Finn

Finn got his turn to experience the magic of fourth grade Gold Rush Day on May 17th. He and the rest of his classmates had been preparing for this day for weeks and they were all very excited. His class was in charge of making this year’s town sign.

Finn’s work shift at the Assay Office wasn’t until right before lunch, so he spent the morning panning and mining for gold, buying stuff at the general store, and enjoying sarsaparilla at the Redwood Ridge Saloon.

Finally, his shift started and it was a doozy! He and his friend Satvik manned the scales during the busiest time when everyone was cashing out their gold for the day. Here’s a shot in the calm before the storm.

And here they are mid-transaction.

Once they were finally done, they enjoyed a miner lunch of chili and bread.

After lunch they had an auction, but I didn’t stick around for that so I don’t have any photos. I want to share a few of my other favorite shots from the day and you can see all of my photos here.

Here are Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Easton getting in some gambling time at the saloon.

A couple of girls from Finn’s class teaching school.

The opening gold rush.

It’s such a great day!

Finn hit double digits this year!

His birthday fell on a school day, so I made cookies (lemon, at his request) for his class and then we celebrated with dinner of his choice at The Counter. He opened one present early (just after school) and the rest in the car after we picked up Bruce from work.

He got a few sets of LEGO minifigures which we opened and put together at dinner.

After dinner we continued the celebration with ice cream cake.

No party this year — he chose to go on a snow trip with Bruce instead.

I don’t remember this happening when Ezra was in fourth grade, but this year the District held several events for fourth graders to try out and choose what instrument they’d like to take next year. Finn is interested in either the trumpet or trombone, and despite the ridiculous lines at the event, he got to try each of them.

We’ll see which one he ends up with, and start preparing the sound-proof practice room.

On March 9th, Finn and I went on the annual fourth grade field trip to Sacramento. I was happy to get to go again since I had a great visit with Ezra’s class two years ago. It’s an early day though! We were on the bus at 6:30 am! Here’s Finn and his friend Floyd setting in for the ride.

There was some confusion at first when our bus tried to drop us off at City Hall instead of the State Capitol building, but soon enough we were where we were supposed to be. We started off with a class picture in front of the building.

Once inside, we waited for our tour time by walking around a bit. Here are a few shots.

Los Angeles County’s display case (every county has one):

Finn in front of the bear that guards the governor’s office:

Our tour guide later told us that Arnold Schwarzenegger bought the bear from an art gallery when he was governor. He also said they call it “germ bear” or “bacteria bear” because everyone touches it. Yuck!

Here are a few shots from our tour. We weren’t able to see the Senate room because there were too many other tours happening but we did see the House. (As an aside, it did seem to be quite a bit busier tour-wise than two years ago. I’m attributing it to everyone’s increased interest in government since our last debacle of a presidential election.)

While our tour guide this time didn’t harass the kids about how they are responsible for taking part in government (a good point with poor execution), this year’s guide wasn’t that great either. He did a pretty good Schwarzenegger impression though. But, he didn’t point out fun things like the tiled California poppies on the floor. Luckily, Finn’s teacher, Mrs. Johnson, did.

After the Capitol, we still had two more stops on our Sacramento tour. Next was Sutter’s Fort, which had another school doing an overnight field trip in costume. Our kids got to see rope and candles being made, as well as the cannon being fired which was a huge hit.

After lunch, our final destination was the Railroad Museum.

Once again I had a little nerdy moment to myself while I admired the place setting display from the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line.

Finn asked me to sit next to him on the way home. I think he had a wonderful day but was just done interacting with friends. Or maybe he just wanted to play games on my phone. (Sad news for him as there aren’t any games on my phone!) It didn’t really matter because about 20 minutes in he was out.

Great day!

On February 24th Finn’s class teamed up with their second grade buddy class for this year’s buddy assembly. They did a version of the book Click Clack Moo which was super cute. They also sang a song — here’s a video.

