William is almost 6!

We say it every year but it is hard to believe that William is turning a year older and will be 6 years old in less than two months! We are at awe at how much he has grown and how much he has learned and is learning. He is a very creative, particular, playful, polite, funny, sporty, smart and loving little boy.  He loves to color, paint, draw, play drums, and making things out of recycled materials, he also loves to read his favorite topic is animals. Loves to play as much as any 5 year old, most evenings we take walks to the golf course where William loves kicking the soccer ball, throwing the football or boomerang and running with Nora. One nice perk about living in Hawaii is being able to play outdoors all year around.  We try to make it to the beach at least once a week; he is showing interest in learning how to surf.

He has adjusted well to living on the island. We did notice that he was a little shocked to experience so much change in such a short period of time. The hardest part for him has been not being able to see the family weekly or even daily like he use to. The move to the middle of the sea is shocking to anyone, even if you love this place, which is why many people move back home within the first year. Despite the turbulence of the move he has adjusted well to life on the island.

The Hawaii public school system is not our favorite. It’s hard coming from the suburbs of Chicago which is home to some of the best public schools in the country. He is so good at making friends with good kids and thankfully got a great teacher.  He has learned so much, it is incredible. His reading and writing skills have skyrocketed in the last few months. He is so independent and takes initiative. He loves to write and will copy words or sentences he sees on magazines or books.  He has now started to do what he calls “very best guess spelling” where he spells out words to the best of his ability, he does a good job! He can now read level 1 book’s to us with minimal assistance. We will be visiting a few schools, some public and some private for the following school year and hope to find one that we are all happy with.

I could go on and on about how amazing we think William is, we are just very proud of him and look forward to watching him grow and grow!

Here is a picture that William drew. It is a chameleon trying to catch some flies. He did his very best guess spelling to write "by William Newton illustrated" and "the king chameleon". Love the chameleons crown.