Blake MDO

Blake enjoyed his year at Northwest Hills United Methodist Church Mothers Day Out.  I really enjoyed the program which was much more of a preschool than a daycare.  He went twice a week from 9 AM to 2 PM and it included lunch time and a short rest. He had two different teachers for the year.  Miss Shelly taught the first half   

and Miss Claudia did the second half.

I was really happy with his accomplishment at the beginning of the year when Blake got his potty training down.  At the beginning of the school year he used  to strip all the way down even with shoes off and sit backwards on the seat. The teacher worked with him and  he only had an accident on the first day and then gradually learned to stand so that he wouldn't have to take his clothes off.  

his class (missing one girl)

The MDO program had lots of fun themed days, among them tent day, jumping day with bounce houses, pancake day, pajama day, carnival day, an  Easter egg hunt, and career day.   He had fun with his friends, with lots of boys in his class.  He would come home excited to tell me all about his day. 

He celebrated his birthday by bringing spiderman cupcakes to share.  

They celebrated their last day with a water day.  

Career Day, Take Two

The kids came home very excited about having career day.  Each class had 3 different presenters. Since Matt was able to share his career with the 2nd graders (Brayden's class) last year, this year he signed up and requested to present in the 5th grade so that he could do Kylee's class.  Blake and I went to go see Matt talk to Kylee's class.He was very entertaining. Kylee said that most of the kids in her class enjoyed his presentation the most.

Besides hearing from an Ophthalmologist she also got to hear from a Pathologist, but she thought the presentation was "kind of disgusting."  The last presenter was an employee of Starbucks.  Kylee was excited that she gave everyone a cup that represents a free cup of hot chocolate.

Career day is a good way for business to get their name out and have kids tell their parents about their businesses and get them to come, which is the effect it had on Brayden.  He was very influenced by the gymnastics presentation.   On our drive home he told us one of the gymnasts did push ups with no feet on the ground and described all the fun things they have at the Powerhouse Gym.  Kylee, who had attended a party there, chimed in that they have a foam pit.  Brayden responded with "I know, that place is awesome."   He was very excited to tell  me that the Powerhouse Gym has a "Fun Friday" where kids can be dropped off for 3 hours for $15 while the parents go out.  After we got home from school he continued to talk about it and even offered to pay all the money he thought he had, which was $10.  I let him know that he would not be going to Powerhouse gym that evening.  In just 10 minutes later I let the kids know I was going to go to the store and Brayden not ready to give up chimed in, "That's the thing.  You can go shopping and we can go there (the gym)."  Matt was home so I started to head out the door to run some errands and Brayden in his typical positive persistent manner put his shoes on and said, "Alright let's go.  I am ready to go to the gym."   I let him know again that he wasn't going, but he kept saying, "I am ready, let's go."  He finally gave up and took his shoes back off.  For career day Brayden also had a person that worked in the Toyota plant visit his class.  He said that he showed them something top secret.  He wouldn't tell me what it was, but said that it had something to do with the paint section because that is the area that the guy worked in.  He liked that he gave them a pen, a brochure, and a back pack.  The last person that visited them was a man that works for the water company.  He actually got to see him last year also.  He was happy that he brought a little foam cone for everyone.

Julia saw the Northside nutritionist.  Julia said that she said, "eat healthy food and get moving. Do not watch TV all the time, and do exercising activities."  The nutritionist brought the monkey mascot that everyone got to high 5.  The second person for them to see was a DJ that works at the radio station.  Julia said "he can't mess up or everyone will hear on the radio station."  He asked them to raise their hand if they liked Justin Beiber, Julia said that she kept her had down.  Kylee and Brayden congratulated Julia with, "great job for keeping your hand down."  I asked if anyone raised their hand.  The last person she saw was a martial arts instructor.  Julia liked that they got to touch Karate weapons and put on karate stuff for safety.

At the end they have a person that the whole school gets to watch. He was a musical person that played the halo.  Brayden said, "it is an instrument that was invented 5 years ago.  It was awesome.  He has his own website."

Missions Baseball

Matt got free tickets for a Missions baseball game from work, so we went on a Thursday night, May 23rd, despite it being a school night. 

After getting in the gate the kids came across a Navy Federal Credit Union booth that was giving away free stuff to lure people to sign up.  The kids made sure they got everything offered.

So they were outfitted with visors, sunglasses, and a helicopter toy.  

Lemon Battery

This was the first year to have the 5th graders do a science experiment project.  Kylee decided to do a lemon battery experiment she had read about.  She understood how it was supposed to work and had written up the report and results before doing the experiment.  But when it came down to actually doing the experiment it wasn't quite working as she expected.  At first she refused to modify the methods because she had already printed them for the poster.  But with the due date looming and no functional battery, she had a couple of stressful days as she and Matt made multiple trips to Home Depot and Radio Shack trying different materials for copper and zinc leads, different types of lights, and arrangements of the lemons.  Finally they figured out a functional setup and Kylee breathed a deep sigh of relief.  

