Science Fair Winners

Paige and Ashby entered the school science fair today.
Their question was: "Does adding triangle shapes to a structure make it more stable?"

I told the kids we had to do something simple because we didn't have time for anything spectacular.

We looked through some science books and Paige stopped at a picture of marshmallow construction. Well, that's simple enough - marshmallows and spaghetti noodles. We already had all the materials and it would be fun for the kids to build.

It was fun! The kids built lots of squares and cubes, snapped lots of noodles and ate lots of marshmallows. It was simple, but they got the concept. They also liked searching the web for pictures of cool buildings and bridges that incorporated the concept they had just witnessed.

The judging was today (Wed), we did the project Monday night for FHE and made the poster last night. We kept it pretty low-key. I had thought about skipping out on the science fair this year, but I think its important for them to have these extracurricular activities.

Past years I've gotten to help judge projects and stick around for motivational support. This year I had to drop the kids off early, help them set up, pick up Brian and the little kids, take Brian to work for an early meeting, rush back to the school, pick up Ashby (even though he wasn't quite done with the judging), and hurry to the church so I could unlock the door to start aerobics.

I wasn't sure how the science fair would turn out, but the kids came home from school this afternoon all excited. "We got a gold medal! We won!"

Well, what do you know? I guess simple is better.

Good job Paige and Ashby!

Instrument Preschool

This week I taught the preschool kids about different instruments.
We made drums, and played around with a conglomeration of different instruments I had at home, and borrowed from neighbors - violin, piano, harpsicord, trumpet, ukelele, guitar, recorder, cymbals, drums, flute, percussion sticks, harmonicas, kazoo, tambourine, nose flute, maracas....(wow, that's a lot of stuff). It was a very noisy preschool session.
The best part was going to down the street to our neighbor's home recording studio. He is fabulously talented and put together a track of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and had the kids sing. They loved it! and I loved watching it all get put together. It was cool to see how he could just add different lines of music - different instruments and harmonies. So neat the things that people can do.

Ashby's Kindergarten Christmas Program

My favorite song was "I want Chocolate in my Stocking for Christmas". I got to wear a Santa hat. My favorite part was Mom taking pictures of me. I smiled at her. I like being on the stage but I was a little scared of all the people watching me (except for Mom).  I saw all of my friends there and some of their moms. I was smiling because I was so excited for Christmas.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Crazy Hair Day

 It was crazy hair day at school today. I'm not very good at doing hair, or very creative. But the kids were happy with the results.

Paige went to school with a ratted up mess of ponytails. I'm not really looking forward to brushing it out later.   

Ashby wanted to look like Grandad. So we shaved the top of his head and left all the sides long. . I couldn't bring myself to actually buzz it to his scalp - this is a #2. I was surprised that Ashby was actually interested in drawing any attention to himself. Its surprising how shy/stage-fright he gets. So hopefully he will enjoy a little showing off today.

Reptile Preschool

 Highlights from preschool...

Using bubble wrap to paint scales for a snake.

Visiting our neighbor's house and having their son show us his lizards.

Ashby was the only one brave enough to actually hold the bearded dragon.

Watching them eat cockroaches and then having the kids feed them shredded carrots.

Such a cool chameleon! We were hoping to see her super long tongue, but she got stage-fright.

Thanks to Jeremy for answering all the kids' questions and showing off his animals.

Making stained glass sea turtles with tissue paper and contact paper. 

Halloween Preschool

Hhhhhhappy Hhhhhalloween!

Its a letter H Preschool Halloween Party at our house this morning.

We practiced the letter H with bodies...

and glued together 3 Popsicle sticks to make an H.

 They rolled marbles of white paint around their paper to create a spider web.

 And then used their hand print to make a spider.

 

 We played "Don't eat Jack!"

They got their wiggles out by using different Halloween movement cards. Like "float like a ghost" or "roll like a pumpkin".

We did a sorting activity where they had to pick 3 buttons to put on a witch. Same color or same size, or both.

I think their favorite part was the Witch's Brew.

