One of the first units of sixth grade study for Ezra was about archaeology. He seems to have taken to the subject and enjoyed the project of making up a civilization and creating its artifacts. The culmination of the unit was a field trip to the beach, where the artifacts were buried and teams of students dug up and analyzed other teams’ artifacts. Luckily he’s still happy to have me along on field trips, so on September 13th, we drove to Pacifica State Beach at Linda Mar.
The teachers had set out grids for each civilization. This is Ezra’s group’s.
Before any artifacts could be buried, there was playing to be done. We were at the beach after all.
Finally it was time for each team to bury their creations. Ezra made a golden chicken bone on a stick and a silver helmet.
He had a good time doing the burying, but was disappointed when it came time to dig for the other group’s artifacts. Apparently someone else dug up the grid that he was supposed to dig, but he didn’t know it, so he dug and dug but never found anything. Luckily he was still happy to be in the sand. Some things never change.
It was a pretty nice day for a field trip to the beach.
Once again we got a stack of art to bring home at the end of the school year. The school’s art program is really good — the kids love it and their work is so great. Here are the pieces Ezra brought home this year.
On June 2nd, Ezra finished up his elementary school career with a fifth grade promotion ceremony at school. He seemed pretty low key about the event, but insisted on getting dressed up. He loved the jacket we got for him for his piano recital, so he wore that even though the sleeves were a tad short. He looked adorable. Here he is with Bruce before we left for school in the morning.
We dropped off Ezra at his classroom and took our seats with all of the other family members. Soon the younger grades filed in and sat on the grass in front of us, and finally the fifth graders started to file in.
There were, of course, a few speeches that were great but a little hard to hear. The four fifth grade teachers sang a song to the kids about leaving elementary school that was a bit of a tearjerker. Then the principal gave out the certificates.
The teachers greeted all the students. This is Ezra’s teacher, Ms. Darrow.
He got a good bear hug.
After the ceremony we spent a few minutes milling about on the field and then there was a little party upstairs. Ezra and his friends immediately filled their plates with all sorts of goodies and dug in. I managed to pull him away for a few pictures.
Ezra and Emerson:
Ezra and Henry:
An actual family photo, missing sick Finn unfortunately:
The three musketeers:
This boy.
And just for posterity’s sake, here’s his Kindergarten school picture.
I took a ton of pictures; the whole album is here.
Fairmeadow fifth graders celebrate the end of their elementary school careers with an all-day picnic at Foothills Park. I volunteered to drive and chaperone, but really I had nothing to do since the kids are both self-sufficient and totally uninterested in interacting with adults. But it was fun to hang out and watch Ezra among his friends. I didn’t take very many photos but I’ll share what I have.
This one was when we first arrived. The boys immediately found sticks, and someone noticed there was a lizard on or near a rock. They were trying to do something with it (I don’t know what) and Ezra was very upset. He couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just leave it alone.
This is Ezra and some friends playing a game where they close their eyes and squeeze the hand of the person next to them, trying to go around the circle faster than the other groups.
And here’s the whole fifth grade class; I think there are 100 of them. Ezra is in the middle.
My favorite part of the day was when they got their yearbooks.
I loved watching them study all of the photos and rush to sign everyone’s yearbooks.
Parents were able to make a personal page for their kids if they wanted. Of course, I made one for Ezra. Since he’s only been at Fairmeadow for two years, I included photos from all of his years of elementary school. Even though he’s a man of few words, I think he liked looking back on the early photos, especially since the main part of the yearbook was filled with early-grade pictures of the rest of the class. Here’s the page I created for him.
Ezra and his fellow fifth graders all learned an instrument this year. Ezra chose cello, and while he didn’t practice at home much he seemed to really enjoy playing and was very excited about the end-of-the-year concert. He loved getting dressed up in his crisp white shirt and black slacks.
He was particularly enamored of Pachelbel’s Canon so I made sure to video the performance. The footage isn’t great given my vantage point, but at least you can hear the song pretty well.
He was one proud boy.
And here he is after the performance chatting with another mom. So cute!
He also pointed out some artwork he did as part of the “Musical Miniatures: Portraits with Music Notations” project.
I’m very pleased that he has such great opportunities for art and music at school. He plans to continue playing cello next year in sixth grade.
Like many previous projects, this year’s science project (which fifth graders are required to do) was not met with enthusiasm. He chose a topic from the list of suggestions (do people taste jelly beans differently if their eyes are closed) and did some minimal preparation before testing his subjects: Henry, Emerson, Finn, Bruce and me.
I tried to let him do the project as he saw fit with a little help from us. We finally convinced him to take Bruce’s advice and use graphs to show the data. He wrote up everything else on Google Docs and we all helped put it together late on the night before it was due. Once Bruce came up with the idea of gluing jelly beans on the board, Ezra finally showed some enthusiasm. Then he drew comics and little legs on all of the jelly beans.
Here he is at the science fair. I think he was actually happy with the experience, in the end. But it wasn’t easy getting there!
