Gold Rush Day 2015

A culminating experience for the fourth graders, who study California history all year long, is Gold Rush Day. The teachers and staff build a gold rush town at school (“Tiger Eye Canyon”) and the students spend most of the day as miners, panning and searching for gold, heading to the assay office and the bank to turn it in, buying provisions at the stores, hanging out in the saloon, and more. It’s really quite a production, with most kids and adults in costume and a miner’s lunch of chili, ribs, bread and desserts provided by the parents.

I volunteered to help and was asked to take pictures — a perfect fit for me. The day started with a speech from the Sheriff, who laid out some rules while the fidgety kids tried to spy the gold nuggets in the adjacent “field.”

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Soon enough they were off and running, finding lots of gold in them thar hills.

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There were also a couple of spots to pan for gold. However, after an hour or so, most kids figured out that the gold nuggets weighed a lot more and therefore were worth a lot more in exchange, and the panning became less popular.

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Once they had some gold, they went to the assay’s office where it was weighed and they were given a certificate to take to the bank.

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Each student was scheduled for a shift at one of the stations — assay’s office, bank, saloon, photo booth, schoolhouse, etc. Here are Ezra and Henry, who took at early shift at the bank.

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The saloon was a popular destination, with two blackjack tables and a bar selling root beer shots.

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There was old timey music, too.

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Here are a few more pictures of Ezra from throughout the day.

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Here he is at the newspaper office. I’m not sure what he was writing or how he could see but I thought it was super cute.

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And here he is after a search for nuggets in the gold field.

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Since I was one of the designated photographers, I have a ton of photos here. It really was a great day!

Ezra’s Art 2015

The boys’ school offers an art class (Spectra Art) and so that their masterpieces are not forgotten once they are packed away, I’ll post them here. This post is Ezra’s. We should get Finn’s artwork soon and I’ll do a separate post.

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Also, because I don’t think I posted this last year and it was my favorite piece, I’ll post his screwdriver from third grade here.

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Ezra’s School Music Recital

On May 19th Bruce and I were treated to a fourth and fifth grade music recital. Ezra’s class (fourth grade) spent the year learning how to play recorder and they performed a song called “Jitterbug.”

They also sang two songs: “Movin’ on Out” …

… and “All American You and Me.”

They were all pretty cute!

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Ezra’s Firebird Award

Ezra received his Firebird award this month — at the very last award assembly, of course. You can tell from the picture it meant a lot to him. (He told me he crumpled it up to make it “easier to carry.”)

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“Creative spirit” could easily be code for something more nefarious, but I think his teacher really did [mostly] appreciate his outside the box personality.

Ezra’s Raccoon Habitat

It’s always heartwarming for me when Ezra, our reluctant student, is doing something at school that he’s excited about. He had such a project this week — building a model of a raccoon habitat. It was only after several days of planning and building that he mentioned that it was a math project; part of the assignment was to calculate the area and perimeter. Here’s his booklet.

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He came up with the idea to only have the raccoon’s tail showing since it was digging in the trash can for food. Here’s the model, complete with a hot glue pond with rocks, a little house, and a fence around the perimeter.

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I knew he was happy with it when he agreed to a picture our way to school today despite his recent camera aversion.

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Braces

So last month, this happened.

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And here’s why.

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Basically, there are three problems. 1) There’s not enough room for all the incoming teeth, 2) he’s got a pretty big overbite, and 3) he’s got that wayward yet-to-come-in tooth on the bottom that is heading in the wrong direction. The hope is that the braces will correct the overbite and open up the current teeth to make room for the new ones to come in.

Ezra was not happy about getting braces at all. In fact, at first he didn’t want any one to know and he planned to not open his mouth at school so no one would find out. But, it’s been a month now and he’s adjusted well. I think his teeth are already straighter.

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Only 11 more months to go!