Ingredients:

Mouse tails (chow mein noodles)

Ghost poop (marshmallows)

Cat whiskers (pretzels)

Dried bugs (cranberries)

Bat ears (chips)

Witch's magic (candy corn)

 They made different funny faces on pumpkins.

We played freeze dance to the song "Monster Mash" and then we did some "Monster Math" by counting different eyeballs on monsters and adding them up.

They also made ghosts by rolling around white paint in a plastic water bottle and drawing a ghost face on it.

It was a fun Halloween party!!

There are a lot of great Halloween preschool ideas in the packet I found online.

http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2010/10/h-is-for-halloween-packet.html

Bragging Rights

Its about 4 weeks into the school year and I feel like I'm allowed to brag.

Ashby had his kindergarten assessment the week before school started. He came home with a note that said, "A typical score for an entering kindergarten child would be between 100-120 points. Your child's score at the beginning of the year is 217." Yay Ashby!

Paige came home with her 2nd grade beginning-of-year assessment last week. It said, "Paige has met or surpassed grade level expectations." Yay Paige!

...So, what is she supposed to do the rest of the year?

Ashby's first day of Kindergarten!

....And he's off....!

Ashby's ready to take on Kindergarten.
Luckily, he changed his attitude about going to school this morning - phew! Just in time! He'd been pretty apprehensive about it all summer long.  This morning he even begged me  to give him a hair cut, and he sat totally still the whole time! Amazing what that boy can do if he puts his mind to it.
I'm so thrilled that he is excited to be in school. I always hope my kids are enthusiastic about learning.

SWEET & SOUR by Ashby

Sweet: My sweet part was the whole thing! Having one piece of candy and going to music class. We sang a train song - Engine, Engine number 9. 

 Sour: Getting hit in the face with the hard, giant ball at recess. And falling down and hurting my knees and my hand on my scooter on the way home from school.

Mrs. Sarkady's classroom

Holding his ME-doll that he turned in for Kindergarten. Ashby wanted his doll to be dressed ready for a mountain bike race - complete with medal and a grasshopper that Ashby likes to catch near the biking trail.

Paige Remembers First Grade

My teacher in first grade was Mrs. Moser. I love her very much. She's a very great teacher. She does very fun activities. My favorite was the candy rocket. First was when we made a little rocket (except it wasn't actually a rocket - it didn't actually explode or fly). Then we made a little string and cut a hole and tied a little string in it. Next we put another string onto the bottom, so at the end of the week if the rocket was full of sweets, we could pull the string down and let all of the candy out and eat it! There was a rocket over each and every table. And, if we're good in school then we get ten or five candies in our table.

My friends were Kaylee, Grace, James (I have a crush on him), Alizabeth, Naomi, Roselyn, Dallyn, Emilio, Anthony, Jacob, and Jace. At recess usually me and my bestest friend, James, would sometimes play Night Furies. I was the mom and James was the baby. We loved to do the monkey bars - everybody cheered for us, and I'm really good!

I won in the Reflections contest. I got a trophy, my very first one! And I got a green ribbon from the district contest. On the science fair I won first place, too. I won a microscope and a magic illusion game. A magic illusion is when you put something in it, and put the top on and the hole makes a reflection with mirrors come out of the bowl. Its pretty weird. (There are mirrors everywhere inside.) It also came with marbles. It is a really cool toy. Sometimes I even put my platypus in it, and use as a dress for it.

The school play was a really fun thing, too. I got to be Professor Longears (he's actually supposed to be a boy). I got a little embarrassed when we were practicing. I kind of got a little nervous because everybody was watching me in the play, but I was the big hit of the show! The play was called, "Professor Longears saves the day," so, I saved the day. :) It was really fun, we even got to sing some songs about Spring. The rain song is Ashby's favorite.

My favorite subject in school is P.E. Mrs. Robertson is the teacher. I liked the garbage throw best. There are balls in one line, we pretend its the garbage. And on the sides are the houses, so we don't want garbage in any of our house backyards. So we have to throw it into the other neighbors'. I know its kind of rude, but its still fun.

