Family

This week was Teacher Appreciation Week so I asked the boys to make cards for their teachers. Ezra didn’t want to draw anything, so he wrote [brief] letters.

Finn drew his classroom on one side and then wrote a note on the other. For Ms. Jessica, his math teacher, he drew the D1 classroom and did some math problems on the other side.

I love that each of the S’s in Jessica is going a different direction.

Ms. Vonni, his literacy teacher, got the D2 classroom and a sentence on the other side.

The sentence is his standard version of “I went to the park and I had fun.” Creative spelling is a must.

About a half-hour ago I was making dinner and realized I’d seen the boys ride their bikes past the kitchen window a while back but I hadn’t seen them come back. They are now allowed to go around the block and since we’d had a sudden thunder storm about an hour earlier, they were particularly excited to have sun again and be able to ride. Still, I was a little concerned so I went out to look for them. Here’s where I found them.

Woodworking #11 came up on us fast since, due to a schedule change, Woodworking #10 was only three weeks ago. Bruce decided to switch things up a bit for this class and instead of real woodworking the project was carving plaster. They still had a little woodworking to do when they made a base for their carving, but mostly it was all about the plaster. Bruce built a mold and poured 100 pounds of plaster, in batches of course, to make blocks for carving. It looked pretty cool.

As a sample before class, Bruce carved Rob’s nose — it came out pretty good!

Here are Bruce’s instructions with ideas of things to carve:

The kids ignored the idea of making the base first and got right to the carving.

After the projects were done (or at least after some of them were done) we broke out the slip n slide for some water play since it was a freakishly hot day. I have never seen this group line up in such an orderly manner!

Here’s Finn mid-air.

Jackson’s rock on! move.

Jack opted to go head first.

Olivia, Ashlyn and Terra all had a similar method.

The water was so cold, I can’t really believe they kept going back for another slide. But they did.

After a while, we took a break from water play to have dinner … in various places around the yard.

Here are some samples of finished products.

I don’t have a picture of Jack’s mountain but it was awesome. And his mom told me that he cleared off his dresser so it would have “maximum visibility.” Ha!

I was having a very fun time taking pictures at this class … and I took several hundred. I uploaded some of them here if you want to see more of our super fun evening.

We’d noticed for a while that Finn’s bike was looking a little small for him, but he was reluctant to switch because the next size up is just a bit too big. Finally, after the camping trip where he did a lot of riding, he agreed it was time for an upgrade. Here’s his fancy new bike.

Finn was so excited about his bike that he wrote about it. Keep in mind when you try to read it that he has just started writing and many of his letters are backwards. Oh, and word spacing? Not so important to a Kindergartener.

Translation: “I got a new bike and it is faster than my old bike. It is a blue and black bike.” Yay, Finn!

The boys spend a lot of time riding their bikes on the sidewalk in front of our house. There’s a part of the sidewalk that has been lifted up by tree roots and they use it for jumping. I’m sure they feel like Evel Knievel, but really they’re barely leaving the ground. You’d never know it from their faces though — especially Ezra.

Finn’s approach is a little mellower.

They graduated to crossing the street on their own this weekend. They wanted to go around the block, but the street just north of us doesn’t have sidewalks on the south side, so in order to ride on the sidewalk they have to cross the street. It’s a big step in their world.

I’m trying desperately to catch up with my blogging, so here are some random images I’m shoving into one post. First, while Bruce was on his most recent backpacking trip with Peter, I took the boys to the credit union to open “piggy banker” accounts. It took a little longer than I anticipated and they got a bit unruly, but luckily the bank staff saved the day with coloring books and crazy pencils to keep them busy.

My favorite part of the day was seeing their signatures on the bank forms.

Next, Ezra’s been doing some test prep the last few weeks as second graders participate in state testing for the first time. His literacy practice test came home about a week and a half ago and, as a self-proclaimed grammar nazi, I was horrified to see he missed this one.

I’m pretty sure he knows how to properly use an apostrophe and that it does not, in fact, make things plural. He probably just wanted to torture me. Needless to say, we had a chat about it.

Last Monday Finn and I ran some errands during his sick day (he was coughing a lot), and one of our stops was Cottage. First, I have to say he looked huge in that setting. His former teachers all came to say hi; I think he was a little uncomfortable with the whole thing but he was relatively polite, if a little quiet. When we were ready to leave, we measured him in the little cutout with the tree.

I remember when he started going to Cottage he didn’t even make it into the green part of the tree. *Sigh*

Last but not least, Ezra had two sick days last week when he came down with a random fever. Of course, even though his body was burning up, he felt like he was freezing and since it was a nice warm day, here was the remedy he came up with.

Luckily, the fever didn’t last too long. In fact, his second “sick” day was really just a free day off since his fever was gone but we were obeying the 24-hour fever rule at school. It was a warm day and he couldn’t wait for Finn to get home. They filled up the [very dirty] pond and were happy as clams.

Both boys have had their annual checkups recently so I thought I’d immortalize the facts here. First, Ezra:

And Finn:

That’s right, little brother outweighs big brother by 4.5 pounds. But most importantly, both are healthy and on their own normal growth curves.

I didn’t think to take any pictures during Ezra’s exam, but covertly snapped this one of Finn because I thought he looked so cute.

Afterwards, we headed to Penguins where they chose giant ice cream cones and enjoyed every bit of them.

We had the second and final set of Student Led Conferences on April 23rd and 24th, where we got to see how the boys are doing and, more importantly for the evening, what they’ve been doing. Finn was up first and he’d worked out a special deal with his teacher, Ms. Jessica, that he could start with the 100s Board math job because he really wanted to show it to us and he wanted to make sure he’d have time.

He was very excited that he managed to get through it all. He’s not actually required to do the whole job when showing it to us, but he is a little obsessed with this particular job.

