penguins no more

Countdown to the end of the school year was pretty busy, as usual. There were all sorts of extra things going on at school for the kids and any foolish volunteer parents.

The librarian asked for parents to come in and help her on one particular day. I showed up and observed about 10 moms repairing bindings and taping together ripped pages and relabeling books with their shelving numbers and such. The librarian looked up at me and said, very enthusiastically, "Hi, can you please take all the books on this whole half of the library and move them one shelf over to the left? Yeah, thanks so much."
I cut my library volunteering plan WAY short that day.

Later there was a potluck brunch for all the school volunteers put together by the teachers, which was nice. And second-to-last week of school I attended a field trip to the zoo with Kate's class. She was happy to have Jake and Tiffany in her group with me.




My troops visiting "Penguin Island", which kept them laughing constantly. The penguin is their school mascot, and Penguin Island is the name of one of the playgrounds at school. They lingered here for quite a while.


We had a great day at the zoo. I carried their lunches in a pack with me and we were able to wander the zoo and stop when we wanted and where we wanted for a lunch break. We met up with classmates here and there and saw Allison with her group a couple of times as well.

On the second-to-last day of school I attended a field trip to a technology museum with Erin's class and my group consisted of 6 girls. We watched a really spectacular Imax movie and the kids had fun with the various hands-on displays, but I hardly had a chance to observe or try out anything myself. The 6 of them never wanted to do the exact same thing at the same time and keeping track of my particular 6 girls with blue shirts and (except for Erin) black hair among SO many others was fairly exhausting.




Then came the very last day of school, which fell on one of my usual volunteering days. The first graders in the twins' village made these silhouettes with a little poem about themselves on each, and they took turns reading their poem to the class.




Later on the whole school gathered for a sing-along outside, with one teacher playing piano, one on guitar, and Erin's teacher and Allison's teacher leading the singing as usual.


And then some tying up loose ends in the classes and packing for home every single thing possible, and then the many goodbyes began. Erin's been at the school for four years and it wasn't the usual waving as you walk past knowing that you'll see these people again after the usual short six-week summer break.


Though I think I was really in denial about it at first, our kids being minorities in school created a whole bunch of strange situations. Though doing so was optional, for the fall we've enrolled them at the school near the new house which is ethnically much more "diverse".

The school principal has an open meeting with parents once a month, called the Parent-Principal exchange. They always took place in the morning shortly after school starts and I've attended several. There is typically between 5 and 15 parents there, more at the beginning of the school year and then it kind of drops off. At one meeting when Erin was in first grade, there were 5 other parents there, all Caucasian, which is an extraordinarily strange coincidence given that there are only about 20 white kids out of 525+ kids in the whole school. Our principal is Caucasian too. Surprised, we all kind of looked around at each other, and after a general question or two everyone launched into all the problems their kids have faced by being white and that became the whole discussion for the next 45 minutes. At the time, I didn't have much to say because I was still in my denial phase and there was nothing specific going on with Erin that I knew of, or at least acknowledged. By the next school year when the twins were there too and I was on campus much more often, I snapped out of it and a few months later we were house shopping.

We hope that their social life will improve and there will be more than 1 or 2 kids that they'll get to see outside of school. People I know whose kids go to the other school tell me how great and social and close-knit everyone is. I've visited the classrooms there, had a meeting with the principal, and talked to lots of people about the new school to help me make this transfer decision.

I'm convinced that overall this is the right thing to do, but I still felt pretty bad on that last school day. We literally won the lottery to get Erin into their old school and only 1 in 8 families get a spot. It has such a fabulous curriculum and atmosphere and philosophy and there is a whole laundry list of unique things that I really like and that drew me to apply for this school in the first place, which we won't have at the new school. It's been hard to think about all that the kids will be certainly leaving in hopes of something else I hope they'll gain. I hope I'm right.



The new school's mascot is the tigers. For a long while I think we're going to feel like penguins inside of tiger suits.

down on the farm

For the past couple of months the kids in the twins' village have been learning about farming and I chaperoned a field trip a couple of weeks ago to a large working farm in the hills nearby. Since I was with Allison's class the last time I joined a field trip I went with Kate's class this time. Below was my assigned group for the day, including Jake, one of Kate's best friends. Allison got to sit right across from me on the school bus though.

When we arrived the kids gathered for pictures and pet some baby chicks which were held by their teachers.

The we all met the owner, Farmer Rob. It's obvious that Farmer Rob hosts a lot of school groups because he is very, very good at speaking to small children, keeping their attention, and keeping them interested and entertained. Farmer Rob told the kids a little about his farm and what he does, then we set out for a wagon ride to the other side of the farm to get to work.





