Seen up here

Drinking and banana/spirulina smoothie…no one else liked it. Have a feeling she won’t be drinking that twice.

This little decorating wizard spent at least a half an hour perfecting her cupcake. It was hilarious. She was so into cupcake decorating that I think i may just have to set up a blanket with a bunch of cupcakes/icing/toppings and let her and her sissy just have a blast. Since these cupcakes were intended for the kiddos at school and Sabs creation had a pen cap on it at one point, she was only able to work with one cupcake. So cute we found her new little talent. She kept saying “I still making. I no done. No touch”, Below is her final product 🙂

After many revisions…her final masterpiece.

And here are Momma and Pooks that were sent off to school for Teacher’s Day. My favorite is Sophie’s walrus which she made all by herself 🙂

In 2006, hedge fund manager Sal Khan launched “Khan Academy,” to provide YouTube tutorials for his 12-year-old cousin who needed help with unit conversions. The online school now delivers more than 580 million online lessons in over 36 languages.

Khan Academy’s “world-changing” plan for schools
Last fall Khan expanded his influence by creating his own brick-and-mortar school in California.

“It was my dream to start a school even before Khan Academy started. But now that Khan Academy has had this reach, we’ve working with a bunch of schools trying to push the envelope on mastery-based learning, blended learning, project-based learning. We said, ‘Let’s do it under our offices for real.'”

The Khan Lab School runs differently from traditional schools. There’s no homework or grades, and students – ranging from ages five to 12 – share the same classroom.

“It’s only 150 years that we separated children by age in classrooms,” said Khan. “The idea is you can learn a lot from the students who are a little older than you and if you’re 12 years old you could exercise a lot of leadership being a teacher assistant for the younger students.”

The school also breaks up the students based on their “independence level,” rather than their age.

“Whatever independence level you’re on–whether in math reading and writing – you’re on your own track,” he explained.

Another unique feature of the school is that it runs all day, all-year long. Khan said the current school schedule – that he says was originally designed for a one-income household — is not enough learning time.

“The gap between the U.S. and Shanghai test scores can be purely accounted for by time in the classroom,” Khan explained. “You have the summer learning loss, which is not only time that you’re not learning when you could be, but you’re actively forgetting the things that you learned at the end of last year.”

As Khan Lab School enters its second year, Khan said he hopes to use the reach of the Khan Academy – currently boasting more than 30 million registered users – to send students and teachers information on how to create similar learning experiences in their classrooms.

Yesterday I was leaving the bank while Pooks was at art and I bumped into her Spanish teacher. Selena. from school. She hollered at me to come over and spent the next 10 minutes just raving about how special Sophie is and how she seriously can’t believe the beautiful things that come out of her mouth. I said awww thank so much, and she said no seriously she is just incredible. She then rattled off about 5 hilariously cute stories about little Pook and told me how she met her last year in art class b/c she is friends with Pookie’s art class teacher and just couldn’t get over her since then. She has a little four year old boy who came to Sophie’s school with her on Thursday and Sophie apparently gave him a tour of their entire classroom and told Selena “not to worry that she will entertain him while she is teaching the big kids”. Ooooh she is precious and i am so proud of her :).

Selena also told me that she told Pooks to draw a beautiful picture on the paper and she will tell her the words of what she drew in spanish. Pooks looked at her and said, “you’re a beautiful picture. I’ll draw you on paper”. Selena said she just can’t believe what comes out of her mouth. Hahaha. She said her words are just beautiful. Preciosa.

Pure joy below. Love this little crew 🙂

The other day when we went to drop Pookie off at school, her entire crew ran out excited and screamed good morning Sophie while handing her this card they made for her. Luckily I held it together because I was so overwhelmed with happiness i could have bawled my eyes out and embarrassed the little peanut. I am so incredibly grateful for this experience she is having at school. The kids are truly AMAZING. They are the coolest crew of little people with caring, sensitve souls that are guided by an incredible teacher. xoxo.

ps(the card below says Flower head b/c at school one of the boys was calling another boy butthead, and Sophie told him that it isn’t a nice nickname and he should maybe say flowerhead instead. So the kids wrote flower head on the card:)).

As if that wasn’t enough to make my heart melt, yesterday when i went to pick up Sophie at school she came running out to tell me that she cried at school. She was all bummed that she cried and said she cried once because she accidentally swallowed some gum from her lollipop and was terrified it would never leave her body. The crew told her it will come out in her poop. She pooped when she got home and was all relieved that her gum came out. Crisis averted.

Her second cry was because she was bouncing a ball and it landed on Dillon’s lap and as a joke Dillon was saying “you’ll never get it back”, etc. I think this was shortly after the gum episode so Pooks was in rare form and thought he was serious. She cried again. Most kids who are around 13yrs old (especially boys) would make fun of her or tell her she is being a baby and they were just kidding. Not this crew. When i got there Dillon and Venus were off in the corner and she was drawing something on a piece of paper. I was wondering what was going on over there but quickly got diverted with Sophie’s stories. As i was about to leave with Pookie, they came running over and said “Wait Soph (or Sophe, as they spell it) we have something for you)! They bent down to her height and handed her this…

OH MY GOODNESS! Venus drew this for little Pooks and then Dillon bent down to her height and asked her for a hug. He then told her he was sorry for making her upset when he was kidding around with her. He asked if she would forgive him and she said yes. Then they hugged for like a minute (a real big bear hug). It was one of the most precious sights i have seen. These are the kids of our future. What a lucky world. This is education. This is the way it should be. Kids with compassion, forgiveness, affection, positivity, etc. Simply magical.

Oh how bummed i am that the power was out all day and my phone was dead so i couldnt take any pics or videos of the sweetest sight yesterday! Pookie took Sabsy to her very first yoga class and it was absolutely adorable. I think someone may have taken pics so if they post i will snag them off FB.

Sabs was so flipping excited and proud to be walking in to one of Pookie’s classes. I had a chat with Pooks the night before that she needs to help Sabs and show her everything to do and she did just that! Sabs is so very lucky to have her and just looks up to her so much. She didn’t look for me at all during the class (i was peeking through a window) and she followed everything Sophie told her with a big fat grin on her face the entire time. It was insanely adorable. The teacher came up to me when the class was done and told me how proud she was of Sophie and was a great helper Sophie was the entire time. She also was gushing about how adorable the two were together and what a pleasure they were to have. Sabs got a special little parting gift for her first class (two pom poms) and came out of it all geek smiling and proud. Oooooh really i keep saying it, but it was ridiculously cute! She is going to be mega bummed when Sophie goes to art today and she finds out she cant go with her. xoxoxoxoxo

Some doggies we met while Pooks was at school. Sabsy the dog whisperer. Girlfriend has zero fear when it comes to animals.