Kindergarten Graduate

Today was Juniper's last day of kindergarten. Juniper's school emphasizes a variety of good qualities they are trying to foster in the students (thinker, open-minded, compassionate, inquirer, etc.). For their kindergarten graduation, each child got to pick one of these qualities to describe herself. Juniper chose "risk taker."

At the start of the year, we never would have described Juniper as a risk taker. She's so bold and outgoing that many people may not have realized how completely unwilling she was to do something she couldn't do "right." She would quickly become frustrated and give up when trying something where she wasn't immediately successful. There is so much that comes easy to Juniper, we feared she might sail through on the easy accomplishments without starting to learn how to do hard things. Juniper made a lot of progress this year in learning how to be a risk taker. She tried new things that were hard for her. She did things that weren't perfect on the first try, or the second try, or sometimes the third try. She still gets frustrated when she tries something and falls short of her vision for how it should be, but she is much more willing to put herself in that position than she was 9 months ago. We are proud of Juniper for learning to take risks (and grateful to ICS and the amazing Ms. Wong for pushing her to become a risk taker).