More school happenings

Brandon had a field trip to the symphony. It was kid's day and a bunch of the schools were there. They played movies silently and did the music for it like the old silent movies. Brandon said it was kind of cool but being in the dark with only music playing, a bunch of them fell asleep. At least he can say he went to the symphony. He had to dress up for it but he said a lot of the kids, especially the boys, didn't bother. I don't understand why the parents don't at least make an attempt to follow the rules, they just don't seem to care anymore.

Jessie had her AR fun day. AR is accelerated reading. All the kids at reading age read AR books that have different levels and points. The kids read the books and take quizzes on them. At the end of the year the older grades got to go on a field trip but the younger ones just did a party. You may remember my previous blog last year about Brandon's trip to the Rockies baseball game. They went again this year but Brandon didn't quite make his goal so he didn't get to go, not that he was too upset because he didn't have much fun last year. Anyway Jessie went above and beyond her goal. She had something like 26.7 points for the school year and a 95% accurate reading level. Keep in mind her books are only worth .5 points each and they only started the program the second semester of school so that tells you how much she read. So the first grade combined and had an AR fun day for all the kids who passed their goals, which was all of them. They had different stations and every ten minutes they switched. Scott and I were manning the food station. The theme was tropical. They had a dance station with hula hoops and hula skirts and got leis to wear. At the food station, they made fruit kabobs and had fruit punch with little umbrellas. They had a craft station and one they made, I am not sure what it was supposed to be, something with marshmallows and toothpicks. They also made bubble pipes out of water bottles and socks. I am not sure how that worked because it was outside so I didn't see them. The last station they made slime. They had a lot of fun. Probably more than the kids on the Rockies field trip.

On Thursday the kids had their field day. This year it was all day which was a lot better. It was more organized and the kids got to do every station. The only problem was the weather was chilly and we had a lot of water stations so we had to improvise a little to keep them from freezing. All the kids got tshirts this year, which was nice..

It is hard to see but the front has a running wildcat and says field day and on the back it says be the best version of you.  They had laundry relays with wet clothes, tug of war which Jessie's class went against Scott, one other dad, and Mrs. Carter (the teacher). The adults lost. They had to find giant bugs in water covered with floating foam, parachute play, things like that. They even had one of the parents who is a part time DJ play music. One of the most popular things was to dance by the speakers. Brandon's class even made it into one of their stations. It is really fun to watch a bunch of little kids line dancing and doing the worm. One time he played YMCA and the kids didn't know how to do it so they formed a congo line and did that instead. At the end of the day was the annual fifth grade against teachers kickball game, which the teachers won as usual. They show no mercy for the fifth grade and win almost every year. I can't believe Brandon will be doing that next year.  They were very tired that night and then Jessie got sick and Brandon also got sick on Sunday but at least they made it through the fun days and had a long weekend to recover.