Category: school

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Sing-a-long

After Harry’s dancing, bongo bashing spectacular from a couple of weeks back, it was now Toby’s turn in the limelight. Toby had the starring role – he was introducing the show. He had been practicing his lines all week and now it was show time. With the children sitting waiting for the clock to tick round to 11:30am Toby spent his time counting the number of people in the audience and then holding his head in his hands! Was stage fright about to strike?

We needn’t have worried though – despite there being 32 people in front of him all with cameras flashing – he delivered his lines like a seasoned pro!

And here for all to see is the majority of the performance (13 minutes long):

httpv://youtu.be/RT3DrQh_Azk

And then grand finale (just another 6 minutes):

httpv://youtu.be/hatMTwGtDT8

The excitement of it all gave Toby an appetite. Straight afterwards it was pre-school snake time and he ate cookies, ice-cream, water melon and cup cakes. Then we took him home and he had lunch. Followed by pop corn. And then out for chinese for his tea!

What a clever, fat porker!

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3rd Grade Concert

Families were invited into school to watch the 3rd graders deliver a musical bonanza. It was an hour long extravaganza and included the Spiritridge version of of “row, row, row your boat” which went something along the lines of …

Propel, propel, propel your craft
Placidly down the liquid solution.
Ecstatically, ecstatically,
Ecstatically, ecstatically,
Existence is but an illusion.

httpv://youtu.be/VKPjz2dOEK0

After this Harry also delivered a bongo bashing, merrily dancing exhibition and a great time was had by all!

httpv://youtu.be/Ix97X3DmnnE

 

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Bieber or Obama?

Tomorrow, Toby has someone famous visiting his class. At least that what he tells us. And Miss Chen told him so it must be true. When asked who the famous person was, Toby thinks that it may be either Obama or Justin Bieber. His preference is for it to be Obama because he can’t stand Justin Bieber singing. If it is Obama he thinks that he will probably tell Toby that he can be President.

I’m not sure if will be either of these two but time will tell!

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Super Slalom

Although not technically a video clip of slalom ski activity it is nonetheless mightily impressive. It is also not something I thought I would see when Tracy and Harry got back from the slopes after receiving a text message earlier this afternoon saying something along the lines of “Harry nearly fell off the ski lift, they had to stop it!”. Not being the most confident boy I was worried that he may decide to give up with ski-ing however I needn’t have worried as the video shows him zooming down the slope. Well, ok, he may not be zooming but I’ impressed!

Harry on the ski lift going up the slope (not the one mentioned above):

httpv://youtu.be/l7XJpVl_PsA

Then zooming back down – if only I knew how to dub some Ski Sunday music into the clip:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeqbNav1Mvo

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Ski-ing

Harry had loved his first ski lesson and been suitably unimpressed when his second lesson was cancelled last week due to the winter storms. This Wednesday he was off again, hitting the slopes. This week Tracy went along as well as a supervisor. They clearly hadn’t seen Tracy’s ability on the snow before asking – she spends most of the time on her bum (a skill inherited from her sister). Anyway, they went for an afternoon up at Snoqualmie Pass and had a fun afternoon in the snow – lucky devils!

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157629035334957″]

httpv://youtu.be/Y8R_ldMrBjI

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School Dinners

Harry likes school dinners in America.

To give you an idea why the following are a couple of things he has had this week. On Monday he had a great big pile of nachos with cheese all over it.

On Tuesday it was turkey dinosaurs and chips and on Thursday it was the best of the lot! Belgian waffles, with whipped cream, bananas and a turkey sausage on the side. It was delicious! Although he was a little upset that there was no pudding!

No wonder Jaimie Oliver despairs with American school dinners! But what does he know? Harry loves them!

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Back to School

Well the stress of the first day is over. As we waited in the assembly hall, Tracy insisted that Harry looked like he was about to cry. I think it was more likely the other way round to be honest! Harry and Toby both went off to their respective classes like very brave boys and before you know it we are all back into the old routine. There are a few new routines as well including Harry coming home on the school bus (the #45):

A proper little American school experience!

Toby had a good time at pre-school too but hopefully in the next few weeks he will be joining his brother on the school bus! You may think he is too young for that but after one day at pre-school he has already asked if he can be dropped off at pre-school tomorrow and left to walk in by himself!

What an independent pair!

