The Lee Family

Friday, November 17, 2017

Sofia's Field Trip to the Dallas Arboretum

Yesterday, Sofia and all of her fellow 5th graders went on their second field trip which was to the Dallas Arboretum. I arrived at the Arboretum around 9am and the kids arrived on their buses shortly after that. We entered the Arboretum at the Children's Garden and after all of the kids were separated into their groups with their respective chaperones, we were told to explore and meet in the picnic area at 11:30am for lunch. It ended up being a little chilly and cloudy all day, so it was a perfect day for a field trip! Much better than it being too hot out! Along with Sofia, I had Georgia and Lily in my group and they ended up being the perfect girls to have for the day. I let them decide which way to go and just told them that they had to stay together and keep me in sight, which they did more or less. Of course, Sofia was the one who would "forget" my rules and head off.

We headed for the Walk in the Clouds tree that looks like a tree, but is actually a big play structure with stairs in the truck that leads down to the lower level of the Children's Garden. The girls played on the tree netting before we decided to head downstairs to the T. Boone Pickens Pure Energy Garden, where the girls were able to explore energy and how it is created by wind, sun and water. There are several hands on features that the girls played around on and they all had a lot of fun. Hopefully they actually learned a little too. Of course, there was one of those "wind energy" machines and the girls climbed into it machine to test it out. They loved it, of course! I got a few cute pictures of them, but didn't really capture how much fun they really had!

After exploring energy for a bit longer, we decided to continue to a new area and ended up at the large kaleidoscope and exploration area. The girls loved the kaleidoscope and exploring all that the area offered. It included a large plate with a pendulum that released sand as it swung. The girls loved clearing off the plate and then trying for different patterns with the pendulum. It was really cool and sort of memorizing at the same time. Near the pendulum was an area that included huge foam shapes that could be arranged to build different things. Of course, there were several of the Academy kids playing around with them! It was really creative and cool. The area also included an enclosed cylinder of water that could be spun to create a kind of air tornado. There was a long line of Glenhope kids waiting for a turn to pull the crank and create their very own tornado. They loved it!

They still had a little time before lunch, so we headed to the maze, which I knew the girls would love. As we walked to the maze, the girls loved finding snails and Georgia found the smallest snail ever and made it her pet. I took a picture of the girls (and tiny snail) at the entrance to the maze before we started to explore. Of course, I lost all three girls after about 3 minutes in the maze, so I headed back to the entrance since I knew they would end up there sooner or later. Sure enough, they had a great time exploring the maze and Sofia ended up asking me to go with her into the maze to take a picture with a really cool dragon.

After the maze, we met the rest of Sofia's classmates and fellow 5th graders at the picnic area. The kids' lunches were in ice chests so they found their respective lunches and found a place to enjoy their food. They were all eager to eat since field trips and all the running around makes the kids super hungry. I had my sandwich and enjoyed sitting down for a few minutes.

After lunch, Ms. Hayes and her kids (and all of us chaperones) went to the Life Cycles Center for the kid's science class portion of their visit. A young woman taught the class and it was really interesting! She explained that there is a lot of life, even though we don't necessarily see it with our naked eye. So, she explained the wetlands and how important are and how the wetlands life cycle works. It was so impressive to see how engaged and interested all the kid's were and how eager they all were to answer the instructor's questions. One of the best parts of Sofia joining the Aspire Academy is how engaged her classmates are in learning! The instructor separated the kids into groups of four and gave each of the groups a large bowl of water. They had to test the ambient air temperate, water temperature and then find three of the various little creatures that live in the water. The kids were all over it!

Once they were done exploring their water samples, the kids finished up and we all headed back to the entrance of the Children's Garden, where we met up with the rest of the Glenhope 5th graders. The kids sat on a series of stairs for a class picture and then we said our goodbyes and the kids headed back to their buses. It was such a fun field trip and I always love joining Sofia on such events so I can have a little better understanding of her classmates and class dynamic. I gave Sofia a big hug and then headed to my car and home in time to pick Olivia up from school.

