KAUST Activities

Greetings all,

Please excuse our lapse in blog entries. School, work, and life takes over, and we find that we are out of time at the end of the day to write about our lives. We have been busy with school - teaching, planning,

assessing, tutoring, planning, teaching, meeting ... you get the idea.

A week ago we were fortunate to attend Hayden's and Logan's student-led conferences. Hayden showed us many writing pieces he has done and read two pieces to us aloud - one was a story about a day with friends in Seattle and one was imagining himself on an Olympic bobsled team with a teammate named Britt. He showed us his skills on his class laptop, showed us an online math game that he uses frequently, reflected maturely and proudly on his achievements and where he is heading, and talked confidently about his progress. He was clearly so well-prepared to share his work with us.

Logan showed us all of his work, too. Equally well-prepared and confident, he talked about his many art pieces, what techniques he had used, what he had tried to make, and what he had learned. He also seemed so proud of his work and efforts. In my earlier days of teaching (before I had children), I had not understood the value really of student-led conferences, but after experiencing our kids' talking about their learning and growth, I realized how empowering it can be when the kids are prepared well. Thank you to our kids' teachers!

We recently bought a ping-pong table and have it set up in our garage so that kids can come and play together. Hayden has been enjoying it quite a lot.

We have been asked about photos of our campus, so we will post some here. The main campus mosque is truly stunningly beautiful! One photo is our house with the garage door up. Our house is a three bedroom-townhouse between two others. Our neighbors on both sides have kids Logan's age, plus one family has a toddler son who adores Hayden, and the other family has a son just a year younger than Hayden.

Thanks for reading, Jennifer