Ezra

Ezra’s first field trip of the year was last Wednesday and, of course, I went along to chaperone. It was a community based field trip, similar to Finn’s last month. This time, we were taking a school bus to Vons for a tour and shopping. We would then donate the groceries we bought to a local food bank. It was a great opportunity for the kids to put some of the stuff they’ve been learning about healthy foods into practice. Here are some photos.

First, the other chaperones and I admired the quiet (and I mean quiet!) reading time in Ezra’s literacy class as the adults worked out the kinks of the trip. I couldn’t believe that the kids could manage to concentrate with the excitement of the trip, but they did!

First stop was Vons. Each group of five students had $17 to spend on healthy groceries to be donated. Here’s my group.

And here they are shopping. (Thank goodness another mom joined our group, because kids are crazy in the grocery store.)

Next we got a tour of the store, including the back room which was pretty cool.

And the butcher area which was pretty gross.

Then, thank goodness, Vons gave us a snack and we had a little break before heading back on the bus.

Next stop was the food bank at Friends in Deed.

We dropped off a ton of food and got a tour of the pantry from the nice folks who work there.

We then headed back on the bus to our final destination, La Pintoresca Park for lunch and play time. Ezra found this cozy spot to eat his lunch.

Most of the boys, Ezra included, were more interested in watching the skateboarders than eating their lunch.

And finally, it was time to head back to school. Here’s my little bus-rider.

Later that night when I asked Ezra how he liked the field trip, he asked if people were allowed to donate food to the food bank at any time. When I said, yes, he said, “We should do that again!”

I was working diligently this morning on a Photoshop project when I received this text from one of Ezra’s teachers.

Later this afternoon, I had a chat with Ezra about it. In the conversation, I said something like, “You know, that’s the F word. You can’t say that word.” He said, “I didn’t know that was the F word because you wouldn’t tell me.” He has a point. About a month ago he and Finn were dying to know what the F word was, and I just could not bring myself to say it in front of them. So I guess this is my fault. It’s always the mother.

Anyway, I was talking to Cari about it later and to lighten the mood (I assume) she said, “Maybe Ezra could do a Bart Simpson exercise and write 100x on Thea’s board, ‘I will not say fucking in front of my teacher.'” (This was a text, so technically Cari didn’t say it out loud.) Anyway, that gave me an idea to hopefully give Ms. Thea a laugh. I sent this to her via email.

Oh how I love Photoshop.

Ezra has been drawing a lot lately, and last week he showed me four new drawings he called his “latest inventions.”

Surrender!

I can’t remember what he called this one, but perhaps it’s Infinity Man.

Bullet-bomb.

And my personal favorite, Pet Maker 3000.

Quite an imagination. He was very proud.

Today’s installment of Laundry Treasures is brought to you by summer camp:

One acorn
One plastic gem
One pine cone
Someone else’s Chapstick (yuck)

At least the pine cone went all the way through the dryer cycle so everything smells piney fresh.

Ezra was sleepwalking the other night (not unusual). He wandered around the house a bit and then I said to him, “You can go back to bed now.” (He can hear and understand and usually does as asked.) This is where he went.

I thought it was very funny and ran for my camera. In the morning I showed him the picture and he also thought it was pretty funny (and weird that he didn’t remember doing it). Then I told him the story about how I slept-walked at a friend’s house one night when I was a little older than he is now. I walked around their house until I made it to the family room where her parents were. Then I sat down in an ice chest that was in the middle of the room. After a while, I got up and went back to bed. Needless to say, he thought that was pretty funny, too.

One morning this week the boys asked Bruce to get the giant box of stuffed animals down from the closet. He did and Ezra and Finn proceeded to divvy up the contents.

I wasn’t really paying attention to their game because I was getting everything ready for them to go to camp. At one point, Ezra asked me what time we do books each night. Since our schedule is sort of a disaster as of late, I just threw out 7:00 but didn’t ask why he wanted to know. He confirmed that I meant 7:00 p.m. and went about his business. Later in the day, I found this sign he’d made and taped to their bedroom door.

He is such an enigma, that kid.

Ezra did a little chalk art on the gate in the backyard the other day. I thought it looked pretty cool.

He went back the next day to finish filling in where he’d colored some of the wrought iron.

One of the Aveson dads is a photographer who took great pictures of the class for 1900s Day. I’ve finally had a chance to scan them in and share them so here goes. Here’s Ezra with the old-fashioned telephone, which he loved.