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School Days

This week is an open week at Spiritridge School so parents and children can view the new building. It is a very posh school, Harry and Toby are very lucky boys. Everything about the school is new and lovely although with a few hundred children charging around it in a couple of weeks time I don’t imagine it will stay that way for long!

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Captain Kid

This week at school Harry has been “Captain Kid”. Every week one of the children is Captain Kid and this entails a whole heap of exciting things – and 4 pages of instructions. It looked like being a busy week and this was confirmed when at 7:45pm on Thursday night we were still trying to sort the Captain Kid science experiment.

Activities for the week included…

“Caring Captain Kid Book” – this involved all the children in the class writing a page in a book giving Captain Kid compliments and telling them how special they are! Keep reading to find out more!

“Captain’s Favorite Snack and Story” – on this day Captain Kid has to take in his favorite snack to share with the class and bring in his favorite book. The snack was two packets of smartie cookies – yum, plus some raisins for the healthy children. The raisins remained untouched. The favorite book was one that Harry Captain Kid read recently which is all about Titanic.

Next up was “Hooked on my Hobby” day which involved Captain Kid telling the class all about soccer, how brilliant he is at it (as well as everything else), some photo’s of him playing for Harrold & Carlton FC and spending the day at school wearing his Harrold football shirt.

The week ended on “Science Experiment Day” which focused on static electricity. I won’t go into all the details of positive and negative charges, atoms, protons and electrons because we all know about that. But basically Harry taught the class about static electricity and then rubbed a balloon on his tummy to make it stick to the wall, his belly, make hair stand on end and ground pepper jump in a plastic pot!

When we got home from school on Friday we had a read through the “Caring Captain Kid Book”. It was a very entertaining read – some of the highlights as follows:

“You have great cursive”, from Lily

“You are awesome”, from Katie

“I really like your hair color”, Arielle

“Do you know what twenty times ten is?”, Zoe

“You are corgeous [sic] for joining a new class”, Shivani

“I have some things that I want to share with you”, Omar

“What would you do if you had 1,000,000,000$?”, Ashley

“I like your awesome accent”, Dane

“Do you like kangroos? [sic]”, Ruby

“What would you do if there was a pig inside your house?”, Taylor B

“Why do you like parrots so much?”, Giovanne (apparently Harry told the class that parrots are his favorite animal. No idea why.)

“I like your accent because it sounds like Harry Potter’s accent and it is awesome. Can I call you Harry Potter?”, Sarah

“Where would you go if you could go to Korea, China or Japan without the earthquake damage?”, Haohan

“You are awesome kid”, Liam

So that’s some of the compliments and questions Harry got from his new school friends.

If nothing else it has enabled us to find out what the children in his class are called. Having been there for just over a week he’d managed to find out about 3 names! At times he is almost too sociable.

So that’s a week in the life of Captain Kid! He’s quite pleased that he is not Captain Kid next week!

 

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First Day at School

Now that we have signed a lease, and much to Harry’s horror, he was able to start school! The school couldn’t bear the thought of Harry being off school until September so they made a special exception and allowed him to go for the last 2 and a bit weeks of term. Officially Harry is at Spiritrigde Elementary however that school is being completely rebuilt this year so the school relocated to Bellewood.

We took Harry to school for his first day this morning – it was a shock to the system for some, particularly as school starts at 7:50am. He is in classroom Portable C (“the place to be”) and his teacher is Mr Oppenhiemer (or Mr O). His class size is 24 and he sits on table 5 near the back of the class. It had a very nice feel to it and we think he’ll enjoy himself even if Harry doesn’t! Anyway, school finishes at 2:25pm so we will find out then how his first day went!

//Update

Two days in and school seems to be a roaring success. Harry has made three friends so far – an Italian, German and an American. This in itself is impressive because at the end of day one everyone in his class bar one was American. The first birthday party invite has come through – with a disclaimer to sign – a trampoline party in a couple of weeks.

The only downside so far is that Harry won’t help his friend making causes by winning everything he plays at school. This includes a new game called Bump, a catch game at the end of class today and at PE today (which was 10 pin bowling – no wonder he likes school!).

And to end with, a quote from his “Family Communication Journal” that he has to write at school and bring home for us to see:

“In maths I’ve been counting by four it was prity (sic) easy but some people found it hard unlike me.”

What a modest child we have!