And the results are in . . .

Apparently Abbie's audition for the string orchestra went well because she has been accepted for the 2016-2017 season. Although we applied for the Junior String Orchestra (geared toward elementary school kids), the judges have the discretion to place the students where they see fit, and they placed her in the String Orchestra (geared toward middle school kids). So, beginning this fall, she will have rehearsal every Monday night (in addition to her regular lessons on Wednesdays), and the String Orchestra has four performances scheduled - two in the Fall semester, and two in the Spring semester. Abbie was definitely very excited to be accepted and we are hopeful that it will be a good experience for her.

As for the rest of Abbie's life right now, it is all about the end to the school year. Both the teachers and students are getting antsy to be done. The last day is this Thursday, so they are very close! The past month has been filled with lots of good activities, though. First, the class survived their big three-day field trip, and they were fortunate to have decent weather for all of the outdoor activities (although not much sleep!).

We also had Abbie's last parent-teacher conference of the year. The major take-away is that Abbie is doing great. She is poised, self-confident, enthusiastic, and loves doing research. Her main areas for improvement are to keep herself better organized, and more focused on her work (rather than being social).

Also, because Abbie has a summer birthday, we chose a random day earlier this month to celebrate her upcoming birthday with her class. In the lower grades, this involves bringing in photos from each year of the child's life, but in the Upper Elementary the students prefer to put together a PowerPoint presentation. Abbie did a great job selecting a photo for each age and adding a little blurb about what happened during that year. Of course, the blog was a big help. She spent a fair bit of time reading old posts and laughing at her younger self. :)

The final bit of excitement at school this week is scheduled for Wednesday night when the Upper Elementary students will be performing a play about the life of Maria Montessori. Her life was actually quite interesting. Women often weren't allowed to attend college, but Maria managed to earn an engineering degree, then a medical degree, then decided to earn degrees in education and psychology. Not too shabby. Anyway, Abbie scored the role of "young Maria" which is a pretty big role. She appears in the first three scenes and then is in the ensemble thereafter. I assume that I'll be able to get some video to post, but I think it is going to be an outdoor performance so the sound quality may suffer.