Last Day of School

You guys, I can't believe we're already at the last day of school! The time is just going by so fast right now. Before you know it, the summer will be gone and we'll be back to the school routine. But for now, I'm going to enjoy this transition to summer and the slower pace of life.

"Last Day of School!!!!!!!!!"

The kids have had a lot of fun activities at school this week. Tuesday was yearbook signing day. I didn't get a yearbook until I was in junior high. But in 2017, kids get to buy yearbooks for every year of their life.

Wednesday was Emily's park day/cookout field trip. Her class also had a visit with some Extreme Animals. Emily said she got to pet an alligator. Noah had his awards assembly in the afternoon.

Today was the official last day of school as well as the annual talent show.

Noah danced to the Chicken Dance song with part of his class, but I can't show the video because of all the other kids in it. I couldn't even see Noah up on the stage. He said he was hiding in the back. The other part of his class danced to the Macarena and he said he really wanted to dance to that one.

Emily played the same song she played at her piano recital, "Silver Moon Boat," and I thought she did really well.  The Youtube video is below.

There were really a lot of talents showcased at their school today - lots of singing and dancing, several piano players, a violinist, a traditional Native American dance, and a girl who danced in a pillowcase. Yeah, I don't know either, but that one was pretty funny. I'm sure she didn't just come up with that whole gig just for this talent show, but I can't think of any other time or place you'd do something like that.

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Noah's First Grade Awards Ceremony

Noah's first grade awards ceremony was this afternoon at the school. They did things a little bit differently. Each child decorated an envelope and the teachers put all their certificates and awards inside of it. At the awards ceremony, each child was called up on stage one at a time and were presented with their awards envelope. A few kids got medals or trophies for certain awards as well.

Noah got his awards envelope as well as a trophy for perfect attendance!  Only two or three other kids got this award and Noah was so proud of his trophy!

At the beginning of the program, all the kids recited a poem. I wish I'd made a video of it because it was very cute and choreographed, but I only snapped a few pics. It's a hard decision whether to video something or take a picture. Am I right?!

Noah got a lot of great awards, including the Superintendent's Award for reading over 100 books this year. Wow, that is really impressive!

And of course the perfect attendance award is totally awesome. When Noah got off the bus this afternoon, he was carrying it and he said, "This is my first trophy!" He has already put his trophy on the bookshelf in his room.

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Emily's 6th Grade Graduation

Emily's 6th grade graduation ceremony was Friday morning. 

It was rescheduled from Thursday night due to weather. The school had booked a different venue for Thursday night, but since it was on Friday morning it had to be in the school cafeteria. And it was a standing room only crowd full of friends and family.

Emily received several award.

• Perfect attendance
• Honor Choir
• CubCo (Student Council, 1st grade rep)
• Silver award for all A's & B's

Her teacher had put together a slideshow of pictures from their 6th grade year. At the end, she showed each student's baby picture then their 6th grade yearbook picture. It was a really cute video.

I got Noah out of class so that he could attend the graduation ceremony with me. We were sitting way in the back and he had a hard time seeing the kids on the stage and the video. He did see the picture of Emily on the screen though. He said that her baby picture was SO CUTE. Yes, it was. 

After the ceremony, they had cake and punch for everyone. It was a really fun time at the school. Next year, Emily will be going to Jr. High!

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Ocean Biome in a Shoebox

The other week, Emily had to make an ocean biome in a shoebox for her science class. She put a lot of thought into how she wanted her biome to look and I thought it turned out really neat. It even had a stingray that moved!

In case you're curious, these are the supplies that we used and how we put it together.

For the box, we just used a cardboard shipping box. I cut the flaps off. The first thing we did was cover the outside with colorful wrapping paper so that the box would look "finished" on the inside as well as the outside. Just wrap it like you would wrap a gift and tuck the ends of the paper inside the box. The inside of the box will get covered up so it doesn't have to look neat.

Next, Emily took some printed scrapbooking paper that had a water pattern on it. We got two pieces of 12X12 paper and we needed probably twice that much. We could only cover the back and sides of our box, but not the top or the bottom. We just used white printer paper for the top and bottom. Just fold the paper and glue it down with white school glue.

