Student Council!

Allie decided to run for office at her school -- announced her candidacy on Monday last week, had to come up with posters the day after and then gave her speech at their middle school assembly on Tuesday. This was right up my alley since I did student council during my middle and high school years, so I was pretty excited about it. She was so nervous about her speech, but was able to get through it okay.  Whew! Later that day, the winners were announced and she MADE IT!!!!

 Annie, one of Allie's "campaign managers"

As part of the 15-member Student Council for middle school next year, she will be busy -- starting this summer when she will get to go to a 2-day Leadership Camp, lots of extra meetings, then also attend the Student Government elective class this next year.  The class is reserved for those who are members of the Student Council.  They are expected to attend 70% of after school events, such as sports, concerts, activities, and participate on committees to plan and take down these events.

But what I love most is that they will get to also study and learn from leadership books like "Robert's Rules of Order", the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens (ALA is a Covey Lighthouse School), and Lincoln on Leadership. So good for a 6th grader next year! And no, I cannot believe she will be in 6th grade next year. Crazy.

Allie and her friend Audri

Casting her ballot

Today she came home with her middle school electives form, and knew right away which ones to take.  She has 4 electives that she gets to take in addition to her core Math, Language Arts, Science, History and Geography classes.  Her picks are:

1. Student Government (mandatory because of her office),
2. Speech and Debate (very interesting choice),
3. Journalism (no surprise, has excellent writing skills and she is good at digital scrapbooking), and
4. Theatre (no surprise here, but she signed herself up for all the school productions throughout the year).

If she could pick a 5th, she would choose: U.S. Constitution Studies - which I was rooting for because the class explores Bastiat's The Law, selections from The Federalist Papers, and dissect and interpret Articles, clauses, and subclauses of the US Constitution. But...theatre is WAY more fun.  Can you tell she has quite a bit of Kevin in her?!

So, this being Allie's post of activities for the week -- she has also been busy learning a new song called "Though the Kaleidoscope" by Steven Cravis.  She asked me to download the sheet music on Sunday night and she hasn't let up on that piece since we got it.  Of course we were out of printer ink so she went and painstakingly copied off the first 2 pages of the music on to blank music sheets until we got ink on Monday night (which I should take pictures of for memories).

Here she is playing the first 4 pages with an added ending that she made up to finish it so that she could play it in music class tomorrow.  But tomorrow she will have to explain to Bob, her piano teacher why she hasn't been practicing her assigned songs. Oops.  She first heard this song played by Archie's girl Emily when she came to visit last April.

Allie says she knows she messed up on some of the notes and the timing is off, just in case Emily is watching.