The video is a little far away, so here’s a picture from after the performance.

After weeks of research, writing, and creativity, Finn turned in his mission project on February 9th. He was very proud of his storyboard, which was the required part …

… and his model, which was the optional part.

He and Bruce did a bang-up job, even creating the inside and installing a light. Here’s a peek through the front window.

He was also excited about Fiesta Day and his new sombrero which he wore all the time.

Sophie liked it too.

We are very proud of Finn for doing such a great job on his project!

Fiesta Day was Friday the 10th and the kids learned a dance and got dressed up to perform.

Here’s video.

Here’s a post-dance picture of the whole class.

I left after the dance, but they also had a taco feast, so all in all a great end to the week for Finn!

Finn was assigned Mission San Miguel for his project, so on February 4th we made the 2+ hour trip south to pay it a visit. I was hoping to make it into an overnight adventure, but we just couldn’t make it happen. It turned out to be fine as a day trip, and on the way back we stopped at Mission San Juan Bautista so Bruce could see it. Here’s Finn just after we arrived — he was super happy.

There was a wedding about to happen inside the church so we spent some time outside first.

Here’s the bell tower.

On the side of the church was a small cemetery. This was the entrance.

Inside the side yard …

They had a small museum and store, which we saw next. Finn liked this cannon outside of the store.

After we saw the grounds and the museum, we went inside the church. (The person at the store told us it was OK, that people who get married there understand there will be tourists visiting.) I snapped a couple of pictures.

After the tour we had lunch at a local diner, which was surprisingly good, and then we hit the road. The stop at San Juan Bautista was fairly brief but Finn was excited to show Papa all the things he saw on his field trip. Here are the three of them standing on the original El Camino Real.

At the historic park, they were doing a monthly reenactment and we ran into a couple old-timers at the end of their day. They were very nice and had the boys stand in one of the vats for a photo … which was a little weird.

Finn took a bunch of pictures that day too, which are in a separate album here.

Finn’s class began studying the California Missions before winter break, and on January 24th we visited Mission San Juan Bautista. I didn’t go on this field trip with Ezra, so this was my first visit. In addition to the Mission itself, the surrounding area is a State Historic Park with many buildings from the 1800s. The kids were split into groups and allowed to explore the Mission and the Historic Park in whatever order they liked. We started at the Park and saw the Plaza Hotel, the Zanetta House/Plaza Hall, the Plaza Stables, and the Castro-Breen Adobe.

Here’s our group outside the jail.

After our lunch break we toured the Mission and its grounds.

There is also a small chapel apart from the main Mission, which I thought was lovely.

There was a little bit of time for running around too.

Here’s a shot of the outside of the Mission.

And one of the whole class.

Finn had his second piano recital last month. He played Green Tea and Jingle Bells. He looked pretty sharp in the outfit he picked out. He really wanted to wear the jacket.

Here’s the video of his performance.

And here’s the whole group of students with their teacher, Heidi Saario.

On November 3rd I drove and chaperoned Finn and a few classmates to Filoli for a docent-led hike. Filoli has a 16-acre formal garden and a mansion, but we weren’t there for those things. We were there to hike in their nature preserve, which has a couple of good examples of ground shifts due to earthquakes, a focus of the fourth grade curriculum. We did walk through a part of the formal garden on our way out to the nature preserve; here’s my one photo. Very manicured (and a little fussy for my taste).

Here’s our group and our docent, who pretty quickly lost patience with our talkative bunch.

Here are a few more shots.

We stopped in this spot by the little bridge because it’s right on the San Andreas Fault. The ground has shifted quite a bit there are two plates (the American and the Pacific) which move in opposite directions.

We saw examples of this on another field trip when Ezra was in fourth grade, but I thought it was much more visible here.

I didn’t take very many pictures but it was a gorgeous day. Here’s one last shot from when we were walking back towards the cars.