End of School

School got out today (June 19th) so I hope to catch up on the blog.

Monday, June 9th, Carmen had her end of the year band concert and Tobin had his Spring Sports night. I don't have a picture of Carmen because she was in the second row and I could see her face at all!

Tobin's award night began at the same time as Carmen's concert. It gets very buys at the end of the year. Tobin received his 3rd varsity letter this year. He is hoping for 12 letters by the time he graduates.





The next night Carmen had soccer tryouts for fall soccer while Sarai had a select choir concert.


This video is of a song that two eighth graders taught the rest of the group. One was in charge of directing the voice while another played the piano. The director of the choir, Bryant Clark, never influenced the song and directing in any way. Last year the select choir would sing together Sara Bareille's song "Love Song" before or after their rehearsal time. They asked to perform it during the end of the year concert and they were fantastic. Hence a tradition was born and hopefully keeps being passed on. Enjoy.

Carmen's field trip

On June 4th I was priveledged to attend one of Carmen's field trips. We walked from her school to her science teacher's home.

There the kids, all 50 of them, were given a huge scavenger hunt/ discovery to do in 2 hours.

They had to answer questions such as: name 5 things birds use to make their nests. Here teacher had this display of nests for them to look at and study.

We had to disect a flower and find all the parts. Look for different kinds of leaves, flowers, trees, slugs, water insects and so many other things. All of them could be found in her yard!

There was a brook running through her yard. The kids could treck through it with water shoes on. They measured the temperature of the water and took water samples to look at under a microscope.

After this field study pizza came for lunch!

and Ice Pops

Before walking back to school they experimented with Mentos and Diet Coke!

Notice the soda geyser! A package of Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke will produce this. The experiment was done 3 more times. Carmen wants to try it at home. We will try to see if Root Beer or Fresca will do the same.

I enjoyed this field trip. It made me think more about teaching science to the older grades.

Sports dictate my weekends

So much has happened since I last posted!

I will begin with a photo or two of Sarai playing in with her Shamrock's team. When she has a tournament weekend she has 4 games to play in. On the weekend or May 30th and 31st she had a tournament in Easton, MA. This was a late tournament. She had two games on Saturday, but didn't attend them because she attended a friend's BarMitzah and celebration. She attend both games on Sunday; one at 4:10 and one at 7:55pm! What were they thinking assigning us (we had an hour plus commute) the last game of the night.

Sarai is number 32.

The following weekend she had 4 games in Natick. Thankfully, they were close by because we were assigned games with a good amount of time inbetween. This allowed us to squeeze in my last game with coaching Rachel's U8 soccer team....

Rachel is using some her footskills she's been working on here.

Team cheer at the end of the game.

After the game I gave out trophies,

and popsicles

The team was very kind to give me a gift certificate to the local liquor store. I have used it already to stock up on Sangria ingredients!

After this celebration was over I took Carmen to her soccer coaches house for a pool party!

Rachel is wearing the large goggles. Carmen's friend is doing the handstand.

It is great and tiring to have all the kids so active! I am looking forward to a "slower" pace during the summer.