductory school experience: it's three hours long, with a two-year-old, three-year-old, and four-year-old class, with only six to eight kids and two teachers in each one. The whole day is divided into 15-minute blocks, with time for a Bible story, arts and crafts, library, snacks, and lunch. The teachers are awesome, and they're all volunteers! This year, she had her first field trip (to the fire station), her first school Christmas party, and first school program. They also had a Halloween carnival, Easter egg hunt, Valentine's card exchange, and Thanksgiving dinner and program.She also bought her first lunch box, as they eat box lunches everyday. Claire's usual lunch was ham and cheese rolls (a slice of ham wrapped around a cheese stick and cut into small pieces), carrots and Ranch (without me prodding her, she would usually only eat one or two of these), whatever fruit we have on hand, and some sort of treat, like marshmallows or mini cookies.

I usually ask Claire what Bible story she learned every time I pick her up, and at the beginning of the year, her answer was always "I don't know..." because I suspect, from what my cousin Kim told me, that she spent most of Bible story time sharing a mat with Kim's daughter Katelyn and being silly. Toward the middle of the year, a Bible story finally registered, and she started to answer, "About Jesus crossing on the river." I'm not sure if this was Jesus walking on water, or Moses crossing the Red Sea, because she would respond positively to details from both stories. She used this confusing answer for several weeks, and toward the end of the year, she finally started to respond with an actual Bible story! She would say "Daniel in the lions' den" or "Jesus making a man feel better." It's so exciting to see my daughter learning the Bible, both at home and in school with other kids.

At the program, all the kids sang a couple songs of course, and they also did a slide show of pictures from the year. Mom, Grant, and Ty got to be there, and they haven't ever seen where Claire goes to school, so it was really neat for them to see what a great program it is and how much Claire enjoys her friends and all the things they do.

Anyway, a tradition they have at the Thursday School graduation is to give each child a chance to say something into the microphone. They tell the kids and parents on the day of the graduation that they will all have a the chance to sing a song or say hi to their parents, or whatever. Some kids clam up, get red, and shake their heads no, some kids grab the mic, jump up and sing a song, and some kids say, "Hi Mommy and Daddy, I love you!" This is where the program gets very unpredictable and amusing, as you can imagine. Case in point with Claire. I had talked to her about what she would say into the microphone that afternoon, and I'd said, "You can sing a song, or say hi to mommy and daddy--what would you like to do?" The first time, she answered "Sing the ABC's," but then every other time I asked her, she said she would say hi to mommy and daddy. So I had her practice, Jay had her practice, and we practiced on the way over in the car. What does she do when Miss Amy hands her the microphone? Starts singing the ABCs, and turning slowly around so that by the time she's on G, she's got her back to the audience, but is still singing, at a level just above a whisper. She sang the whole thing, but I could barely hear her for trying to smother my laughter.