Three very sweet girls!

Fun in the wind machine!

Exploring water power

Selfie!

Sofia, the dragon.....

The large kaleidoscope

The sand pendulum

The tiniest of snails that Georgia found and made her pet animal

The girls (and tiny snail) at the entrance to the maze

Sofia and her dragon

The floating globe

Lunch time....of course, Sofia's eyes are closed.

Georgia and a butterfly that landed on her and ended up staying on her hand for nearly an hour!

Heading to the Life Cycles Center - Class of 2025!!!

Exploring the water sample

Sofia and her buddy, Liam

The 5th graders of Glenhope! Go Gators!

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Teacher Tuck-In With Mrs. Schultz

Tonight one of the girls' very favorite teachers came to read stories and tuck them into bed. Every year at the CES Fall Festival, one of the fund raising items is the "Teacher Tuck-In" offered by each of the Kindergarten teachers. The highest bidder gets the opportunity to have their favorite Kindergarten teacher to come to their house and read stories to their child. Sofia had Mrs. Schultz as her teacher for 1st grade and Olivia had her last year for Kindergarten. Both girls adore her and she is easily one of the sweetest and warmest teachers. Last year, the Teacher Tuck-in went for $200. This year, somehow we were able to pay less than half for Mrs. Schultz' visit.

Mrs. Schultz arrived at our house at 7pm and both girls were excited. Olivia literally asked for hours when Mrs. Schultz would arrive and kept a lookout the front door for an hour. Mrs. Schultz arrived and the girls couldn't calm down or stop chattering! Olivia had written on the white board upstairs "Welcome Mrs. Schultz" and was desperate to show her. So the three of them headed upstairs and ended up sitting on the floor in Sofia's room. Mrs. Schultz brought a book called "Good Night Yoga" and soon it was quiet and I sneaked a peek to find Mrs. Schultz reading the book to them while all three did yoga poses. It was so cute! Unfortunately, I didn't have my cell phone, so wasn't able to take a picture. It was so sweet and the perfect book given Mrs. Schultz love of yoga.

Once the were done with their yoga moves and book, the girls and Mrs. Schultz moved down to Olivia's room where Olivia read to Mrs. Schulz and Sofia and then Sofia read to them. Olivia read a Dr. Seuss book. It was super sweet and Mrs. Schulz was very impressed by Olivia's reading! She gave the girls hugs and headed home. I told Mrs. Schultz that the girls were so excited and she said, "I can believe it! I think Olivia has talked more tonight than she did all year in class!" She really was super excited and they both loved having Mrs. Schultz over for the evening. Olivia re-read the book to me and showed me each of the yoga moves. She was so excited. After she left, we tucked the girls in and got them ready for school the next day.

Olivia reading to Mrs. Schultz and Sofia

Mrs. Schultz and her former Kinder Cuties

Olivia re-reading the yoga book after Mrs. Schultz left.

Olivia and Giraffey going to bed on Mrs. Schultz' pillow from last year

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Trick Or Treat!

It is finally Halloween! I absolutely love Halloween since it's so much fun to talk about costume options for each of the girls, I am able to be a little creative with their costumes and it's just a fun night out together. Growing up I wasn't able to trick-or-treat until middle school since the town I grew up in didn't allow trick-or-treating after a child was hit by a car and killed. Instead, our elementary school would hold a festival in the gym and we'd play festival games and get a little candy. It wasn't until I went to a middle school in another town that I was able to trick-or-treat with my friends in their neighborhood.

Of course the girls really love collecting candy, but I think they also love to dress up and look different for an evening. This year I asked the girls about a month before Halloween and Sofia immediately knew she wanted to be an astronaut. Originally Olivia wanted to to be a fairy, but I suggested she dress up as a unicorn and she agreed. I wanted her to wear her unicorn horn from her birthday and had a few easy ideas about creating a costume. Thanks to Pinterest there are a ton of great ideas and she really loved sitting with me and looking at different costume and unicorn face painting ideas. I ordered a white long-sleeved and skirted leotard and tights for Olivia's unicorn costume and used yarn that was a combined pink and purple color to make her tail and "hooves" for her hands. We planned to spray paint her black boots gold, but she decided to use her gold tennis shoes instead. She was most excited to have her face painted as a unicorn, which we'd seen on Pinterest.