For the coral reef on the left side of the box, I printed a picture of some coral off the internet and pasted it to a small piece of cardboard. Then Emily cut the cardboard/picture and pasted it onto the bottom of the box. We had gotten some small plastic ocean animals from Hobby Lobby as well as some small fake plants. These are sold in the hobby section of the store and are things that are used to make miniature models and things like that. 

The animals that we got were made of a squishy plastic, sort of like a pencil eraser. Since they were soft, I was able to use a needle to thread a piece of fishing line through the back of the animal so that we could suspend them in the box to make them look like they're swimming. 

The "sand" at the bottom of the ocean is actually brown sugar that we glued to the box with white school glue. We also added some pieces of cardboard to make the ocean floor look uneven. We attached some turtles to the seafloor using hot glue as well. We made the mistake of trying to hot glue the turtle to the floor after we'd put on the sand, but the turtle kept falling off. We eventually had to scrape some of the sand/brown sugar and hot glue the turtle down and then add more brown sugar around it. So, don't do like us and make sure you attach your animals before you add the sand. 

Another fun thing that Emily wanted to do was make a stingray that could cruise across the ocean floor. I cut a slit into the top of our box to facilitate this. I used the needle and fishing line to attach the stingray, then tied the finishing line through the holes of a large button. Then we threaded the stingray through the slit in the top of the box. The problem was that the thin fishing line would not travel smoothly through the slit in the box. So, we added a small safety pin that would add more stability as it slid down the slit in the box. We also put scotch tape all along both sides of the slit in the box to help the safety pin move more smoothly. This did the trick! We used hot glue to attach a starfish to the top of the button.

All the kids in Emily's class thought it was pretty cool that her stingray moved. That little button contraption has gotten a lot of use and is still going strong. (Perhaps I should sell it on EBAY? I could probably get a lot of money for it!) She said that none of the other kids had animals that moved in their biome box. 

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Emily's Salt Dough Map

A few weeks ago, Emily's class made 3D salt dough maps in class.  We had to make the salt dough at home and send it to school in a plastic baggie and provide the pizza box and supplies to decorate the map, but they did the rest of the project in class.

Salt Dough Recipe

4 cups flour

2 cups salt

2 Tbsp cream of tartar

1 1/2 to 2 cups water (add a little at a time until it's the consistency of Play-Doh)

Mix together the dry ingredients then add the water a little bit at a time until the dough is the consistency of Play-Doh. Don't be afraid to use your hands. Knead for a few minutes until smooth. 

I told Emily that we could whip up this dough really quick with the Kitchenaid mixer, but Emily said that her teacher said to mix it by hand. Okay fine. You can do it by hand, too. 

I thought Emily's map turned out GREAT! I was really impressed with it. She decorated it with acrylic paints and labeled it with a Sharpie marker. 

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How to Make an Edible Animal Cell Cake

Several weeks ago, Emily had the opportunity to make a cell cake for extra credit in her science class. It could be made of any food as long as it was all edible and large enough to feed half of her class.

She chose to make an animal cell cake, which is round. We did a lot of research on the internet to get some ideas for what to use for different parts of the cake.

Emily wanted to look like the cell was cut open so we baked one cake in a large round baking pan and another cake in a large glass bowl to make a dome for the top of the cell. We cut off some dome cake so that we can add in all of our cell parts. 

Here are the items we used for different parts of the animal cell:

Yellow frosting - Cytoplasm

Orange frosting - Cell membrane (add red food coloring to the yellow frosting to make things easy on yourself)

White candy melts - Ribosomes

Airhead Extreme candy belts - Golgi body

Large round lollipop - Nucleus

Sour gummy worms - Rough ER

Red Mike & Ike - Smooth ER

Orange frosting - Nuclear membrane (put some frosting in a plastic baggie and snip off the end to pipe the frosting around the nucleus)

Red gummy bears - Mitochondria

White jelly beans - Vacuole

If you try it, let me know how it goes for you.

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Honor Choir

This spring, Emily tried out and was accepted into the Honor Choir at her school. They practiced after school one day per week.  A few weeks ago, they had their Honor Choir performance at the local high school. The performance included Honor Choirs from all the elementary schools that feed into our high school.

We were sitting up in the balcony during the performance and I couldn't get any good pictures. This was the best I could do. Can you find Emily? She's on the back row.