On May 5th, I chaperoned Ezra’s class at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View. After an initial mixup on our entry time (we were early and they wouldn’t let us in) and an impromptu lunch on the outer grounds, we finally checked in and made our way over to the educational building. The day was split up into three stations; our first taught about wavelengths and light.
Really, though, the thing I found most interesting was that they had a model of LADEE, the spacecraft that flew Bruce’s error correction code for the laser communications terminal. Ezra and I were more than a little proud of Papa.
The next station had a few spinning things. Unfortunately, the guide didn’t explain what was happening, but the kids had fun anyway.
There was a third spinning demonstration — two people sitting in chairs on what looks like a seesaw. While the whole thing is spinning, the two participants try to throw a ball back and forth. It’s very hard. To the delight of the first group of students, their teacher leaned too far back and the chair snapped, throwing her off the seesaw. Sadly, it was out of order after that, but the kids didn’t mind because one of the chaperones had been filming so everyone got to see Ms. Darrow go flying. Luckily she wasn’t hurt and, as usual, she was a great sport about it.
The third station was a mockup of the International Space Station. Each of the kids had a different job. I don’t remember exactly what Ezra’s job was, but here he is.
Fifth graders at Fairmeadow get to have a special day to commemorate their studies of Colonial times. This year Colonial Day was at the end of March, right before the start of Spring Break. I volunteered to photograph the event, which meant I got to see the goings on first hand. It was a great day!
There were several activity booths including butter-making, tin lantern making, sewing, dancing, badminton, a school, an apothecary, and, of course, a saloon. There was also a silversmith booth, which turned out to be Ezra’s favorite. Each student “worked” a booth for part of the day and had the rest of the day to choose other activities. Here’s Ezra with a couple of friends at the beginning of the day.
Here he’s working on his tin lantern.
He also took a turn trying badminton, which is surprisingly hard.
Here are Ezra and his best friends, Henry and Emerson once again at the silversmith booth.
I also popped into Ezra’s classroom and nosed around a bit. I found a wall where there were short stories about kindness. This one is Ezra’s.
Since I was one of the “official” photographers, I have a ton of photos. To see the rest of them and get a feel for the day, click here.
Two weeks after his birthday, we finally had Ezra’s birthday sleepover this past weekend. He invited his two best friends — Henry and Emerson — and planned an entire day of activities. As you might expect, there were a few glitches, some additions and subtractions to the activity list, and one superdad who had to leave for a conference, but it was a fun day.
Ezra wanted the boys to sleep in the tent, so Bruce enlisted their help to set it up.
Our first glitch was an all-too-normal visit from Palo Alto’s finest for a “wellness check” on our neighbor.
This was the scene when Emerson arrived. Always fun to explain that situation to a parent you don’t know very well who is dropping off their kid for the night. Luckily things remained calm on the street and the police soon left.
The first main activity on Ezra’s list was a Google X tour, so Bruce and the three boys headed out for that. I stayed behind with Finn to give Ezra a little big kid time. The result is that there aren’t any pictures from X. But the boys came back with pockets of Google candy and I think they had a good time.
Next up was supposed to be lunch at Five Guys, but the boys weren’t hungry yet (see above reference to candy) so they got started on another activity on the list — making tin soldiers. The kids love this activity. What’s not to love? Fire, melting metal, toy soldiers. It’s all good. Bruce set it up in the backyard with the camping stove this time which was great.
After they’d used the soldier molds, Bruce had the idea that they could make coins. So, he brought out the drill, some old wood, and carving tools.
They turned out pretty cool. Here’s Ezra’s.
Because the molten metal was such a hit and the activity was taking longer than we planned, we scrapped the Five Guys idea and ordered some pizza. After a late lunch, Ezra asked if we could do cake. Why not?
Wishes were made, cake was eaten, and the boys got back to their regular programming. Namely, more nerf battles.
It turned out that not everyone wanted to do archery, so instead of going to the range, Bruce set up the target he’d recently made for the backyard.
After shooting at the regular target for a while, they started adding balloons to it and shooting at the balloons. That led to water balloons. Which led to this …
Super fun, totally irresponsible use of water.
As evening came, we got going with Ezra’s choice of dinner — hotdogs roasted over the fire in the backyard. By this time Bruce had left for the airport, and I was too busy managing the chaos to take any pictures. The boys had their dogs and then roasted marshmallows for dessert, and headed back inside for a little more Minecraft time before bed. I was left with a quiet moment to roast a marshmallow over these beautiful coals.
There were a few tense moments over screen time conflicts, but about 9:00 I sent the boys out to the tent. I attempted to take a nice picture of the three of them. Here’s what I got.
Ezra thought it was very funny to be flipping the wrong finger. They stayed up for about an hour and just about the time I was going to go out and tell them to quiet down, they were already quiet.
I think they slept pretty well, although they were up very early. I plied them with pancakes, sausage, and bacon for breakfast.
After everyone left, the boys and I had a relatively quiet day. When I asked Ezra if he had a good time at his party, he said, “It was awesome.” You can’t ask for much more than that.
