Ms. Titus

This is Trevor with his 3rd grade teacher, Ms. Titus. She's the best.

I went back and forth about the red/green color scheme, thinking it might read Christmas, but I decided I don't care. I'm happy with how it turned out.

Penguin Gift Bags

This is Cindy again! I hope you enjoyed Trevor's blog takeover yesterday. It will be interesting to see if that is still what he wants to do for his party once his birthday rolls around in June. I hope so. It's a really fun theme. I especially loved the gift bag. It's so easy to make! Affiliate links below. 

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Penguin Gift Bag

Materials: 

• black gift bag
• microtip scissors
• cardstock (white, orange, and black)
• craft glue
• googly eyes

Steps: 

Start with a black gift bag, then cut a white piece of cardstock slightly smaller than the bag. Cut a dip at the top and glue it in place. Use orange cardstock to make two feet and the beak. Cut a pair of flippers from black cardstock. 

Glue the eyes in place, the add the beak below the eyes. Then open up the gift bag and glue the feet in place. Finally, add the flippers to the side of the bag. Done!

Trevor's Penguins of Madagascar Birthday Party

Hello! This is Trevor. My class is doing a school math project. This is the assignment:

"You are planning a birthday party. Your parents have agreed that you may invite four people and will give you $120.00 to buy everything that you need."

For this project, I decided to do what I actually want to do for my 10th birthday. First, I picked a theme, Penguins of Madagascar. I chose the theme because I thought it would be fun. It has a lot of crafts that you can make and the movies are cool. 

First, I decided to get these invitations ($0.99). 

Next, I chose decorations:

• Balloon ($2.69)

• Streamers ($0.99)

• Tissue Penguin ($9.99)

Next I decided on my menu. I chose:

• Round Table Pizza, one Maui Zaui ($18.99) and one pepperoni ($15.99)

• Strawberries from the farmers market ($6.00)

• Pretzels ($1.99)

• Sprite ($0.99)

• Lemonade (free because my grandma has a lemon tree)

• Popcorn (free from Picnic Day) We'll eat this while we watch Penguins of Madagascar.

• Cupcakes (have ingredients) Everyone gets to decorate their cupcakes with frosting, candy eyes, other candy and Sparkle Gel ($2.99)

• These candles ($1.98) will be on my cupcake.

Next I decided how my table setting will be. I chose:

• Light blue tablecloth ($1.99)

• Black plates ($3.99)

• Black forks ($2.69)

• Black polka dot napkins ($2.17) 

• Black cups ($2.99)

These are our party games and activities:

• Piñata (free because we have supplies and we always make our own)

• The piñata will be filled with 60 packs of Pez ($15.90).

•  We are going to play 'Pin the Beak On the Penguin!' ($1.00 for poster board)
•  We will also play The Present Game. The present will have these Pez dispensers in it ($20.00).

• Everyone will get a party bag to put their things in.

When I added all of those up, I got $116.59. My change is $3.41. That's my math project! I hope you liked it. I'm looking forward to my birthday!

Ice Skating (Recital #4)

Anyone remember my attempts to guess what the theme of Trevor's fourth ice skating recital would be? Not surprisingly, it wasn't Prison.  It wasn't Halloween either, though Steve's guess of 'Thriller' was the closest either of us came.

Check it out:

Trevor is the only boy in the routine, so he should be easy for you all to spot. 

Unfortunately, two of the girls lined up in the wrong spots at the beginning. That small mistake messed up pretty much the entire routine, as every formation was off. The kids split into two groups of 3 and 8, rather than more equal groups of 5 and 6. That meant the circle didn't split where it should have. They almost fixed it, but then they split into the same incorrect groups as before. The rotations of 3 in one group and 8 in another had no prayer of staying together or staying with the music. With all the formations off, they didn't transition to the next moves in time and ran out of music before doing an entire end section. You can see the confusion throughout the piece. At any given time, you can see a few kids trying to correct the problem, a few going with the flow, and a few who are clueless that there even is a problem. It's too bad, as the routine looked fantastic during their last practice. Oh well!  

Anyway, the theme for the whole recital was 'I Love School.' Did you guess? Any guesses for what the next recital will be? It's right before Christmas, so I wouldn't be surprised if they perform to holiday songs. 

Adventures In Science, Meeting #1

This month, I'm leading Trevor's Webelos (Cub Scout) den as they work on their "Adventures in Science" activity pin. We had our first meeting this week. I pulled out my periodic table t-shirt, lab coat and safety glasses for the occasion, an outfit I used to wear back in my teaching days when we started the first day of our Chemistry unit. Good times.

We held the meeting in the garage, aka the Cub Scout Science Lab. Trevor and I made a poster to direct the Scouts where to go. The poster was a true collaboration. We sketched out our design together, then I moved across from him and we colored simultaneously. I love how it turned out. 

This is Bob Skeleton. He's been hanging in our garage for the past 9 years. Prior to that, he hung in my classroom and served as our class mascot. (Not once in 9 years has anyone ever asked why there is a skeleton wearing a name tag hanging in our garage.) Bob helped us out by holding the US flag during our meeting.

Our meeting was so much fun! After watching me do a silly experiment with too many variables, the boys worked together to design a fair test to see whether hand soap or ketchup is more effective at cleaning pennies. They were amazed to rinse off their pennies and see that the ketchup worked better for all but one Scout! 

Then the boys worked together to come up with a fair test of the effect that fertilizer has on plants. They each planted lettuce seeds in two containers, keeping all variables the same except for adding fertilizer to one pot and not the other. They took the plants home and will be making observations throughout the month.

Then we experimented with dry ice. The Scouts loved seeing how frozen CO2 behaves in water, but they were even more excited to see what happened when I put pieces of dry ice into their cups of apple juice!

Here are the hard-working scientists from the Space Seagull Patrol, showing off their soon-to-be sparkling apple juice.

 

Before putting dry ice in their cups, I'd emphasized safety rules and expectations. Apparently I did too good of a job, as they were all very nervous to try their newly-carbonated juice, even after I'd said it was ok. I love this photo with one brave soul tasting the juice, two who are considering it and trying to get up their nerve, and two who are watching to see what happens to the others once they try it. 

 

After seeing that their fellow Scout neither died nor froze his insides, the others cautiously took a sip... and LOVED it. The last time I saw such enthusiasm for apple juice was approximately 10 years ago when I last did this activity with my students. 

I can't wait for next week's meeting.