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."

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.

 

 

 

 

Solar Cars

Kylee was selected to be a part of the three member Solar Car team representing Bob Lewis Elementary School.  She and her teammates, Erin and John Adam, spent afternoons at the school designing and building an electric car powered by solar panels to be raced at a district wide competition.  Northside ISD is a huge school district, so there were about 50 teams at the competition held at the NISD stadium.  The teams raced in numerous heats on both sides of the stadium.  The little cars were pretty fragile, but fortunately there was onsite assistance available for last minute soldering and hot glue repairs.  Kylee and her team did great.

in it to win it

This year at Bob Lewis the theme for field day was In It to Win It.  They changed the traditional relay races to short one minute competitions patterned after the Minute To Win It game show.  Each child had a partner that they would stay with as they chose between 50 different games to do as many as they wanted in a couple of hours.  

Brayden and his partner Aiden

Kylee and her partner Kara.

Julia and her partner Alexa.

It was nice that Blake was allowed to take part in some of the games.

The consensus at the end of the day by the kids was that they liked the traditional games better.  I thought that this new way was a lot more chaotic.  The kids had the freedom to wander around and not really do much.  The little kids were kind of running around not really knowing what to do.

Fiesta

Bob Lewis Elementary does a pretty good job celebrating Fiesta week.  This year they wanted to make sure that each of the grades were able to do something special.  The Kindergarden classes are involved in the Fiesta Float Parade and the 3rd Graders get to do the Wax Museum, so it was the first year that 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th were apart of a science hat parade.  Each child was given a science term that they had to represent on a hat, and they could be however creative they wanted.  Kylee was not very good about communicating the assignment.  We bought the materials and she made it in one night since it was already past due.  On April 12th they had a parade and all the grades involved showed off their science hats.

This year was Julia's turn for the Fiesta Float Parade.  I tried to make things a little easier and found a foam kit at Michael's that she used with her fairies to make a fairy land.  We cut out a lot of foam flowers to add to it.   

This year they had a better set up to view the parade which was on April 20th.  In years past we had to stand in the hallway as the kids pulled their fiesta float through the hallways.  This year that set up chairs in the gym so the parents could sit down and watch the kids pull their floats by.  They even had them go through twice.   

At Blake's MDO they also got to make a Fiesta hat on April 26th.

Chalk Fest

Kylee was invited by the art teacher to be the captain of the Lewis Chalkfest team. The chalk competition, held on March 31st, was part of the Los Leones Student Arts Festival that included music performances by various high schools and artwork displayed by students in elementary, middle, and high schools.  

The art teacher gave chalk to Kylee so she could practice at home on our driveway and porch. These were here practice drawings. 

The Bob Lewis Chalkfest team included Sydney, Kylee, Kenna, Kaeylan, Daniel, and Mrs. Owens.

The team is given 2 hours to complete their drawing with the theme "Cats in the Wild".  Kylee was the one assigned to outline the drawing and then her and the team each had assigned parts to shade in.  

 

This was the final product.  Everyone who walked by "oo'ed" and "ahh'ed".  It was on par with the middle and even some high school drawings.  We were all very impressed.

These are some of the drawings from the middle and high schools.

There was also a large indoor display where there were about fifteen to twenty select art projects from each school.  Kylee and Julia both had a project on display there.  

There were plenty of other activities to keep the whole family entertained during the festival.  

Luckily there was face painting and lots of treats and snacks to keep them entertained.  

Brayden did not want to get his face painted, but he was very anxious to meet the nickel. 

kylee costume

This year Kylee and Brayden's Piano recital was a few weeks before Halloween so their teacher said they could dress up for their recital.  Brayden's costume was easy because we found stuff at Goodwill to alter for a Luke Skywalker costume.  Kylee had visions of creating a Vampire costume and had even made a sketch.  Not thinking that she was really going to do it, we didn't ge the material until the night before the piano recital.  I had my doubts that it could be done, but Matt was good about just letting her try.  She started sewing at 10 p.m. and finished at 12:30.  I went to bed at 12 and was sure that she wasn't going to finish it.   Amazingly she did not use a pattern and just looked at the material, roughly measured and then cut and sewed. I thought for sure she wouldn't finish in time, and when she did I thought for sure she wouldn't fit in it when she was done. She tried it on and fit in it, even though there was no zipper.

Then again a few weeks later for the church halloween party she made a whole new costume in a couple of hours.  We are not sure where she gets her talent, but Kylee frequently amazes us.