Tabatha’s First Pair of Glasses

Today Tabatha got her first pair of glasses.  Ken took her, and he mentioned that the whole time they shopped she kept reading everything.  It is amazing how you want to read more when you can see all the letters clearly.  She picked out these glasses, and I really love how cute they make her look.  Gone are the huge glasses I had when I was a in Junior High.

Titlow Beach

So this picture has a question attached.  Mixed within five classes of fourth graders, can you find Tabatha?

It took me awhile, but I found her, and for this field trip we stayed together combing the beach for crabs, sea stars, and other sea life.

The only problem, was as the students said, the teacher, Mrs. Bayliss, was a little crabby, as this picture shows.

Here are a few animals we saw.  An eel looking thing,

lots of crabs, with quite a few boys being pinched by being a little too cocky holding them.  Here is a larger one hiding.

Here Tabatha is holding a sun star.

Later, she touches up a little octopus.  That is Tabatha’s hand, which is not large, and the octopus is in a shoe size plastic bin, it was the smallest octopus I have ever seen.

Moving rocks and going from group to group seeing the animals made this a short, but fun field trip.

Good-bye Narrows Bridge, we will come back again, hopefully on a sunnier day.

Endeavour Cultural Fair

Alicia came home a few weeks ago wanting to be part of the school cultural fair.  Friends were talking about parents from Mexico, the Ukraine, or even the Caribbean.  No fear, Alicia knew exactly where our culture is from.  She said “we are from Utah, right.”  When I asked, “who is from Utah” she said, “Well mommy you were born and raised there.”  WHAT!  We had to have a geneology lesson right then and there, got out my PAF files, and showed how dad’s family is mostly Canada and Germany, my side is Norway, England, and Switzerland.  We are a mixture of many cultures, so we didn’t end up doing a voluntary cultural fair board, but we did support those who did.

While we waited for the musical portion of the fair, the kids ate various foods from many countries.  We had already had dinner, but they still tried lumpia, seaweed, churros, burritos, pineapple soda, hard candies from Ukraine, soy milk drinks, sweet breads from Switzerland and delicious cookies from Norway. 

Once they ate enough foods, they tried to make face masks, used in many cultures.  I am not sure where Olivia’s mask originates from.

The musical portion included a bagpiper.

and drummers from Hedden Elementary

and a Native American dance with Tabatha’s friend Jody.  Here Jody is in her costume standing with Mrs. Bayliss, Tabatha’s teacher.

It was a lot of fun.  We should join next year, but not sure what “culture” to showcase.  Any ideas?

OHOP Indian Village Field Trip

Tabatha has an extremely competent, caring, and excellent fourth grade teacher.  Mrs. Irons-Bayliss (most people just call her Mrs. Bayliss) is a teacher that I feel lucky to have as Tabatha’s teacher.  She told me that for this field trip only two adults would be able to come, and I was one.  It was the easiest field trip ever, and the kids were better behaved than I have ever seen.  Yes they are older, but 4 other fourth grade classes were there and I would pick Mrs. Bayliss anytime to be in charge of teaching and managing kids.

All year the kids have been studying Washington State History, especially Native Americans.  Here we got to see the Native America culture by trying it out.  We stayed as a class the whole time as we went to various houses a family would have lived in.

As we walked in I saw this sign and had to take a picture to remember it.

The first house we visited was the Fall House where Native Americans prepared Arrowheads, practiced drumming, making canoes, drying fish, and children learned to throw spears and fish.  After a short lesson, the kids each received a piece of slate to fashion into a point by sharpening it on a rock.  Tabatha loved this, she says she will catch me a fish using her finished arrowhead.

Here girls played the drums and braided leather.

Further out, you can see the house and all the kids learning.

Here Tabatha is showing off her finished arrowhead while the fishing practice area is in the background.

At the Winter House, where we came next, the kids learned how petroglyphs were made (and they could try to make one too),

they could dress up,

they could weave

or fit a whole class into a canoe.

