Published Author

During her first year in elementary school K-bao made significant progress with her writing, to the point where she officially "published" several short works. Near the end of the school year, the K-folks spent a morning at K-bao's school learning a bit more about her journey as an author. She has come a long way from the when she self-published her first book in late 2014.

The works pictured above include a narrative of her first soccer game, a spooky story about an evil witch, a poetry anthology, and most recently a non-fiction work about her favorite animal, the horse (in a 3-way tie for first place, along with ponies and unicorns).

For the book about horses, K-bao had to spend some time researching her subject. In the process, she learned about the physiology of the horse (205 bones!) as well as distinctions among breeds. (By the way, the reader with a long memory might recall this early post in 2009, when K-bao was first exposed to horses. Clearly her interest has grown quite a bit since then.)

Naturally, the fact that K-bao loves to read has been quite helpful in her overall progression. Over the past year she has devoured countless short chapter books about detectives, rainbows and fairies, ponies and other related topics. It is also certainly true that K-bao's school and first grade teacher have actively fostered in K-bao's class a sense of authorship and a pride in writing.

A Duet

K-bao has shown remarkable progress since taking up the piano about 6 months ago. She can now handle basic tunes, and while we can't say that practicing through the hard pieces has been entirely devoid of whining, the K-folks are proud of her pluck and persistence to date.

Here she is playing a simple version of Bach's famous Minuet in G with K-Pop.

Jump!

K-bao persuaded K-Mum a few weeks ago to buy her a jump rope, and has since been practicing her hops.

In the below she tries out both the backwards skip as well as the running skip. Not easy, but as she reminds the K-folks constantly, "Practice Makes Progress."

Game On

Let the record show that, after a single weekend of practice with pop-up PUGG soccer nets (acquired at what is undoubtedly an 85% gross margin from the Sports Basement), little K-bao scored four goals in her weekend soccer match.

K-Pop was volunteer coaching / refereeing the game and so couldn't go overboard with enthusiasm, but nonetheless thought it appropriate to throw his arms up and and bellow "GOOOOOOAL" each time the ball hit the back of the net.

Here K-bao puts on her game face before the match:

"I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"