Every morning I rode my scooter to school, and in the winter I rode with the Galvez's and the Lindsey's (my neighbors).

When I grow up I want to be an astronaut. And a little bit of an artist too, because I love art. You know why I want to be an astronaut? Because I want to go to the moon, and maybe to Mars if I can. I also want to learn science and math - that's what astronauts are really, really good at.

I had a great time in First Grade. I love first grade!

First day of 1st Grade

Last day of 1st Grade

Preschool Letter U

We had a successful day of preschool. And I think the kids had fun.

For show-and-tell the kids brought: Umbrella, Utah picture, Unicorn horn and a fireman Uniform.

I brought a Ukulele. I borrowed it from my sister-in-law last night and quickly learned how to play a song on it so I could show the kids. I learned "The Wheels on the Bus" and sang it through several times while the kids picked different things on the bus. Luckily that song only had two chords, so it was easy enough, but I sounded like a pro. ;)

Everyone got to make their own Ukuleles. This was a fun project..

I got pencil box sized boxes at the post office (if you get the flat rate boxes, they are free until you send something in them!)

I cut a hole in them with a razor blade, stuck a ruler in the top and duct taped it down inside. This was all done the night before.

The kids took q-tips and covered the outside with glue to decorate with tissue paper. I originally thought they would paint them, but this saved a lot of drying time, and they still get to feel like they're painting with the glue. It worked really well, even the littlest ones could figure it out. After the glue was dry, they decorated it more with all kinds of stickers. Kids loooove doing stickers, so that was a total win. Then I put 4 rubberbands of different sizes around the box and a crayon for the bridge.



I was so pleased with how it all turned out, and the kids jammed to some ukulele songs on the computer.












We played a game called "Up".
Everyone had a balloon and the object was to keep it up in the air as long as they could.












After practicing writing and coloring, we played an indoor game of horseshoes.














Snack time: Umbrella shaped apples, with pretzel handles and raincloud wheat bread.













We learned the story of the Ugly Duckling and spent the remainder of the time in front of the computer making "Ugly" faces.

Aren't they cute?

School?

I woke Paige up early this morning to get ready for school. She told me all about how she was sure there would be some kind of New Year's party at school today. She got dressed and ate breakfast and asked what was for lunch. I went to the computer to print off the new January lunch menu but saw there was no lunch listed for today.

School doesn't start until tomorrow! We should have slept in.

Paige the First-Grader

Paige woke up bright-eyed and happy this morning. She got dressed, read her scriptures and told me how to do her hair. Today was "red" day which took off the pressure of what to wear on the first day of school. I guess her class has a different color each day this week. We didn't go school clothes shopping this year anyway, since we had so many hand-me-downs. The only trouble is that there aren't really any "outfits".

First grade! Paige couldn't stop talking about how excited she was for lunch time. She even remembered to make her own lunch the night before. She picked out a princess lunch box. I tried to get her to pick out some other cute design, but her heart was set on those princesses.

Paige's desk is in the very front center of the classroom. She is excited to have a secret cubby underneath to store her stuff. On back to school night she noticed that her name was placed under "teacher's helper" for the week. She is still waiting to see what that means.

There are only a couple of kids in her class that Paige already knew from last year. She will have lots of opportunities to make more friends. But I asked her who she sits right next too, and she said it was a boy, but she couldn't remember his name. Maybe that's good - she won't get in trouble for talking to her neighbor too much. Cause she never talks too much. :)

Preschool Graduation.

Even though Ashby is not technically graduating (since he still has another year before Kindergarten), we participated in a special end-of-year ceremony for our co-op preschool.

Kindergarten favorites from Paige

My favorite thing that I learned in kindergarten was about flowers and plants and also volcanoes. We even made a volcano by putting little things in a root beer bottle (that had root beer in it) and when we shook it up, we opened up the lid and it was exploding and going down from the root beer bottle. And then when we were standing on the black thing [the asphalt] that's what volcanoes are made from. And I was a little bit worried because I thought there was going to be a volcano at our school, and it would erupt and lava would wash our school - but it didn't really, and it didn't really make a volcano either. What I like about plants is that they grow food and the thing I learned about the seeds in the plant is that they grow roots, a stem and leaves, and they make fruit and all of the plants have little flowers in their leaves. What I like about flowers is the same thing as the plants, except it has beautiful, beautiful petals on them and in the middle of a sunflower it has seeds in the middle.

