Measuring Milestones in School Programs

On Friday, I attended Megan's First Grade Patriotic Program. We've been fortunate enough to have all the kids go to the same school since Amanda was in first grade so this was my third Patriotic Program. For the third time we got in our red, white and blue clothes, charged up the battery in the video camera crammed into the gym and wrestled with a younger sibling while trying not to get in the way of other cameras and recorders, all pointing to those adorable kids on stage. I joked with a friend of mine who was also attending her third of four programs that we were envious of another friend, calmly sitting without a younger sibling and enjoying her fourth and final First Grade Patriotic Program. We asked her,"what are you going to do now that you are done with these?" She said, I'm going to go home and make a montage of the kids' pictures from the programs for them to see that I attended ALL of them and put them on my blog." She seemed happy to be at that stage and I began envisioning myself there. After I sat through the sweet shouting songs of "Let's Hear it For America" and "This Land is Your Land" and watched them say their parts, pronouncing "George Washington" and "patriotic" with first grade "r's" (you know, patwiotic) and then, of course, eyes getting watery when they show the power point of all the first graders set to the right song, An American Child, (I know, I can be sappy), I couldn't help thinking it was the best program yet and that I am glad I am not ready to put my montage together---not quite yet. Incidentally, I've already messed up the opportunity for a cute picture montage--we'll have to continue to do video, as our digital camera has been abandoned at a recent sporting event and attempts to recover it have been unsuccessful. So, the picture of the flag will have to do until I can get a new camera. Hopefully, that will be before the next third of something I attend.