Ezra’s Sacramento Field Trip

At Fairmeadow, the entire fourth grade goes to Sacramento every year. I decided to chaperone the trip, and I have to say I was dreading it a bit. It was going to be a long day — we had to be at school at 6:00 am (!) and we wouldn’t return until after 5:00 pm. The drive alone is over two hours, usually longer on the way home. But, it turned out to be a pretty great day. I knew a few of the other moms who were chaperoning and the school rented very comfortable buses for us instead of school buses. Best of all, they allowed the kids to use screens on the drive, so it was pretty much the quietest field trip I’ve ever been on.

Ezra and I were grouped together with his best friend Henry (and Henry’s mom, Christina) along with four other kids. Here are the silly boys before we embarked on the trip — it was still dark outside.

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We had some nice views of the sunrise from the bus, and even though my photo doesn’t do it justice (I wasn’t near a window), I’ll share it here.

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Our first stop was the Capitol building.

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While we waited for our official tour to start, we spent some time looking around the rotunda and the offices they have set up showing what they looked like historically.

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Here are the kids in our group in front of Governor Brown’s office.

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When our tour started (unfortunately with the worst tour guide ever!) we visited the museum-like offices first and then went upstairs to the Senate and Assembly chambers.

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My favorite room was the office of the treasury, which included the coolest old safe.

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After the tour we had a little down time outside where there was a great climbing tree (until one of the other moms deemed it unsafe and made all the kids get down).

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Our next stop was Sutter’s Fort where we took a group shot of the whole class.

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And then after a quick lunch, we toured the fort.

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The last stop was the Railroad Museum where we saw lots of historic trains and railroad items.

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These two goofballs seemed to have a pretty good time.

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My favorite part was a recreation of the dining car on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line.

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They had displays of all of the dishes they used on each line.

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The boys really liked the enormous model train display.

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And then we were done. One last shot of Ezra and Henry outside the museum before boarding the buses and heading home.

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Ezra’s 10th Birthday Party

Ezra wanted to build something for his party this year. After several ideas and a few prototypes (the mini-crossbows were cute, but a little difficult to make and not very robust), we decided on a woodworking project. We needed a fairly simple project since we assumed most of the boys didn’t have any woodworking experience, and we settled on making a chalkboard based on one of Rob’s successful woodworking classes last year.

In addition to the project, Ezra requested a homemade papier mache piñata, so Bruce got to work on that early in the week. Here are the boys getting ready to paint it — like a globe since it was round.

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And because Bruce is Bruce, we also had a second piñata, this one made of ice. Bruce used duct tape, rope and a wooden spoon to sink Hershey bars into our largest pot, and then added more water with our turkey baster.

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We weren’t really sure how either of these things was going to work out, but we hoped one would be successful for the party.

There were six guests, all boys from Ezra’s class, plus Ezra and Finn. Bruce set up the backyard with stations for each step of the project, and did one of his famous instructional posters.

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Bruce went through the project and showed them how to do each step, and then they were off and running with, not surprisingly, varying degrees of interest and accuracy.

This is Ezra’s best friend, Henry. He’s a very nice boy and Ezra adores him, so I allow him to come over despite the Sharks t-shirt he seems to be perpetually wearing.

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A few more pictures of the action:

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Once the chalkboards were built, their frames painted, and the boys had devoured some snacks, it was time for the ice piñata, which turned out to be a huge hit, I think both for the novelty of it and that they got to hit it with a hammer. And wear safety goggles. Oh, and the king size Hershey bars didn’t hurt either.

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After the ice piñata came the final round of painting, the boards themselves. Everyone was surprised — and some were dismayed — that there was no regular black chalkboard paint. Oh well.

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And then we did the world piñata. The boys enjoyed calling out where on the earth they were going to hit.

And they made quite a few dents and finally Bruce took over to bust it wide open. I don’t have video of the mad rush because I was consoling Finn who was too scared to join the craziness and thought he would totally miss out on candy. We managed to get him a few pieces.

