Finn

This year, it’s Finn’s turn to do the fourth grade California Passport project. He chose to do it on Jamma, which meant he could do most of it on his own. He took great initiative contacting her with questions and putting it all together. I helped with photos and proofreading, and Bruce helped with the visual aids for his class presentation. Here’s a slideshow of the passport booklet.

And here he is meeting with the “governor of California” (his wonderful teacher, Mrs. Johnson) before his presentation.

Here’s the video of his speech.

And the speech written out.

Lastly, here’s his grade report. Well done, Finn!

Last month I chaperoned Finn’s last field trip of the year — to Angel Island, just north of San Francisco. All of the kids and most of the chaperones made the 90 minute plus trip on school buses. The overflow chaperones (me included) went together, which I thought would be better, but turned out to be a little too Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride for my liking. At any rate, we all made it, if somewhat worse for wear.

First up was the ferry across the bay to the island. I was paired with another mom and these were our charges: Finn, Atticus, Sasha, and Ethan.

Here’s another one of Finn on the ferry. It was very bright and windy!

The day’s plan was to hike to the top of the mountain, have lunch, hike back down, and play at the beach for a while. Here are Finn and Atticus consulting the map.

The first part of the hike was pretty steep and strenuous and there were lots of complaints from the kids. But then the trail settles into a fairly easy, meandering route and most of the kids did pretty well. Finn and his friend Eli took turns taking pictures with Eli’s camera.

It was a lovely hike with great views.

I took this one from the top after we had lunch.

And here’s our whole unruly bunch.

And my selfie with Finn.

Soon we were off, taking a different trail back down.

After the hike we had a lot of time at the beach. Too much time, if you ask me (or any other chaperone). Finn didn’t go in the water, which was understandable because it was freezing! Despite unpleasant rides home for both of us and lots of traffic, we eventually made it at about 6:00 pm. Long day!

The next day Finn brought home thank you notes that he and Atticus wrote. I loved his.

I loved how we talked and hiked, too, my sweet boy.

Poor Finn’s birthday came in the middle of escrow craziness, so we have yet to schedule a birthday party for him. However, we did have a family celebration, of course, and I think he had a pretty nice day.

He got some presents.

On the way to dinner — at Five Guys, his pick — I snapped this picture of the brothers.

Peanuts at Five Guys …

And finally, back at home, there was cake.

Among the moving boxes.

Happy Birthday, to my sweet, silly nine-year-old.

Last week Finn and I visited the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge (now that’s a mouthful) across the Dumbarton Bridge in Fremont. It’s a doozy of a trip with some parents leading activities for the students and other parents chaperoning. I reluctantly agreed to be a station leader when they were short on volunteers, even though it was terrible timing for us since we were leaving on a camping trip the next morning. We were all a little worried about the weather and the projected rain, but the day turned out to be mostly dry, if a little chilly.

I paired up with another mom to teach the kids about salt pond migration and the necessity of the local habitat to the migratory bird population. There was a script to read and a game to play; some groups were more interested than others. Here are a couple of shots from our station.

I have very few pictures, but I snapped a couple when Finn’s group came through.

And here’s one I took at the end of the day when the rain clouds really started rolling in.

It took what seemed like forever to orchestrate this class picture.

The rain came just as we were hiking back up to the cars. It was a good day but totally exhausting!

This year, Finn’s third grade class is buddies with a first grade class. They had their Buddy Assembly last week; the theme was Character Matters. They wore costumes and sang a few songs about the Golden Rule, and were generally just adorable. Finn is in the back row on the left in floppy mouse ears.

I don’t have many pictures because I was way in the back of the room. After the performance was over and the auditorium cleared out, they did a reprise of their golden rule song for the parents so I got video.

Finn’s first field trip of third grade was to check out the new Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers. I volunteered to go, because I almost always volunteer to go on field trips. I didn’t realize it was such a hot commodity (the teacher did a lottery to chose the two chaperones); if I had, I would have bowed out and let a real football fan take my place. Anyway, we were taken on fancy buses about 20 minutes south to Santa Clara and arrived to find a team of stadium employees set to show us around. Here are some pictures of Finn and friends, and their opening pass-the-football activity.

Our group was assigned to take a tour of the stadium first. Our guide talked a lot about football and the upcoming Super Bowl, which I found endlessly entertaining as a high percentage of the kids are not American and are blissfully ignorant about American football. She also made some attempt to talk about the geometry of design in the stadium, but really it was dawning on me that this field trip was pure 49er propaganda. The stadium is lovely though; here are a few pictures.

A couple of the kids got to try on some football equipment.

Then we went for a lunch break. Finn liked the charging station.

After lunch we went to the “educational” portion of the field trip. They talked about lift and force with respect to throwing a football, and then the kids broke into groups and got to try out throwing, kicking, and handing off footballs. It was fun — I got to catch the footballs.

They also had these screens up with different aspects of football. I don’t remember what they all were, but the biggest hit had the kids trying to follow along with a cheerleading routine.

Here’s a short video. All girls and one brave boy.

Then they gathered in the big helmet for a class photo.

The last bit of time was spent in the 49er museum. Again, this would have been really great for an actual fan.

It’s a good thing I don’t mind the boys getting a free day away from school, because this was a nonsense field trip. The only purpose I could see was to try to recruit new 49er fans!