Field Day!! 6/4/10

Today was Marc's very first (of many) field day at school. I came to school to watch and join in on the fun. They rotated station every 15 minutes. Marc's first station was a pool noodle race. They were divided into teams of 4. Each team had a pool noodle. They had to run down the course, around the pole, and back to start while everyone held on to the noodle. If anyone let go, they had to wait for them to hold on again. Interesting to watch a bunch of kindergartners run together. They had to run frontwards and backwards and skip.Marc's 2nd station was the parachute. The did different activities like running in circles, bouncing a ball on top, running under and changing places with someone, and making a tent by sitting inside.
Marc's next station was I think my favorite!! :-) It was a pool toy relay race. The kids had to carry an inflatable ball down the course, put a ring around their waist, then put a swimmie on their arm, the put a ring around the neck, run around the cone, put the ring back in the hoop, put the swimmie back in the hoop, put the ring back in the hoop, run back and pass the ball to the next person in line. This was so cute I had to get a picture and a video. Super cute idea!!

Marc's 4th station was my 2nd favorite. He did the field-day-must; tug of war!! The Dad that was running this game was awesome!!! He really got the kids pumped up and ready to tug! They did some a couple evenly divided boy/girl on each side matches. After that they split up and did girls vs. boys. There are 12 girls and 9 boys in his class...a little uneven. They each won a round, then the Dad helped each team win another round, which made them 2 and 2....oh no, a tie!! So they had to do a tie breaker. The boys dug deep and won the final tug of war. They were so excited!

The next station was the one the kids liked the least. :-( They had to kick soccer balls and try to make a goal past the goalies. Well, kindergartners can't kick that well yet, so they never made it to the net.

The 6th station was the more traditional field day event...the baton relay race. They did a few different relays.
Marc's last station was probably the most unique. They played belly button tag. They had to try not to get tagged in the belly button with the pool noodle. If they got tagged they have to freeze with the arms in the air. Anyone could unfreeze them by tagging them in the belly button. Once unfrozen they could chase other people again. With the kindergartners, it was more mass chaos then a game. ;-)
After the batch of games that were on the schedule. they got to go back to their classroom and have a popsicle to cool down before going home.
I remember my field day as having more "competitive" games then Marc had. He had more "fun" games. I guess either way the goal is reached....to show the kids that exercising can be fun. :-) I enjoyed watching all of the kids of different ages rotating and playing the different games. :-)

S'more Please! 6/3/10

Marc's kindergarten teacher, Mrs Grimm, decided that they have worked hard enough and learned enough throughout the school year that she was going to do "fun" stuff for the last week and a half. All this week they did a camping unit. They did various crafts (camping badges, binoculars, pet rocks, lightening bugs made from glow sticks), read stories, and sampled various "camping" treats (trail mix, campfire cookies {graham crackers with frosting and candy corn to look like fires}, and s'mores). Mrs Grimm set up a tent in the middle of the room along with a campfire. Whenever they did a group thing, they sat around the campfire.On Thursday, as kind of a finale to the camping unit, they got to build s'mores.......watch the marshmallows grow in the microwave.....
pause to show Mommy his final creation........
and eat their s'mores around the campfire.
Marc was nice enough to share a bite with me. It tasted so good that I asked his teacher if I could make one of my own. She was nice enough to let me. It was yummy!!

I was in his room for 2 of the 3 "camping" days. it was so fun!! It was a very fun way to end the year. :)

Games, Games, and More Games! 5/29-31/10

Marc has been asking to have a family game night. We told him that we can't do it on a school night. Well, we finally had a non-school night free so we had game night....and then game day.....and then game day. ;-)
The first game we played was Skip-Bo. Marc had never played this before and we thought he would enjoy it. He did...and bonus for Mommy since I LOVE Skip-Bo!! :-)
(On a side note: While we were playing Skip-Bo, Marc was building up one of the piles and counting out loud. He said "5, 6, 7" and out of my little Princess came "8, 9"!!! She totally floored us!! We tried to get her to do it again on video but she wouldn't do it with the camera rolling. She very frequently count "1, 2, 3" while playing, but she has not gone higher then 3, sometimes 4. wow! )
We played various other games throughout the next few days including Deal or No Deal, and Clue Jr. We looked through some of the "older" kid games and found the traditional Clue. We decided he got the idea and rules down and correct for Clue Jr. so it was time to try the "real" one.It was truly a lot of fun playing these "big boy" games with my smart little Peanut! He is growing and maturing into a (for the most part) very nice little man! :)
While we were playing games with Marc, Samantha dad various activities at the table with us. She had fun coloring and doing stickers some of the time......
Peeling the paper off the crayons (look at that look of concentration!). When Marc was little I wouldn't let him take the paper off the crayons. Since then I have learned what a great fin motor skill practice it is, so I let her do it to as many crayons as she wants.
One of the other things she did was play with "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" dominoes. She had fun stacking, unstacking, and restacking them. We also did a good visual discrimination (teacher lingo) activity by having her find all the tiles with Pooh on them. She really liked that. She got really exited each time she found one with Pooh on them.
I am very excited that Marc has turned into a game kid. I love playing games and now I have some who loves them equally as much to play them with me! :-)

Marketplace Day 5/28/10

One day last week Marc came home talking about Marketplace Day. He said it was on Friday. When I asked him what it was his answer was "It's where we go any buy things, some are real and some are fake". Well, that cleared things right up! ;-) We hadn't gotten anything sent home from school talking about it so I was completely confused. I asked my neighbor whose kids go to CW as well. It turns out, what Marketplace day is:
3rd graders sell goods and services that kids from the rest of the school "buy" with play money they have earned in their classrooms. The 3rd graders then get to buy prizes with the money they made selling their stuff. It was kinda fun. Both my Mom and I were in Marc's classroom that day. Mrs Grimm told us to go down and go shopping for free. We walked in and were each handed about 5-7 dollars to shop with. Marc got $5 from his classroom. We bought more money (donations go towards buying the prizes for the 3rd graders). Marc was able to spend in total about $20ish. Everything cost either $1 or $2, so he got lots of stuff, 90% of it was food. ;)
The first purchase he made was nachos.He also bought a long eraser, candy, cookies, erasers, magnet, key chain, mystery balloon, chocolate covered pretzel, vase, flower rings, and I can't remember what else. The whole gym was filled with tables of various things to buy.
It was kinda fun going in there, there was a lot of energy and excitement. I am not positive what the lesson for the 3rd graders was, but what a fun way for the kid to learn about money, marketing, selling, product development, etc. As I was walking around I was looking and storing ideas for possible things for Marc to do when he gets in 3rd grade. From this year the ideas that I am filing away are the nachos and the mystery filled balloons. :-) Super fun idea!