Next he showed us his folder with some of his work.

My favorite was this life cycle of a butterfly done in pasta. I love Kindergarten.

Next we played “Kindergarten Yatzy” which was actually quite fun and is a good way of practicing addition.

Bruce, of course, plotted how many times each number came up and later graphed it for us.

We were running out of time in Finn’s math class, but we took a quick look at his notebook.

And his journal.

And then looked at a couple of his things around the room.

Over in his literacy class he showed us this word-making game.

After the conference we headed down to the cafe to try out food from the new lunch program (very good!) and get some stuff at the book fair. Author Diane Lang came back for a return visit and Bruce got to hold her pet tarantula, Terra.

Ezra held her, too, but she was moving pretty fast so Diane was trying to direct her path.

Ezra’s conference was the next day. We started in his math class and he showed us some of his work.

And the silkworms they’re observing.

He showed us some math jobs. Here’s his list of what he wanted to show us.

Big numbers:

Beaded pyramid chains:

We skipped the 100s board since we’d just done that with Finn the day before and went straight to his Fact Factory folder — a tough fit for him because it’s timed addition and subtraction problems. Doing things quickly in a fairly chaotic environment is not his strong suit but he’s working on it.

Over in literacy, we took a look at his journal. Here’s a recent entry about the camping trip.

His most recent writings are much longer than those from earlier in the year — good progress!

Here’s another about a play date with his friend, Jack.

And one about having nothing to write about.

We also got to see the finished product of his book about Space. He was very proud.

After that, we headed to our traditional post-conference (boys’ pick) for dinner — Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Thank goodness there are only two conferences a year; their food is delicious but it’ll kill you!

Woodworking class #10 (!) was at the Bannings’ a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I’m woefully behind on my blogging. It happened to be on Finn’s birthday so in addition to making boxes, we had a small celebration for Finn. First, the boxes. Kids collect treasures. Lots of treasures. So Rob thought making a box to keep them in would be a good idea. I think everyone agreed.

Here’s Bruce’s instruction sign for the class.

I didn’t ever get a good shot of the whole thing, but I liked the end picture so much I got a closeup of that part. “Assemble & Marvel”

Personally, we had a pretty shaky start — Ezra didn’t want to do the project, yet again, but this time I wasn’t having it. The project was not complicated, nor was their too much sawing as in other projects, so I just wasn’t going to let him out of it. I mean, what’s the purpose of us doing these classes if our own kid doesn’t want to participate? After trying some bad tactics of the “just do it!” variety, I finally decided to actually ask him why he didn’t want to. Many tears later, it was determined that it was all the sanding he didn’t want to do. Aha! So, we did it together and then once that part was done he was off to the races and did the rest of the steps mostly by himself. Woot!

Here he is *patiently* waiting for Caleb to finishing drilling so he can have a turn.

Finally, Ezra’s turn.

He got a little help from Bruce here.

And then he was done. He took an unconventional path to decorating his box, eschewing the shiny things, beads, paint, etc. that most kids were using.

It says, “Remember … do not look in here or else!”

Here’s how a few of the other kids decorated their boxes.

Once the boxes were done and dinner was had, we pulled out the cupcakes and sang to Finn.

He was pretty happy.

And so was everyone else, because the cupcakes were pretty darn good, if I do say so myself!

(More pictures here.)

The Easter Bunny visited again this year thanks to a little last minute prep. Just a couple of baskets with a little candy and a couple of toys. The Easter Bunny doesn’t go too crazy at our house.

He also left a note with a short Easter egg hunt for the boys.

Here’s Finn grabbing the ones off the Hattifattener.

They seemed to be having a good time during the hunt, but afterwards Ezra said it was way too short.
Figures.

We started off Spring Break with a bang — a trip to the dentist first thing Monday morning. During our wait time, the boys checked out all the dinosaurs, including the old typewriter, which is always a hit with them.

I took a couple of photos of them in the chairs. They always look so small to me in these situations.

Good report — no cavities, Finn’s got two loose teeth (his first!) and Ezra’s grownup teeth are coming in nicely. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could avoid braces!

We had the Moision side of the family (plus Jamma) up for a little get together on Saturday and decided to take a picture of all seven cousins. As Jerri said when she saw the picture I posted on Facebook, “That’s a lot of boys.” Yes, yes it is.

They are not easy to wrangle, although they were all pretty cooperative. Here’s Ezra directing traffic to get everyone on the right stair.

Pretty good! (Although, no one is actually smiling or looking too happy about the situation.)

Here’s a pretty good close up.

It broke down pretty quickly.

I think this one is my favorite.

Our kids put on a Spring performance again this year; this time the theme was “Imagine.” They practiced for weeks and both boys reported enjoying the process and the performance. I have some photos but most of them aren’t great due to the low light and how far away I was standing. But I tried.

I did get a couple of cute ones of Finn in the classroom before the first performance. It was their last rehearsal.

The Kindergarteners had painted their own rainbow shirts on the Monday before the show. Here’s a picture of Finn painting his.

And here’s Finn and his friend Silvia making an attempt to quiet their class before the show. (Thanks to Silvia’s mom, Stephanie, for this one!)

Here’s Finn’s class up on stage. They did three songs — “I’m Alive,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Walking on Sunshine.”

Finn is somewhere in the back. I got this one of them walking off stage when I could finally see him.

I also shot a short video of the third song they did.

Ezra’s class performed “Turn the World Around.”

The boys started on the floor, and then got up and danced toward the end of the song. It’s not the clearest picture, but I’m putting this up to show that he was dancing!

And here’s video of Ezra’s class. This was the third and final performance and I was standing on the wrong side of the auditorium to get a good shot of Ezra, which is a bummer.