I am the Walrus

For the past few weeks K’s class has been working on a report for their end of the year project.  All of the third grade classes pick a habitat and then each child in that class is assigned an animal within that habitat.  The kids then have to draw a picture, write a report and build a 3-D model.  The report was surprisingly extensive with the kids having to look up and note facts in 4 different categories and then write a full report including outline, rough draft, table of contents and final draft.  K’s report got off to a rough start as he has a hard time getting his thoughts from his brain to the paper, but even the teacher commented that once he got started on it he did great with each section’s rough draft needing minimal if any corrections.

K’s class had an ocean theme and he was assigned the Walrus.  I now know more facts about the Walrus then I every cared to know.   Since the first day of school, way, way before he even knew which animal he was going to have, K was determined that it was going to be built out of Legos.  K built a really rough model out of the bricks we had here, then J helped him refine it.  Thank goodness for a Lego store nearby that we could drive to and pick-up individual bricks, otherwise it would have been the Technicolor Walrus.  I guess we could have said it was a tribute to the Beatles. 

Here is K’s finished Walrus.   I have no idea why it has a white mark on its chest.  It was never explained to me.

    

Wednesday was habitat night where the families came in and toured all three classrooms seeing the fun projects.  Some of the things the kids did were amazing.  But prior to that night, some of the other students and faculty came in to tour the classrooms during school hours.  Monday K came home all upset because the girl next to him had a Great White Shark and everyone wanted to learn about it and only a few kids were able to come ask him questions before their time was up.  Only my son would be upset because he didn’t have enough public speaking time.

Each of the classrooms was decorated to match their theme.  The boys and I had even snuck away to help K’s classroom decorate the week before.  There were fish hanging from the ceiling, a drawing of the different levels of the ocean on the chalkboard, shells and other sea paraphernalia placed around the room and a jellyfish forest which for whatever reason I think is really cute.  The boys and I may have to make a jellyfish forest this summer as a project.

K and his Walrus

K’s Walrus drawing

Jellyfish Forest.  You can’t see it very well in this photo but they have long tails of curling ribbon handing from them.  There was another forest hanging in a different corner of the classroom but I can’t find a photo of it.

 

K reading his report to D and D pretending to listen.

Overall it was a very fun project and I’m proud of all the hard work that K put into it.

Graduate

Okay, from Pre-K so not really but D was still proud of himself. 

J, K, myself and my parents all attended D’s pre-K graduation last weekend.  I thought it was going to be about 45 minutes but it lasted 1.5 hours.  K did a great job sitting while waiting for his brother’s turn.  D was over with his class and how they kept so many kids from running amok for that amount of time I’ll never know.

While D’s class only had 12 people in it, all told there were probably 175 kids going through Graduation.  About halfway through I handed K my phone as I could tell he was getting antsy.  I figured for my high school graduation (all 600+ of us) we had walkmans and game boys so it made sense to me that K could use my phone during his brother’s graduation.

D was excited for graduation because it was going to be on a ‘big, tall stage that you need steps to climb up on”.  We then found out that they were streaming the ceremony live on the internet which at least explained his comment that he was going to be on TV.  In addition to the live video streaming they showed the ceremony on a big screen behind the kids.  D was so excited that when I asked him about it later he told me he forgot to turn around and look.  I have feeling it was more they were told not to turn around and look rather than he forgot but oh well.

D did a great job.  He was decked out in a black and red striped shirt, black pants and bright blue dinosaur rainboots.  What can I say, his rainboots where his signature look this year.  This is his second pair (you might remember the spider ones) and I just noticed this afternoon that the dinosaur boots are coming apart.  D pointed out to me that the top was pulling away from the sole and noted “I think that is why dirt and water are getting in my boot”.  I told him he had to wear his tennis shoes now, although I think that really translates into I need to go buy him new tennis shoes now since I’m pretty sure the ones he has are at least a size too small.

Speaking of shoes, I took K shoe shopping as his shoes were too small and he is almost into men’s shoes.  Noooo.  He’s not even out of elementary school.  I finally found a pair of size 7 boys shoes that fit him which was fortunate.  I’m learning that most boys shoes don’t come in a size 7 (the largest is a size 6) but the smallest men’s shoes come in is a size 8.  Apparently he’s supposed to go barefoot for 6 months or some such craziness.

Back to graduation, D had already warned me ahead of time that he didn’t want to sign the song.  I told him he didn’t have to sing but he did have to stand quietly.  So here is a picture of D not signing.

The expression on his face makes me giggle.  You can’t really tell from the photo but he is standing plank straight with his arms at his sides.

D received a diploma and he got to bring home his cap.

I say his because right after this photo the mortarboard part of the cap came off.  I was right below him in front of the stage and he looked down at me and said “really, I don’t know how that happened”.  It was a mystery, truly.  The Director did a quick swap with someone else’s cap and everything moved on.

Now D has to wait 2.5 months before he gets to go to Kindergarten.  I just hope Kindergarten is ready for him.