Pumpkin Patch

Last week I went with Rosalie's class on their field trip to the pumpkin patch.  It was quite exciting for all the kindergarteners; for most people it was their first time on a school bus!  It was a long and lively trip to the farm.  

I was assigned to watch over three lovely girls, Rosalie and two other nice girls.  One of them actually lives less than a block away from us!  I like how they took their "team" seriously.  They really stuck together all day long, just as the teacher asked them to.  

We went on a tour of the farm, including their store.  I loved these gourds.  They're called "Birdhouse Gourds" because people dry them and turn them into... yep. Anyway, if I were a bird, I would definitely set up a little nest in one of these lovely homes.

Later on the farm tour we saw these cool running ducks who lay blue eggs.  Wish you could see the ducks better in the picture.  They are different than regular ducks you'd see at the pond.  Much more...vertical.  And they cannot fly.



I imagine that for Rosalie seeing the eggs was cool, but maybe not as amazing as it would be for other kids who don't have a Grandmama who takes them out to gather eggs in a henhouse like Rosalie does.  But on the other hand, the love of eggs really only grows the more you get to see and handle the beautiful ones laid by hens you know. :)

 We were lucky to have beautiful weather for part of the time.  This is the view from the hayride.

Rosalie quite enjoyed the hayride.

Here is the whole class.  A really nice class, I'm happy to say!  Good kids.  The four kindergarten classes at R's school were rotating through the other activities throughout the day, so it was never overwhelming that there were almost 100 kindergarteners total at the farm.  We were sitting here waiting for our turn for something at this moment.

Everyone was invited to pick out a pumpkin to take home.  Ro got a good one.

All in all a lovely trip!  By the way, the bus ride home was a little quieter going back.

Soccer, Writing, and Math Tidbits

Here's Rosalie's soccer team!  Just two more games to go.  She has gotten a lot better at soccer during this season.  She really gets in there and goes after the ball now.   It's been a great experience.

Today during "Lindy Boot Camp" Rosalie asked for some paper.  Apparently she spontaneously wanted to write some things down.  I love her "best guess" spelling so much.  It creates a lot of freedom for her so she can put anything she wants down on paper.  Here's what was on her mind today:

"I like trains. I like cats. What do you like?"

"What do the letters say? They say nice things." (As you can see in the pic, she's talking about mail)

She said that this one is a poem: "Where do, where do the cars go? They go under tunnels."

I'm not sure why she suddenly wanted to write these, but it's cool that she did.  

As we were driving home today, she also got her first dose of multiplication.  We were saying problems like: If the three of us each have two hands, that's 3  times 2 hands.  So what is 3 times 2, how many hands are in the car?  She answered 6 very easily!  We started adding body parts and she did fairly well!  I think she was so excited to do this that when she got one wrong it was pretty frustrating (by the time we got to 7 times 3 it was a little un-count-able.  We were up to head, legs, hands, feet), but it was still fun along the way to see what her mind could do.  I hope we didn't scare her off by doing stuff too challenging.  It's a fine line.  

On Friday Ro had the day off from school so she and I had a day to hang out together.  Among other things we were able to get her a Halloween costume.  She picked out a turtle costume, which I think is extremely wonderful.  

First Friend Sleepover!

This weekend was certainly fun for the big R.  On Saturday she had a soccer game, a birthday party for two of her best buds, and then a sleepover with her other best friend.

They did alright—stayed up a little late, woke up a little early, but the next day she was great, actually.  We waited for the other shoe to drop, but it never did.  

Anyway, the morning after the sleepover her buddy’s parents took them to a pancake breakfast at the Swedish Cultural Center where they served, of course, Swedish pancakes.  There was also an accordion player.  The girls did some dancing.  This video is courtesy of Rosalie’s friend’s dad.

Later on Sunday we had a Lindy Hop Bootcamp, which we are calling Lindy Fever 2.0, for people who used to go dancing all the time but now have spouses, mortgages, kids.  We're trying to get un-rusty.  Important guests to this boot camp are the kids, who are also there to learn some dancing, at least part of the time.  The rest of the time is play time for them.

This is a terribly blurry picture taken with a friend's phone, but here I'm trying to show these three cuties how to do triple steps:

Here they are, not moving. Our lindy babies!

Great weekend! Hope you had a good one, too.