My favorite friends are (I guess everybody is my friend), even Talia in the afternoon class. There were 27 kids in my class. I liked to sit by Kenyon. I met Lilly Phillips when we would walk home from school. Me and Lilly Phillips had a different teacher, her teacher is Mrs. Holyoak, my teacher is Mrs. Sarkady. And you know who else I met? Emily and Lizzy in Mrs. Holyoak's class.

My favorite day of the week was Thursday because that was computer day. I got to go to KidPix. This time we did something like pictures to put on the computer and then we made stickers that come to life on the computer. The way how we made them alive is we pushed a green PLAY button and then they all moved around at once.

Monday is also my favorite day of the week because we play music games, we learn new songs, and new composers that write the songs. And one of my favorite music games is "We are dancing in the forest." Another is "Old Mother Witch."

There was one field trip I went to in Kindergarten. I went to a play called, "Knuffle Bunny." I rode a bus, it was fun. There was a big theater and a big stage. We sat on red, soft chairs. It was a fun play.

Mrs. Sarkady was the best teacher ever. She taught us new things and new games that we can play. She is so fun. I miss you, Mrs. Sarkady!

I once got in trouble in kindergarten. I was talking too much with Melissa. Then we had to go over at the place where we paint and we started to talk again. So we had to be separated in the hall with Andrew.

I'm a little bit excited to go to First Grade. I'll do some more fun stuff on the computers.

My Christmas wish for YOU

For Christmas this year, I wish that you all could go back to school as a grown-up.
It is really ever SO much FUN!

What a different experience! I look around the classroom and think, yeah that would have been me...sleeping in class...doing only the bare minimum...asking neighbors if I had missed a quiz the day before.

I'm glad I don't have to worry about dating or late nights or socializing with the cool kids. Its not like I don't have other things to worry about, but diaper rashes, grocery lists and church callings seem so much less life-altering.

I think the absolute worst time to be in college is when you are dating someone seriously - the two just don't go together. Therefore, although it doesn't totally make sense, I feel like maybe people shouldn't start college until after they're married - but then make sure to finish college before they have kids. I've found that it's easier to concentrate and actually learn things when your life is already kind of figured out.

Going back to school means working hard at rearranging priorities - which means you have to make every experience worth it. It actually made me more productive in all areas of my life because I had to try to fit it all in.

The thing I love most about going back to school is that I actually learned something. I wasn't just there because I had to be there. I didn't just memorize things that I thought might be on the test, and I didn't just forget everything the next day. I was in class because I wanted to be there. I want to learn the material and actually really know it. I want to apply things in my life and remember everything. Education is so exciting!

I was scared that I wouldn't be smart enough (because I didn't feel very smart in college the first time). Turns out, if you actually read the chapters and actually do the suggested problems, and actually stay awake in class, and actually participate in the lectures, it doesn't really matter how smart you are - you can't help but learn the material. What a novel idea.

And I don't want any of you to underestimate yourself!

I wish I had known all this stuff the first time round. I wish I had taken better advantage of the opportunities I had. I wish I hadn't wasted so much of my school years. But I am so glad that I get to have this new opportunity now. It is so fun to go back to school and wish that same feeling of success on all of you!

Letter M

Ashby's preschool was at our house this week.
We had a Monster Mash.

Everyone decorated paper bag Masks.
We played Musical Chairs and practiced making monster growls.

We decorated the letter M with marshmallows and frosting
But first we had melons for a snack.

The kids filled up water bottles decorated with tissue paper and modge-podge
with beans and rice to make maracas.

We used all different instruments to make music.

We also read "There's a Monster at the end of this Book", and practiced writing the letter M.
I think it was a successful preschool day.

Rumor is Paige finally started school

No tears today. But my heart did leap.