Thursday, April 18, 2013

DINOrama

K is in the 99th percentile for her age in reading which puts her in the TAG program. Because of this she does extra projects for her reading class at school. Every time they finish a unit, she does an extra something at home and then brings it in to show to her classmates.

The first unit was on three whales who got separated from their pod and trapped in the arctic waters near Russia. They were rescued by people who helped break holes in the ice so they could breath. A Russian ice breaker tore apart the ice and lead the whales to the open sea. K made a picture of the whales trapped and people trying to save them.
Her second unit was on camouflage so she drew and colored this scene of sea creatures blending in to their surroundings. She loves sea life and has read many books on all the different animals that live in the ocean. She is like a walking encyclopedia and can rattle off all kinds of information.
The only things this girl loves more than horses and sea life are dinosaurs. Her last unit was on fossils and she was very excited about doing a dinosaur of some kind. Her dad came up with the idea of printing off a model of a dinosaur that she could put together 3-D style. She wanted to do a diorama so he taped together some cardboard boxes and she set to work gluing her dino parts to pizza cardboard, cutting it out and then piecing it together. It was pretty easy because there were letter tabs that matched up with each other.
Once that was done she started on her background for the diorama. She put some great detail in her "museum". There was a dino skull you can walk in, an egg with a baby dino still inside, a Brontosaurus, a slide and a gift shop with clothes on the racks.
When she was done, this thing measured more than three feet across and was spectacular! Her dad spray painted her dino gray and attached it to the box with wire so it wouldn't fall out and get trampled.
K was so excited to take it to school and show everyone. I delivered it for her because it was so huge. The kids thought it was awesome. She not only gave a presentation to her reading class but she also gave one to her home room class. Unfortunately her reading teacher gave her a hard time; she didn't believe K actually made it herself. K was very upset about that and quite frankly it pissed M and me off.
We are all very proud of her. She is so talented, smart and creative. I only wish she actually got graded for these projects she does. She spent a good part of her spring break working on this. I wish there was a better way for her to be challenged in reading. I don't think doing these projects really does much for her in that aspect. Reading in a higher reading class or reading harder books makes more sense to me but this is the way her current teacher wants to do things. Seems to me it's more of a "Did you really understand the material we covered?" than a "Let's challenge your reading ability with harder books." stance.

Speaking of comprehension, here's a funny story. During the last unit on fossils, which K knows a lot about, the reading teacher asked the class if they learned anything. K mumbled under her breath "No.". The teacher heard her and told her to clip down, it's a disciplinary action they do at her school. K proceeded to tell her that she already knew this stuff because she reads a lot of books about dinosaurs and fossils, which this teacher knows because she had K last year for first grade and commented several times on how much she liked dinosaurs and she could pronounce words she herself couldn't. Anyway, she still had to clip down and when she got home she told me about the incident. I found it rather funny. If you don't want to know the answer to "Did you learn anything?" then maybe you shouldn't ask the question.
I told K that in the future if she didn't learn anything, just keep her thoughts to herself. It did make me chuckle though.

Beach Babes, and a Dude

We headed to Auntie's beach house for the last week of Spring Break. The first day we were there we went to Ripley's Believe It or Not in Newport. I haven't been there for over ten years but it really hasn't changed much. L was scared at first because it was so dark inside with lots of weird things to look at but eventually she liked it. K thought it was fascinating and loved reading all the weird facts.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the pier looking at the boats in the harbor and searching for sea lions. It was a nice day at the coast.
While at Ripley's we stopped at the gift shop. 
Mom bought us all matching rainbow rings.
On Wednesday we went down to the beach so the girls could play in the sand and the tide pools. They always find fun creatures to look at. This time K found a sea star that was stranded on a rock. She picked it up and put it back in the ocean so it wouldn't die.
Cousin Nathan played with the girls and helped them build a sand castle. He is really good with the girls and they adore him.
On Thursday we headed up to Tillamook so we could take a tour of the cheese factory. It was about an hour drive but scenic. The girls had fun drawing pictures on their boogie board and playing with Nathan.
Tillamook makes the best cheese and ice cream products. We were disappointed that it was a self tour instead of an actual guided tour but we still learned a lot of things about how the company started and evolved over the years.
K's face is funny, so serious.
A flash forward of my girls in 8 years?
We could see the workers through glass from above. Here they are taking huge blocks of cheese and cutting them down to 5 pound blocks. They cut off the uneven sides and sell them at a discount in the shop below. I would have loved to bring home one of those huge blocks of cheese!
Before leaving we got to sample 8 or so different cheeses and then we each enjoyed an ice cream cone. My favorite cheese was the garlic cheddar cheese. I picked up some Habanero cheese for M to try. Once we finished our ice cream we headed up the road to Pacific Seafood for lunch.
The food was cheap and tasty. There were even big glass windows where we could watch the people at work shucking oysters.
The girls burgers were HUGE and the smiley fries were adorable. Mom and I got a shrimp basket which was very fresh and tasty. Karen got the clam chowder which was the best I have had in a long time. Definitely a tasty little pit stop along our journey.

And a picture of our gracious hostess with the mostest
with her adoring sister.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Granny Bearing Gifts

Granny brought this marionette, named Maria, for K. It is from Granny's neighbor and very cute. K was able to get the hang of maneuvering her pretty quickly.
L has been wanting a scarf for a long time and Granny brought her one. It is very pretty and makes her look so grown up.
K got some nice smelling hand lotion and lip balm while L got some cute outfits for her build a bears.
They also each got some cute outfits to wear. I love the pastel skinny jeans with the tops.
They also got some bunny ears, bracelets, a necklace (K's was an owl and L's was a doggie), and some cards (L got Crazy 8's and K got Rummy).
They loved their gifts, especially Crazy 8's. We played it a lot and both girls are pretty good at it, although Granny beat us all most of the time. I think she cheats:)

Friday, April 12, 2013

Easter Time

Easter fell early this year, the last weekend of March. My mom was here and helped us dye eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide.


They did a great job and the eggs turned out so pretty. Unfortunately when we took them out of the fridge for the bunny to hide, condensation made them all speckled. Next year we will have to dye them the day before and just leave them out of the fridge overnight.
On Easter morning the girls came down and found their baskets on the counter with a note from the Easter Bunny. This year he had colored plastic eggs assigned to each girl (green and pink for L, purple and yellow for K) and the dyed eggs were free for all.

We had them wait until after church to go through their baskets and do the egg hunt. We all woke up late and had to make it to church by 9am. When we got home at noon and all changed, they went through their baskets. K got ribbon, Alice in Wonderland stories, and a friendship bracelet kit. L got sand castle toys, two barbies, and barbie clothes. Then they started finding the eggs.
   
Even K's kitty found an egg. 
The plastic eggs were filled with hair ponies, candy, money, and race cars. There was candy in their baskets as well. We let them eat as much candy as they wanted, L ate almost all of hers but K was more conservative.

Love this picture of K looking CRAZY!!
And an unflattering picture of us just to prove we were there.