And the lovely Ms. Thea looking very proper in her 1900s teacher garb.

And here’s the whole class.

Lastly, here is a picture of Ezra’s yearbook page where he filled in a few of the items. He lists 1900s Day as his favorite school event.

Thursday was Ezra’s last day of first grade and there was a potluck and celebration at school. First, the potluck.

The kids had to walk by the dessert table to get to the regular food. Ezra was in awe.

After he grabbed a few desserts, he did make his way over to the fruit and sandwiches.

And finally sat down to eat with his friend, Ben.

After lunch the kids went to recess and the adults cleaned up. At the end of recess the kids assembled on the rug to receive certificates and leis from Ms. Thea. All was going so well …

When it was Ezra’s turn, instead of walking up to Ms. Thea, he crawled up.

She asked him to stand, which he did. But then he crawled back to his place on the rug.

And then he hid under the table.

When it came time for a class photo, he hid in the back.

After a while he came out and jumped around. We got lucky in that toward the end all the kids got crazy and Ms. Thea told them to shout “Second Grade!” So, finally all the crazy matched Ezra’s crazy.

As usual, I was really looking forward to Ezra’s Celebration of Learning this week; I love seeing all of the students’ work up on the walls, going over what he does at school each day, and getting the reports from the teachers on how he’s doing academically. In the past Ezra has seemed to enjoy COL, too, proudly showing off his work and the different jobs he does at school. Sadly, not so much this time. I’m not sure what set him off as he seemed fine when we got to school, but he was in no mood to show us anything. Regardless, I took some pictures for posterity.

Things didn’t start off too badly. He read a little of his journal to us.

Here’s his book review — blown up as a display on the wall.

And his picture and notes about Jabuti.

He also showed us his spelling book, but was clearly losing his patience.

So we moved on to his Math/Projects class. This face about sums up how things were going.

He showed us the state map puzzle and how he puts it together without the board.

And built a plane out of Lincoln Logs.

He had an art project up on the wall that was fun — all of the students did Escher-inspired tessellations. Ezra’s was a Pack of Sea Monsters.

Finally, we quit torturing him and left. I snapped a picture of his class picture on the way out.

He’d chosen Pie ‘n’ Burger for his post-COL celebration and was finally sort of himself about half-way through. But he had trouble mustering up excitement for anything — even this extra-long french fry he insisted I take a picture of.

He did enjoy his apple pie a la mode.

Finn had blueberry.

Despite the less-than-celebratory mood, we were very happy to see that Ezra’s doing well academically and has made great progress this year. Now, I think we’re all ready for summer to begin.

Ezra’s class had 1900s Day on Friday and Ezra came home with all sorts of fun stuff. Here’s the list of all the activities they had to do.

Here’s Ezra’s pinwheel, marble, jack, sample writing with the quill and ink, and information about Oreos (which he particularly enjoyed).

He also made a very cool candle.

Bruce worked in the classroom to help out and was on washboard duty. Apparently, they had rags set out for the kids to “wash” but the rags were clean, which seemed anticlimactic. So Bruce and the kids set about cleaning the classroom windows. Ezra’s Projects teacher thought this was great, but when he tried washing Ezra’s Literacy teacher’s windows, she was less than amused. At least she didn’t put Bruce in “reflection” for the infraction.

In the quest to find Ezra some shoes that actually fit (after the Star Wars light up sneaker fail) I ordered him some new Crocs this week. He said his current ones (size 12/13) fit fine, so I ordered new ones just the same. But, alas, they were too small. So I ordered the next size up. Apparently, according to Crocs, between size 12/13 and 1 a child’s foot miraculously gets an inch wider.

And as if these failures were not enough, I accidentally put his old pair in the dryer. Now they look like worn out elf shoes.

I give up.

While I was at the hockey game on Wednesday evening, Bruce was home with the boys and Ezra made a list of activities he wanted to do.

It’s pretty legible, but here’s the translation:

Plan for June 6, and 7, 2012

Watch Stanly Cup til end
Blend the bananas in the freezr (without peel)
Eat bananas (at same time)
Have running race
Bear class

Plan by: Ezra

He managed to check off watching the game, and they did have their bear class, but the rest had to wait for the next day.

After the last post about Finn’s yearbook, I decided I had to dig out Ezra’s and scan in the picture of him ironing. It’s my favorite page of the whole book.