Calvin’s Holiday Program

Calvin’s preschool holiday concert and party was this afternoon. The kids were very excited for the festivities. Unlike all the other concerts and programs we have attended at Meher, it was held in the adjacent church sanctuary. 

The kids did great. Calvin didn’t cry. And most the kids knew most the words to the four songs: Frosty, Do you Want to Build a Snowman, Marshmallow World, and Jingle Bell Rock. 

The party was fun as well with plenty of sweets and baked goods and sugar. Calvin thoroughly enjoyed his cookies. 

Calm

Tomorrow starts the Christmas holiday around here: Cal’s school concert, ellie has no school, Susie coming to town...etc. this morning I found Calvin cuddly with his hippo getting some extra minutes of sleep and rest. 

Yesterday Calvin went on a field trip with his school to the fire station to drop off donated toys by his classmates. He loved it.

Given all the fires recently that have affected friends and family Calvin has been curious, and a little scared, about fires. He has had fire drills at school but came home and wanted to know what to do at home...and then got scared when he realized he didn’t know how to open his window. He has had about a thousand questions about fire and what can catch fire, how fires get put out, is he safe from fire at home, etc. while at the fire station he learned Stop-Drop-and-Roll in case his clothes caught fire. He was so excited and proud about his new skill. 

Ellie’s feast

Ellies teacher hosted a multi-cultural feast today for her class. Every child was asked to bring some food representing their cultural history. 

We took gnocchi.

Ellie’s classmates have heritage and ancestry from all over the world: Scotland, Ireland, Japan, Armenia, Guatamela, Mexico, Middle East, US (BBQ Chicken), Russia, Phillipines...that’s all I easily remember.

Needless to say it was awesome. 

It was fun to be in her world for an hour and meet more of her classmates and friends. 

And the food was prettt good too. I have to say, only in a classroom this diverse would gnocchi be “weird” food. I mean these kids devoured taquitos, seaweed, and Armenian flatbreads with meat (Es favorite was a cheese pastry)...and excitedly try haggis...but the pats in red sauce was unique. 

It was also fun to hear the kids talk about what they brought. Her friend explained to me about how she had made the guacamole she brought and got it was her favorite. Another friend described all the ingredients in the burritos he made with his mom. Her friend beamed with pride when I said I like the Russian chicken dumplings she brought. And another tried to teach me how to pronounce the name of the Armenian cheese party he had brought...and all the kids laughed at me when I couldn’t get it right. 

Her class is a great group of kids and she has an amazing teacher this year. 

Reading

Calvin has been progressing through the Montessori lessons and activities lately. He claims that some things are easy, such as building a three-dimensional physical representation of the Pythagorean theorem upside down. So, his teacher has been challenging him. With reading. 

He has started sounding out words and matching them to pictures using “wooden matching cards”. He really enjoys this and apparently has been doing it often at school. 

Holiday crafting

Yesterday Ellie got together with girls she has know for more than half her life. Preschool friends that have stayed in touch. It has become a tradition of getting them together for holiday crafting. This year was cookies and sock snowmen (or sock pandas). 

Gamble House field trip

Today Ellie had a field trip that I had been looking forward to for years. Every 3rd grade run PUSD gets a tour of the Gamble House. The tours are lead by junior docents, middle-school kids who have been through training. Today was Ellie’s day to go on the tour and there was no way I was going to miss this field trip. So I chaperoned and got a group of 6 kids from her class to keep from touching artifacts while they were taught History and about the house. 

Main concepts that the junior docents stressed for the kids was Greene and Greene were about showing nature in their work and the imperfections of nature; the Gambles and Greene brothers appreciated Asian art and culture and incorporated it into the house; and electricity was new and people were afraid of it. Kids looked for cranes and bats and dragons and weird things about the lights. The junior docents did a great job and was very patient with all the kids...my group had tons of questions (some even stumped the docent and I had to step in to help her). 

The kids were amazed at the sleeping pitches, the size of the house, all the storage cabinets, the secret door and use of it by servants, the kitchen and pass-through window, and the funny telephones which were really annunciatiors. 

The kids were great and well behaved. It really was quite a bit of fun to chaperone this one. 

Incisor

So Calvin was home sick today and spent the majority of the day at the office with me. He walked to Dunkin with a coworker (“my new friend Jeff”) and got donuts for the office; he had conversations and mingled with my coworkers who all find him charming; he played cars in my office and colored; he watched cartoons; he walked to Trader Joe’s to buy lunch and ate with me; he reorganized all my magnets; and he found me calculator and played with it trying to find if there were any games. 

But the real excitement came when Ellie pulled her tooth out tonight. Her upper right incisor has been loose for a while but looked like it was becoming wedged between the new adult tooth and her other teeth. It was loose enough I knew she could wiggle it and get it out. I pulled the majority of my baby teeth out the moment they hinted at being loose; Nick thinks that is weird and let all his teeth fall out naturally. Apparently I’m not patient. Well, some determination and some wiggling she got it out. 

Webster Holiday Concert

Today was Ellie’s holiday concert at school. As she is now a 3rd grader her concert was the second of the day (with the 4th and 5th graders). Which meant that there weren’t any great seats left and I didn’t have my real camera either so I didn’t get the best photos. But she and her classmates did well. At least she is pretty easy to spot even without the zoom. 

Santa

Last night we visited Santa. After attempting to meet the big man twice at two separate malls and finding wait times of 4.5 hours or them cutting the line off 2 hours before closing. We were frustrated. However, we made a reservation (yes a reservation to see Santa) on a Monday night and finally the kids had their opportunity to present arguments for presents. 

Ellie and Calvin spent time writing and drawing their lists. Calvin drew Santa and Ellio (our elf) and dictated a list. He really didn’t have too many things he wanted but the list included: a volleyball, a basketball, and balls. Ellie’s list was all American Girl stuff and a pair of slippers. 

When they had their chance the kids were very excited. Ellie more so than Calvin. Santa asked E if she had kept her room clean all year...she didn’t give a direct answer. So Santa asked Calvin if she had kept it clean and C promptly replied, “No!”. Santa complimented E on her handwriting as well. When asked what he told Santa he wanted Calvin said, “he can read my list”. 

All in all it was successful and we got some cute photos.