He talked to us about field plowing, and recruited three little girl "horses" to help him and another student pull the plow. Then he and the kids used a machine to remove corn kernels from their cobs and we gathered these kernels and went to one of his empty corn fields. The kids lined up and expertly planted some corn seeds for him. Who says good help is hard to find?

The kids also got to climb on some tractors and wagons, feed some goats, chickens, and rabbits, and help Farmer Rob check the progress of the apples in the orchard.

Farmer Rob also grows christmas trees and I was thinking that maybe we should take a trip there this winter and cut a tree for ourselves, which is something we haven't done in the past.

The field trip came towards the end of the farm project the kids have been doing in class, where they put together individual farm books and plotted out a farm of their own. I remember when Erin did this project 2 years ago and I still think it's remarkable as it reinforces understanding of money and math as well as learning about different domestic animals and plant science.







This is Kate's farm plot. The black is the road, brown is dirt, green is pasture land, yellow is vegetable crops. If they wanted to buy two horses for example, they had to have sufficient funds for the purchase and the fencing, and realize that each horse requires so many acres of pasture. Then they had to plot that in their farms accordingly. Each child ended up with a farm that was planned out by them and was unique.

Finally, it was farming unit open house day at school and the parents could come to class and have the kids explain their finished farms and show them off. That day fell on a work day for me, so daddy came to school and to each of the girls' classes and saw the finished products.




Fortunately, I don't feel like I missed much since I'm in class every week and I've been helping the kids with various stages of their projects all the way along.

playing catch up

A couple of weeks ago I came along on the twins' first field trip to a local natural science museum/small native wildlife zoo. It was K&A's first time on a school bus, and they were thrilled about the experience. Allison was seated with Alison, a friend from her class.

Aside: I volunteer in the kids' classes every week. One day in Allison's class her teacher called my Allison up to the board help demonstrate something and the teacher asked the class, "How can we tell this Allison apart from our other Alison? That's right, this Allison's name has two L's." Mkay.

Allison and Kate's whole village (3 classes = 60 kids) were on the trip together but I had to pick one class to be assigned to, so I volunteered to be a chaperone for Allison's class. Erin and Kate were each less than thrilled with this decision. Erin already had her first field trip and I couldn't go withher because it fell on a workday for me. I told Kate I'd chaperone for her class as soon as I could (I hope they have another field trip on a thursday!)

After a "relaxing" bus ride, for which I forget to take along John's earplugs, again, we assembled out front for a few class photos. Allison's class is first, then Kate's.

Here is my assigned group of kids to supervise for the day. We all had a snack before entering the museum and getting started.

We broke up into small groups and listened to lectures about some of the insects. The kids got to touch giant millipeds and cockroaches and all sorts of similarly cuddly things:



Then they looked at some other insects in another room and dug for earthworms, and inspected the earthworms they found with these magnifying viewers:

And then my group and I set out around the museum, checking out the displays and animals and answering some questions about them on a worksheet that I was given by their teacher. This was the first field trip for probably all of the kindergartners and Allison and the rest were SO excited the entire time. I mean, I took my kids to this museum just earlier this year but that obviously paled in comparison to visiting it with their school. The kids were running and yelling and jumping and running some more and it was so hard to keep track of my particular hyperactive orange-shirted 4 kids in the sea of so many other hyperactive orange-shirted kids. At least I could always spot Allison's blonde hair.

So I was forever struggling to corral the right kids much less have a conversation with them about what we were seeing and what they should be learning from the displays.

Every now and again Kate's group would pass by us and Kate always ran over and hugged me but then she went pretty willingly back to her group.

After an exhausting 3 or so hours we assembled outside at a nearby park & picnic area and had lunch together with the teachers. Kate's teacher is on the left and Allison's on the right and the third teacher in the village, in the middle, has K&A every day for math.

And after lunch the whole village assembled for a picture in less than ideal lighting. At least they took my advice and shifted the whole group to a different position when I pointed out that they had the restrooms in the background. My skills in setting up a good shot pretty much ends there, and if I were really talented I'd had left them alone and photoshopped the restrooms out.

Back at school, I was pretty wiped out but the girls reported a fantastic time when we met up with Erin and went home for the day. All 3 wanted to know when they would take another field trip, and whether I'd be coming along. I hope I get a chance to go with Kate's and Erin's classes sometime this year, though I'm a little field tripped out for now.