At last there were cupcakes.

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And singing. Ten year old boy style.

The boys spent the remaining time running around like crazies and trading the candy and gum from the piñata. I think it was a pretty successful, if stressful, party. Bruce and I capped it off with a pitcher of margaritas.

(More pictures here.)

Ezra’s 10th Birthday

Ezra’s birthday celebration got started very early … for me at least. He wanted to bring donuts to school so I was at Krispy Kreme at the crack of dawn buying them. Of course, I brought home some extras so we could start the day off right with the breakfast of champions. Thankfully, Bruce also made them eggs so they wouldn’t be hungry and cranky five minutes after getting to school.

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Jamma called to wish Ezra a happy birthday, so we all got to have a chat.

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Then it was off to school. I stopped Ezra on the way out for a proper 10th Birthday Photo.

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School seemed to go well; I’m pretty sure Ezra ate the three or so extra donuts I’d bought so he was happy. When we got home he had a Skype date with his friend Jack, who turned ten two days before Ezra. Here’s Ezra showing Jack a website he likes.

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After that the boys had much needed and long overdue dentist appointments. I think I earned the Mother of the Year award for booking a dentist appointment on his birthday, but he didn’t really seem to mind.

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For his birthday dinner, he chose his favorite burger joint, Five Guys. We picked up Bruce from the offices of Skybox where he was doing a meet and greet since Google recently acquired the company. Across the street we spied a robot (!) and went over to check it out.

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And there was a whole slew of them inside!

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After dinner he opened presents — lots of LEGO, exactly what he wanted.

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And, of course, there were cupcakes.

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His party was planned for the coming weekend, so I did a little test of the kind of cupcakes he wanted, namely, chocolate cake with a chunk of chocolate in the middle. I wasn’t sure how that was going to turn out, so I did some with and some without. I also tried two kinds of frosting — vanilla buttercream and chocolate ganache. Oh, and of course, chocolate mini figures on top.

He lit his own candle, we sang, and four cupcakes were history in about a minute.

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Happy Birthday, Ezra!

Ezra’s Mission Project

Fourth grade is the year public school kids learn about the California Missions. Ezra is no exception, and he was assigned Mission San Gabriel. We visited the mission when we were in SoCal over the holidays and I was hopeful the project would go well, or at least he would take an interest in it, which initially seemed to be the case.

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His teacher made a schedule so that each piece of the puzzle (essay, map, drawing, etc.) had a due date early enough that there was plenty of time for edits, redos and putting it all together. Unfortunately, every single step of this project became more painful than the last. There were tears, angry scribbles and some door slamming before every due date. It was all so unpleasant that I realized when it was all done that I hadn’t taken any pictures of any part of the process. I think the project came at a particularly tough time for Ezra as the transition back to school after Christmas break was difficult for various reasons.

He finally did rally though, and over the last weekend before it was due we all pitched in and his poster turned out quite good. He had some creative ideas and seemed to be genuinely taking an interest which was really nice to see.

Here he is with his poster and cardboard rendering at school. This is his new pose for every picture.

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The day after the projects were due, all of the fourth graders celebrated with food and dancing at Fiesta Day. Here are a few pictures from the dance. Ezra is on the right of the first photo. He’s wearing a borrowed sombrero.

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I was pleased to hear that he had a good time with the dancing! (I was also thankful that another parent took pictures I could download from the class’s website!)

Ezra’s Buddy Assembly

It was Ezra’s turn for a buddy assembly last week; his fourth grade class and one of the second grade classes put on a play. The little kids dressed up and acted things out; the big kids narrated.

Unlike Finn, who practiced his songs and poems in front of us for several weeks and made sure we were both aware of the date of the assembly well in advance, Ezra hardly mentioned his until a day or two before it was happening. He even had one of the speaking parts, which I didn’t know until I watched it happen.