Somehow, my first born is now 11 years old; I’m not sure how that happened. At any rate, we had several celebrations for him on his actual birthday, and he’s having a small sleepover birthday party a couple of weeks late due to scheduling conflicts. Since that hasn’t happened yet, we’ll stick to the family celebration on the actual day. It started with cake. Coffee cake seemed like a good choice since it was breakfast after all.
He enjoyed the candles.
He had a good day at school, and for dinner we had a taco fest.
Tacos are one of his favorites.
We had the good fortune that the movie Zootopia arrived in theaters that day, so we had family movie night. Of course, we also had all the candy and popcorn he could possibly desire. And the theater has giant reclining seats. He was pleased.
The movie was great! All in all, a wonderful birthday celebration.
Phase One of Ezra’s braces ended this week, a much-anticipated event that we’ve been counting down to for weeks. I took one last picture of his mouth full of metal right before they came off.
They’d told me it would take about an hour and a half, so I dropped Ezra off and ran to Trader Joe’s to get my shopping done. When I came back an hour later, thinking I’d be pretty early, he was already done and happily playing on one of the iPads they have for patients. I got the quick rundown from the orthodontist. Things look good except for the one wonky adult tooth on the bottom that’s headed the wrong direction; they’ve made room for the adult teeth to come in; we’ll visit in September to see about starting Phase Two.
I’d picked up some of Ezra’s favorite treats that had been forbidden for the last year — Abba Zaba candy bars, caramel popcorn, gum — and he enjoyed a few things before I took him to school. Here he is with his loot and newly smooth teeth.
He had a celebratory play date that afternoon and pretty much ate his weight in chewy candy over the next couple of days.
Fifth graders at Fairmeadow participate in an overnight field trip called Age of Sail. The idea is that they are sailers on a ship (the Balclutha) in 1906. They all have jobs and are put into teams ahead of time to practice. Ezra was on the rigger crew. Bruce went along on the trip as a chaperone, but the whole idea of the trip is to have the kids be independent and solve problems on their own, so there is very little interaction with the chaperones. The ship is staffed with actors playing the parts of captain, first mate, etc., all with distinct personalities. Some are mean, some are silly.
The trip is a big deal at school and a bit of a rite of passage as they gain independence before entering middle school next year. I took a couple pictures while we waited for the bus to pick up Ezra’s class. Here are Ezra and Henry milling around.
And here’s Ezra with his giant pack heading to the bus.
Luckily one of the chaperones was tasked with photographing the trip, so I have some pictures. Here’s the Balclutha.
Here are the chaperones being shown to their bunks.
Here are the kids being introduced to the ship and getting some preliminary instructions. As I understand it, the captain had asked one of the crew to find ten 20-year-olds to hire, but he had come back with twenty 10-year-olds instead.
Here’s Ezra and the rigger crew.
Here’s the group with the captain.
Sleeping quarters:
All the groups had to do a night watch, which was probably one of the hardest things of the trip. Ezra’s shift was from 2:30 to 3:45 so he went to sleep and woke up to do watch with his group. Luckily he was able to go back to sleep afterwards. Here’s a shot of his friend Emerson on night watch.
Here’s the rigger crew at dawn hoisting someone up in the bosun chair.
This one is the teacher in the bosun chair. Apparently the class was negotiating for better conditions (less homework, more iPad time). Bruce said she was a really good sport.
And one last shot of the crew taking down the Fairmeadow flag before heading back home.
Ezra loved the trip even though he got in trouble a few times for stepping over the lines (ropes) on the ship. We’d heard ahead of time that there would be yelling and that kids and chaperones would get in trouble. It didn’t seem to bother Ezra at all.
At the beginning of the school year, Ezra’s teacher had the students do self-portraits. This is not unusual, of course, but what was different was that she told them they could use any materials they wanted. Many students did traditional self-portraits with crayons or markers. Here’s the portrait wall in their class.
A few branched out, including Ezra, who “pushed the boundaries” (as his teacher told me) by using spray paint, cardboard, and his own hair from his last haircut. (He always saves a Ziploc bag of hair each time Bruce shaves his head; this time it was actually put to use.) Kudos to his teacher for working with him to formulate a plan for his unusual materials and helping him bring his vision to life. Here he is.
His teacher told me she loved it. I love the fact that she really seems to get him. He’s a lucky fifth grader.
Ezra got the chance to play bubble soccer last weekend at the PTA fundraising party for fifth graders. We’ve seen it being played at the park several times, and it’s quite amusing to watch. That’s Ezra in the green bubble in the middle.
Here’s a short video. Ezra is the one in the green bubble on the left side doing the little roll maneuver at the beginning.
Complete with snacks, drinks, and pizza, this was a successful fifth grade party!
On October 8th I chaperoned a field trip with Ezra’s class to Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. The kids were given booklets to help guide them through the museum and provide some hands on activities. In the booklets, they sketched their favorite pieces and answered questions about the different areas of the museum. I think they all had a pretty good time. First, of course, was some goofing off before we went in.
And here are some shots inside the museum.
This well-endowed horse provided the comic relief for the day to a gaggle of ten-year-old boys.