50 hours of piano playing

Kylee and Brayden's piano recital was on May 19 at RBC Music, a music store with a room for recitals.  

Brayden and Kylee had seen the trophies won last year by 2 students who had completed 80 hours of practicing for the whole school year.  Brayden decided he wanted to get a trophy next time.  His motivation was renewed when he saw that Taylor was close to him and his competitive spirit kicked in.  One day he practiced for two and a half hours broken up throughout the day because he wanted to do a whole week's worth of practice in a single day.  This was  a huge feat considering the struggle it normally is to squeeze 30 minutes of practice out of him.  Kylee was motivated by trying to catch up and beat Brayden.  With their limited repertoire of fairly short songs, this unusual emphasis on piano practice resulted in some practices where they played songs in all different octaves or the same song over and over again until prompted by Mom or Dad to move on to another song due to impending madness.  In the end they both won a trophy for completing 50 hours, a lower target from the previous year because only half the year was recorded when their teacher took a few months off when she had her baby.  We were impressed.

 

 

 

 

True Loves Kiss

Julia had a dance recital on May 18th which was held at the church.  Her class did a ballet dance to the song True Love's Kiss from the Disney movie Enchanted. 

Julia has really had fun doing dance with her teacher, Megan Barrick

Wax Museum

The 3rd graders big project for the year is a Wax Museum.  Each 3rd grade class has their own theme and each student is assigned a person to research and prepare a timeline with important events in their life.  Being a wax museum, the students were supposed to hold perfectly still like wax figures while the families walk through.  Every ten minutes they kick all the visitors out of the room to let the kids stretch for a three minute break.  

Brayden's class had Inventors of the 1800's and he was given Thomas Edison.

Some of the students had to make a prop to go with their person, so with the help of Matt Brayden made a circuit with a light bulb.

The year that Kylee did the wax museum the school had just been given the grant and so they had only purchased a few things.  Brayden's year had a lot more backdrops and neat props.  Brayden's friends had some neat characters also. 

Blake helper

Stubborn Blake can also be sweet and helpful.  When I am doing laundry I like to lay out the clothes on our bed.  I put them in piles of folded clothes and clothes to be hung up.  Blake came into my room and saw the clothes on my bed when I was down stairs.  He put my clothes on hangers and came down to show me and then he put all his clothes on hangers.  It was so cute to see him do that without him being asked.  I guess that means that my other kids should be old enough to do that also.

Going Blind

Brayden has a tendency to be dramatic.

He was outside with the kids on the trampoline.  He was lying down while they were jumping and apparently got something in his eye.  He came in screaming as if his eye had fallen out.

Matt put numbing drops in his eyes and fluorescein dye to see if he had a scratch.  Fortunately he didn't find anything wrong, but Brayden continued to writhe on the couch and moan "why me?" and that he was going blind.

Matt told him to not rub his eye because then he could scratch it if something was in there.  He woke up the next morning saying that he was going to be blind because he rubbed his eye during the night.

He couldn't open his eye normally for several days, but fortunately in the end he did not go blind.

Nutella

Brayden came home from school one day and asked if he could have a chocolate syrup sandwich.  I asked him why.  He said that a boy at school takes a sandwich to school every day that looks like there is chocolate sauce dripping from it.  So he pulled out 2 pieces of bread and poured on some chocolate syrup.  He took a bite and made a funny face.  I could tell that it didn’t taste like he expected.  He didn’t like it, but was concerned about wasting the food. He was relieved when I told him that he didn’t have to finish it.

About a week later Brayden came home and said, “I told Dalton about making a sandwich with chocolate syrup and that it tasted horrible.  Dalton told me that it wasn’t chocolate syrup. It was Nutella.” He hadn't heard of Nutella before and didn't know what it was.

In class on a different day the subject of Nutella came up and the teacher asked who had tasted it. He was dismayed to learn that he was one of only a small few that had not.  Feeling a great void in his life, Brayden shared his concerns with us later that day.  

To allow Brayden to see what he was missing out on we bought Nutella for Mother's Day and tried them on our crepes. Brayden probably finished half the jar himself, and loved every bite.   

batting practice

Brayden recently has expressed interest in baseball.  He and Kylee did do a season (one hour weekly for about six weeks) of First Steps Tee Ball out at Lackland when he was only 4 years old.  He still had his glove, a bat, and some balls from that time, so he took them out to the backyard and started swinging.  In less than ten minutes he proved his ability to connect with the baseball with a loud crash in the kitchen.  Fortunately it only broke the outer pane of the double paned window so it wasn't a major issue while we spent a few weeks figuring out the best way to fix it. 

A Lego in my pocket

Blake stripped off his clothes to get in the bath and when he dropped his shorts on the carpet realized he had forgotten something.  He explained, "I have a Lego in my pocket".  When he finished emptying his pockets this is what I saw.

Mother's Day

I am so lucky to be the mother of these kids.  They are growing up so fast.  I appreciate all the pampering they did for Mother's Day.  

Some cards from the kids for Mother's Day