Zoo

Well, can you see that we have spring fever? We went out in the lousy weather again and headed to the zoo. On the upside, it wasn't busy at all. On the downside, even the bathrooms were closed. We did manage to feed the fish as they actually had fish food in the machine and I actually had a quarter. Also, I suggested to Ethan that one of the cacti looked like a giant ball and told him we should play ball with it. That was the face I got in response.

In other news, I solved the mystery of the missing videos. One more thing Picasa has stopped doing is copying from the camera. I assumed it was because the camera hasn't been working right and not saving them. I did some exploring and found they are there! Hooray! Now to get them all in the right folders. They are now saying "Blog This" which easily allowed me to create posts with lots of pictures won't be fixed until they do a new release. Which means you'll be getting a lot more collages.

Falls Play

Well, it's still cold and wet but it's not cold and white so we headed to the falls for a playdate with cousins. We all had a fun time, even if we were a little numb by the end of it.

Splash!

We have started going to the library every Friday afternoon. When we got home, Ethan requested a chance to play in the rain. While it's finally not frigid out, it's not exactly pleasant. Nonetheless, we went outside for a little while before dinner to see if we could find any puddles. Sadly we no longer have the giant trench to splash in, but we found a big puddle at the end of the cul-de-sac and since no one was around, we ran over there and jumped in.

We Have a Winner!

Ethan came home from school with this awesome "winner" ribbon. For the second year in a row, he won the nutrition week poster contest! He was very excited.

The other photo is unrelated. He taped this to his door last weekend while he and James were playing "Spies."

Coloring Contest

Ethan entered the coloring contest at the Southbury Plaza this year. I forgot to scan the pictures he colored, so I had to quickly take pics with my phone before we turned them in. I love the vibrant colors he chose!

Fizz

Today's science experiment was fizz. The first activity was to put raisins in soda to see what happens. Turns out the gas bubbles attach to the raisins and make them float to the top. The bubbles pop, and they sink again. We also filled a second jar with plain water to see if they would do anything.

After that experiment, we also tried baking soda and vinegar and baking powder and warm water. I couldn't snap photos of that as I was a little more worried about keeping them contained! I think Ethan would have preferred more overflow.

School Activities

These are backward but blogger upload is still broken, so frankly y'all are lucky you're getting any images with the length of time it takes. On Tuesday, Ethan's school had an assembly to conclude their Celebration of Reading program. The children were asked to dress as their favorite character from one of the books. Ethan wanted to go as a goblin, so I attached paper ears to his Frankenstein hat for an instant goblin. The end of one event always means the start of another, so this week we began the five-a-day fruit and vegetable challenge. You may remember Ethan's poster from last year. He wanted to do a similar design this year, only use vegetables instead of fruit. Not sure if you can read it, but the theme was "Eat a Rainbow."

Happy St. Patrick's Day

We had a very busy weekend. We went to a St. Patrick's Day party on Saturday and a hockey game on Sunday. I was off my game and didn't get any pictures of either event. The party was at Ethan's friend's house and was for parents too. We all had lots of fun but a very late night.

Special Friday

On Friday Ethan and I had a special afternoon. I was one of the helpers in his classroom for the St. Patrick's Day craft. That meant he could leave school with me. Of course we needed an after school snack, so we went out for some froyo. Our favorite spot closed, so we had to go to the second best. We enjoyed ourselves before heading to the library and art class.

Science Wednesdays

Ethan and I decided to opt out of the after school enrichment program this spring. He seemed not to love it last time, he was really tired when I picked him up. Not to mention that it never let out on time and it was basically a logistical nightmare. Instead, we decided to make Wednesday our day for science experiments. I had a few in mind, and Ethan wasn't so thrilled with them. So while he did his homework, I started working on dinner and got the pizza dough ingredients in the mixer. He said, "Mom, that can be our science experiment." So that made me remember one I had seen involving yeast and a balloon. I looked up instructions, and just as soon as our dough was in a bowl ready to rise, we set about seeing if the gas that yeast produce could blow up a balloon. Ethan got a journal like Sid the Science Kid to make his observations. As you can see, our experiment was quite successful. As our balloon got bigger, so did our pizza dough. Once the yeast ate all the sugar, the bubbles began popping and the yeast deflated. Now to figure out one for next week!

Magic

Ethan's friend invited him to her birthday party. The special guest was a magician. Ethan volunteered to be his assistant and helped him collect quarters from behind ears. When his show was over, he made each kid a balloon animal.

6 1/2!!

Yep, that's right- Ethan is officially closer to seven than six. I think there are too few birthdays before he's going to grow up, so I say why not celebrate the half birthdays too. For breakfast he had half a PB&J on toast with strawberry halves and half slices of cheese. After that we headed to the Connecticut Science Center. The big attraction was an exhibit about Ancient Egypt, but we found many other things to look at and do as well. There was an exhibit about sound where we got to play a giant xylophone that was projected on the floor. Ethan got to be a DJ and mix the sound. In the sports exhibit we tested helmets and Ethan went down a ski slope. He also got to touch a lobster and stand in a wind tunnel. After we got home, I decided it was warm enough to spend a few minutes outside. We are so desperate for spring that we brought out the sidewalk chalk even though there's plenty of snow still around. We also attempted to build an igloo, but once we had two layers of blocks, the third just smashed apart. By then we were cold and wet and gave up. That was just as well, because I had to ice the half a cake I made- chocolate with peanut butter frosting. Tasted just like a giant funny bone, which of course reminded me of Granny.

Schoolwork

This kills me. Can you believe they are still teaching kids this nonsense? "George took his little hatchet, 'Oh I'll have fun! he said.' He went into the garden, and chopped down a cherry tree." NO, he didn't!!!! I asked Ethan if he was learning about historical myth making. Either way, he did a great job coloring George and relaying the nonsensical story.

Ethan has been learning about different famous artists in his weekly art class. This time they were learning about Matisse.

See that? We called it math. They call it a "number sentence." And instead of learning how to add, we also have to learn how to show addition in pictures and graphs too. I feel like they should have adult ed courses to explain the new modes of learning to parents.

"The plump one is Dad." Enough said.

"This is cheese, and a heart, because I love cheese. It's my weakness."

Star Reader!

Ethan's school had a reading challenge over the weekend. He was supposed to keep track of each minute he read. That was hard, he's always got a book in hand! But he did a great job, and he came in second for amount of reading time out of all the first grade students in his school! He won a gift certificate for Barnes & Noble and a bookmark, and he got a certificate for participating. That night, the PTO had a fundraiser at real Friendly's. So we went there for dinner. Hopefully they won't do that again soon.

Best Laid Plans

We were supposed to go to Philadelphia on Saturday. I had a meeting there for a board I am on. Ethan had other plans. Friday night he started showing symptoms of a stomach bug, and it just got worse. By Saturday night he was feeling better, so it was fortunately only a 24 hour thing, but just long enough to thwart the plans. So we ended up home trying to take it easy on Sunday, and it seemed like a good time to finish up those shrinky dinks Ethan got for Christmas. He enjoyed watching them shrink and couldn't believe how small they got!