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The play was really cute and despite his reluctance to talk about it, I think he had a good time.

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As an aside, that’s his new friend Henry in the Rangers jersey. The last time I saw him he was wearing a Sharks t-shirt. Tough playoffs for him last year!

Ezra’s Los Trancos Field Trip

Ezra’s class has been studying earthquakes this year, and one of the local trails here has an actual San Andreas Fault Trail which is an obvious choice for a field trip. These were my charges for the day, although thankfully I had another mom with us, too.

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Here’s the whole class.

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It really is an interesting trail, showing fault breaks from the previous big earthquakes and examples of how the earth moved. And the weather was pretty spectacular that day.

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Best of all, none of the kids threw up in my car on the windy roads!

Ezra’s California Project

Ezra’s fourth grade curriculum is focusing a lot on California, and their first big project was a “passport” project where they researched and presented a relative who came to California. I think it was supposed to be their nearest relative, but a) Ezra wanted to do male relative (that leaves out Jamma who would have made the research much easier since she was visiting!) and b) we had some very interesting German documents for Bruce’s maternal great-grandfather, Paul Meyer, who came to California from Germany in 1874.

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So, we looked back at the documents we had, and, more importantly, at the translations of them at Jokke had done for us a few years ago (thanks, Jokke!) and tried to piece some information together. I also found some interesting information on the interwebs. For example, he sailed on the steamship Columbia and there was someone else from his town with the last name Meyer that they presume was a relative. We even found a map of the routes taken at that time. Ezra used all of this to fill out his passport booklet:

In addition to the booklet, he had to prepare a presentation to the class as if he were his relative. He was even supposed to dress the part, so he wore his suit coat, shirt and tie with his usual shorts. The shorts were, perhaps, a little unorthodox for 1874, but it was too warm for long pants. He was also supposed to pack a suitcase and luckily we had kept Bruce’s great-grandmother’s suitcase instead of getting rid of it in the Palo Alto panic purge (how’s that for alliteration?).

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He wouldn’t let me in to watch his speech, so I surreptitiously took some photos from the doorway.

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Bruce wrote out his speech for him — here it is.

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He did great! And, more importantly, as much as he complained about the project, I think in the end he enjoyed himself and learned a lot. Here’s his teacher’s evaluation.

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Mohawk, Briefly

Ezra, the boy who asked us to shave his head last year, has been growing his hair out for a few months now. I think the last time he cut it was some time in the Fall, and when it came up again to cut it a couple of months ago, he said he wanted a reverse mohawk. I said no with the excuse that it would be much too distracting at school. So he said, “Fine, then I’m going to grow it out.” Out is really the operative word here — his hair doesn’t get long so much as big. And big it had gotten.

I figured once the weather changed and it was hot I’d have another chance to get him to cut it. This week’s 80 degree temps worked in my favor and Monday night was haircut night. I took a couple of [goofy] before pics.

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Apparently he and Bruce made a deal that he could have his mohawk (regular, not reverse) for pictures.

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We actually thought it looked pretty cute. But as agreed, the rest came off next.

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He reported that many of the kids at school asked if they could rub his head the next day. And one girl told him she thought he looked better with this haircut. Then he said maybe he’d keep it like this all the time. We’ll see.

Ezra’s Sydney Opera House

Before he started building the Sydney Opera House, he made a contract.

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It’s funny that he seemed to put so much pressure on himself to build this thing. We were consciously not adding any pressure, in part because we didn’t know how complicated it would be and if he would actually be able to do it.

Ezra, on the other hand, was quite confident. And it turned out he was right. Here he is after completing the first instruction book.

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And he continued to work. He didn’t have time to do it every day, but when there was time we knew we would find him in this spot.

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And on March 17th, he was all done!

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He really did do almost all of it by himself, too. Bruce helped him through two tough spots, and only once were there tears of frustration. Mostly, just joy.

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And a huge sense of accomplishment.