Month: March 2018

On February 24th I was out for my morning walk when I got a phone call from Ali, who runs the travel teams for the hockey club where the boys play. She said they were in desperate need of a replacement goalie because the regular goalie had the flu. After much hullaballoo about which team he’d play for (there’s an A and a B team), he ended up playing on the A team. Luckily this is the team he practices with on Mondays, so he knows the kids, but they’ve all been playing much longer than he has so their skill level is higher.

He was nervous — and so were Bruce and I! — as he’d never played in a real game situation. There were all sorts of little things he didn’t know, like the goalie leads the team out on the ice, they switch sides each period, and the goalie leads in the handshake line at the end. Luckily, the other players were incredibly welcoming and supportive both for these little technicalities and during the game. Likewise, the parents were very nice to Bruce and me and super supportive of Finn’s efforts. It was a tough game — they lost 9-2 to a team that was clearly superior. Finn played well and had a good time, and even though he had moments of despair when the goals against kept coming.

Here are some pictures and video.

I have to say as a parent, watching him in this situation was incredibly nerve-wracking! I was so happy that the kids and parents were so supportive. Here’s the final score sheet, thanks to my friend Christina, showing that Finn had 19 saves.

Finn’s class periodically has a class store where they can make things and then sell them to classmates. For the first one, he and Bruce made a watermelon out of Papier-mâché. This time, he and his friend Sangeet decided to make a game. Here is their initial sketch.

It’s a little bit like skee-ball in that you throw balls and try to get into certain holes for more points. I don’t have any pictures of them building it, but here are a couple of them painting it. It’s made of chicken wire, cardboard, and plastic tubing.

Here’s a shot of Finn on his way to school the morning of the store. The final paint job took on an Olympic theme.

And here’s a shot his teacher took during the store.

They decided not to sell the game itself. Instead they sold turns to play it and win candy. It was apparently a huge hit.

Two years ago I got to go with Ezra on his field trip to NASA’s Ames Research Center, and this year I got to go with Finn. They have a great learning center there, and they’ve changed some things up in the last two years. There was a new flight landing simulator where the kids get to plan out flight paths and make adjustments to make sure planes land safely. They all seemed to enjoy it.

There was a movie about future space exploration that the kids seemed to enjoy. There’s also a good hands-on part with lots of spinny things.

And then this part where they’re trying to simulate how hard it is to land something somewhere when both parts are moving.

They also spent a little time in a simulated International Space Station doing experiments.

The only bummer about the changes was that they no longer have the model of Bruce’s project (LADEE). It’s been replaced with a poster placed in the stairwell with posters of other projects.