At the last house, the Spring and Summer House, more fun ensued.  We learned that Native Americans put face markings on that changed daily so that you would know who was a friend or a stranger when in your village.  It was pretty funny, the kids wouldn’t talk to each other until they had their faces painted, otherwise we were considered strangers.  Every adult, me included, as well as every student got the markings.  We bonded over face paint.

The kids also tried to make fire, but didn’t succeed.

Plus the hoop toss between friends, a game kids played to learn to hunt.

The highlight was the archery.

Everything about the OHOP village was educational, yet fun at the same time.  My one and only problem was that the bus ride to Eatonville was over an hour each way.  My ears are still ringing a bit from that.

Museum Day in Tacoma

What do you do when you have a four day week-end, three very exuberant girls ready to try anything, and two free museum passes from the local library?  You head out the door and have an adventure.

When in come to Tacoma, you start by riding the Light Link rail line from the free parking garage to downtown.

Once you get to the museum district, you walk across the glass bridge and take pictures of the creations that surround you.  Here the ceiling is made of Dave Chihuly glass sculptures.

I let the girls pick a favorite sculpture from the bridge, and being picture friendly I took a picture with each one.

Once we made it to the glass museum, we learned that today is the very first day ever that they will allow pictures to be taken inside the galleries.  They changed the policy just in time to get these great shots.

I didn’t advise it, but here Tabatha is trying to fly into the sun.  Or at least an artist’s rendition of it.

As we waited for the Hot Shop (that is where glass is made in front of an audience), the girls drew ideas of sculptures they wanted to create.  Behind Olivia you can see a cat glass sculpture.  It was made when a child drew a drawing, and the art museum decided to make that drawing into a full sculpture.  If you are picked, you get to come to the museum with family and friends, see the piece made twice (one for the museum to keep and one for the child to keep), and your sculpture and drawing are put on display at the museum and put into a book.  It is a great idea, but I doubt Olivia’s girl picture will make the cut.

Alicia’s imagination brought out a flying pyramid.  I think it has a hat on.

Tabatha drew this, a very sparkly glass piece with a lot of color. 

We did go to the hot shop, which I love to watch as they made clear pitchers that were decorated, but the girls got tired of seeing other people doing things instead of them, so we walked over to the second museum of the day, the Washington State History Museum.

Here is the Hot Shop from the outside.  This is now an icon of Tacoma.

I only took one picture inside the History Museum.  This picture doesn’t do justice to how much fun Alicia was having, only that I took her away from an interactive t.v. screen to get this picture taken.  She does look a bit like a worn out pioneer though.  She loves Little House on the Prairie books, so this is her “Laura” shot.

We will get more pictures, because I know we will be going back.  We saw the train room with a replica of 1950 Tacoma with at least 10 model trains running through mountains, bridges, and historic buildings. We saw an Egyptian coffin bought by the first Mayor of Tacoma in the 1890’s. The kids saw how Native Americans lived, learned about the Mt. Saint Helens eruption, and watched a video of Galloping Gerty. On the third level, they even had a scavenger hunt where they received a free pencil (made of a tree branch), a coloring book with facts on Washington History, and a Lewis and Clark Map. They said over and over, “This is the best day ever!”

Really, it was a great day.  I got to spend it with my daughters.  I only wish Ken could have come with us.  As they would say, it was a blast.

Then, after it was over at the museums they spent the rest of the day like this, still learning with their new books and map.  How could you not love that.

Preschool Graduation

Here’s to our last graduate of Preschool.  She will soon be moving to the rank of Elementary School student, and she is ready.  She knows her numbers, her letters, and how to play nicely with others.  To top it off, she got to celebrate this milestone with friends, cake, and root beer floats.

Here Mrs. K hands out the celebratory necklace and diploma.

Here is our proud graduate.

Only one of her 9 classmates will go on to her elementary school, so we will be doing a lot of play dates outside of school.  Here Olivia is posing with Holly.

All the graduates, plus an extra sibling, ready to move on to Kindergarten.

Back row – Left to right: Olivia, Josiah, Coltan, Presley, Mrs. K, Terry (Presley’s little brother), Kneeling Dylan, Ethan, Kaitlynn, Holly, Emma and Sam.