For Sofia I knew we had to buy an astronaut costume and then decided to create some of the extras. We spray painted her Target cowboy boots silver and I used three 2-liter soda bottles to make "oxygen tanks" that were also spray painted silver and glued together. I used black ribbon to create shoulder straps that we ended up safety pinning to her costume. A few days before, Sofia and I made a paper mache NASA helmet using a balloon, strips of printer paper and a mixture of wood glue and water. We got into a good groove with me painting the strips with the watered-down wood glue and hand it to Sofia to place it onto the balloon. We ended up adding probably 3 or 4 layers of paper strips and were really surprised by hard solid the helmet was once it dried! I thought the helmet would have "NASA" on each side but CK and Sofia corrected me that the only markings on the real helmets are a wide red commander stripe down the center. So, I painted one on which was easy and then used electrical tape to smooth out the openings. It ended up looking pretty cute and worked well and Sofia loved it!

On Halloween day it was forecast to be in the mid-50s and raining! It seemed like the rain would hold off, until it started raining lightly around 1:30pm. It rained steadily but stopped around 5pm, which was perfect! We ate white chicken chili and corn bread and then the girls got dressed into their costumes. Sofia was lucky in that she could wear whatever she wanted under her astronaut costume, so she wore leggings and a long-sleeved shirt and was completely comfortable all evening. Olivia, on the other hand, had a very thin costume, so I had her wear a pair of white leggings under her white tights and we found a white fuzzy vest that was Sofia's that worked perfectly with her costume! I did her face paint while looking at the Pinterest post and it turned out really cute. She loved it! I took them outside to take a few photos before the festivities, and Olivia was cold from the beginning!

We met up with Stacy, Marco, Antonio, and Luca. Brandon didn't dress up this Halloween, now that he's 14 years old, but he walked the neighborhood with us. The kids actually trick-or-treated at our house first and Connie passed out candy to the eager crew. We then stopped by Pete's house and got more delicious candy. We continued down the neighborhood and saw Carla and Mitzi and ended up connecting with Peter and Tammy and their two girls, as well as Irena, Waguih and their sweet little girl, Michelle. We finished up the rest of the neighborhood and then caravanned to Shivani's neighborhood. Pritha invited us to come to their neighborhood pizza party and costume contest at 5pm, but we really wanted to go through our neighborhood first, so we made it over around 6:30pm. Before we headed over, we had to empty both of the girl's candy containers because they were both very full from all of our generous neighbors! It was crisp and cool, but both girls were very comfortable. Olivia did end up getting cold after we'd started trick-or-treating in Shivani's neighborhood. I also wore a white vest, so I gave it to Olivia which looked like a big, fluffy dress on her. She'd warm up quickly and then she would give it back to me. We visited the rest of Shivani's street and the girls were mesmerized by the house that had a scene of dancing skeletons which then turned into a scene of skeletons climbing out of the ground. It was super creepy, but the girls couldn't stop watching it.

On the next block there was another house that included a full haunted house in the front yard. The kids loved it, especially when the spiders would drop down on them. Just after that house, right around 7pm, Olivia announced she was done and wanted to go home. She said she wasn't cold, I think she was just tired. She and I walked back with Pritha and Shivani to their house where CK and Balaji were hanging out and "passing out candy." Connie stayed with Sofia and Antonio and crew, who continued down the street trick-or-treating. Once we were back at Pritha's house, Olivia tried out some of her candy and sat on my lap. Sofia and Connie returned about 45 minutes later and we said our goodbyes and headed home. Both girls had a great time but they were exhausted.

Once we were home, the girls looked over their candy collection and then changed out of their costumes and went to bed. Olivia loves having her Grandma in town to put her to bed. It's a nice break for me too.

Sofia working on her NASA helmet