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Trip to the Movies + Riding the Bus

This weekend, we went to see the new Pete's Dragon at the theater.  The kids watched the original Pete's Dragon musical before we went to see the new one so they were well aware of the differences between the two.

Noah had a hard time sitting still in the theater. This movie did not capture his attention like some of the movies we'd seen in the past.  We made it through it though.  It was a lot of fun.

The School Bus

This morning was our second day catching the school bus.  The first day, the bus was about 5 minutes late and Emily was all upset that we had to stand out on the sidewalk and wait for the bus.  EMBARRASSING.

So this morning, I tried to do better and get us to the bus stop closer to the time that the bus shows up.  We started walking down our street and Emily says "I think I hear something big."  What? Like a bus? Okay, lets hurry.  So we turn the corner and there's the bus coming down the street!  We took off running toward the bus stop.  Luckily, there were quite a bit of kids queued up to get on the bus so we made it in time.  Whew.

And tomorrow, we shall readjust.  Again.

But I'll leave you with a couple more pictures of our first day of school.

Noah showing off his new Batman backpack.

Emily had a limit to the number of pictures she was willing to take with her brother.

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First Day of School 2016

Friday was the first day of 6th grade for Emily and the first day of 1st grade for Noah.  They both got some really good teachers this year.  Emily will have three different teachers. She's rotated classes before so this is no big deal for her.



Noah's teacher seems really sweet and I think he'll have a good year.  This is his first year at this school, but he knows some kids from his previous school that transferred this year and he also knows some kids from his summer daycare.



This year, I'm home all day with my new job so the kids are riding the school bus.  On Friday morning, the bus was about 5 minutes late, but on Friday afternoon the bus was a full 10 minutes late.  I'm going to have to figure out how to manage our new schedule.



Pretty girl. I know she's going to have a great year.

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3rd Grade Math Carnival

One night last week, Emily's school hosted a 3rd grade math carnival.  We all went and played lots of games.  I am going to let Emily tell you all about it.  She is going to be my guest blogger for today!

~*~

Hi everybody, it's Emily.  On Wednesday I went to a Math Carnival! I played lots of games. This is me when we were getting out of the car!

I will tell you the easiest game.  It's called the cupcake walk. It is when she turns the music on and you walk in a circle of chairs. On the back of the chair is a picture of a cupcake and a number. When the music stops she calls a number in the tens place or other places and if you have a number you get a cupcake!!!! I got a chocolate cupcake with pink frosting with brown sprinkles.

The hardest one is called straight shooters. It is where you have three marbles and throw it on the number chart and you have to add up all three numbers.  Then you have to multiply that number by three!  My three marbles landed on 27 every time. That is hard!

There was also a Estimating Station.  You had to go around the table and guess how many items were in each jar. They had a jar of mini marshmallows, one with M&M's, cheese balls, gumballs, Twizzlers and other things.  You write your guess on a piece of paper and they told us the winners the next day. I won the jar of cheese balls!!!!!!!!!! I guessed 500 cheese balls and there were really 530.

This is me with my cheese balls.  Want some?

I had so much fun at the Math Carnival.  I saw a lot of my friends and the games were fun. I love my new school!

~*~



Thanks so much to Emily for guest blogging today.  She also got her progress report on Friday and she has all A's!  We are so proud of her and love her so much!

Well it's a rainy Saturday at our house.  It's hard to want to get up and do anything when it's rainy and chilly outside.

Have a great weekend!

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Special Persons Day

Last week, Emily's school had a "Special Persons Day" celebration one evening.  Grandmother and Nanny went with us to the school.  We didn't see Emily's teacher, but we visited her classroom and got to check everything out.  Then they had cookies for everyone.

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Back to School

Friday was Emily's first day back to school.  Since we moved to a new neighborhood, Emily is going to a new school this year.

Her new school starts at 9:15am so we had a bit of time before we left the house on Friday morning. I think Emily was excited about school because she kept asking me if it was time to go yet.

She wanted to go outside in front of the front door and take some pictures.  And she wanted to wear her backpack.  So Noah had to go get his backpack too.

Here's a picture of both of them.  They are so cute!

Emily had a good first day of school.  She made two or three friends and she said her teacher is funny.

I hope she has a great year in 3rd grade!

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