1m2aSandbox

Can't talk here - too busy putting the
last touches on B Bear's journal. It goes back to Maddie's class
today as she ends her week-long possession of B Bear, as well as
her week-long extra homework assignments. The final one: keeping a
daily journal of all of B Bear (and Maddie's) activities, with
pictures glue-sticked in to go with it. I won't even pretend that
Maddie helped me with it, except to pose for the pictures.


Maddie ends her week with B Bear having spent several days in the
spotlight amongst her fellow classmates, and extremely sad that B
Bear is leaving. She's already begging me to ask the teachers
where they got him so she can buy her own exactly like him. Giving
the whole "No two bears are exactly alike, just as no two people
are exactly alike! Isn't God amazing?" speech has had no effect.
Guess what's going on her Christmas list.


I have enjoyed having the bear around, and having Maddie see her
life through his "eyes" and seeing how much fun she has. B Bear,
I'll miss you, kid.


The homework thing, not so much.

There’s a really excellent natural
science museum and wildlife refuge not far from us, and our family
membership allows us to enjoy their many miles of hiking trails
through protected wetlands, as well as their great indoors natural
science exhibits. They recently opened a limited-engagement outdoor
exhibit: nine life-size, realistic dinosaurs, complete with
animation and sound, stationed all along a hiking loop. Maddie and
Cora both enjoy dinosaur books as well as the Little Mermaid t.v.
episode where Ariel reawakens the dinosaurs from their frozen sleep
(sigh), so we decided to take in the exhibit.

At the end of last week, Maddie brought
home B Bear, the class bear. He came in his own backpack, with a
full set of clothes and a journal. Maddie is the Beary Special
Student this week, and gets the honor of taking care of B Bear all
week and carrying him everywhere. The week also serves as a
spotlight on Maddie, and every day she gets to reveal a little bit
about herself to the rest of the class. One day she turns in her
journal of her week with B Bear – complete with diary entries
and photos – and one day it’s show and tell time just
for her. On Monday, she had to bring in a poster covered with
pictures of herself, her family and friends.


Let me say in advance that I totally appreciate teachers and what
they do. I heart them in a big way, and consider them professionals
of the highest order – which is why I don’t homeschool
my kids, but leave it up to said professionals. But this poster
thing stressed me out on many levels.

I know I didn’t write anything on
Friday, and you were all waiting to hear how the bike-a-thon went.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go just absolutely superbly, and I
wasn’t really in the mood to blog about it, so sorry to leave
you hanging.


But here’s the story.

Maddie’s got a fundraiser for her
preschool today – a bike-a-thon. The school is setting the
parking lot up with cones to make a circular track, and each class
comes outside at recess time to ride laps around the track –
scooter, trike, bicycle, whatever. The children are supposed to
receive pledges for their ride – so many dollars for each
lap, that kind of thing – and try to go around as many times
as possible. The school suggests aiming for one lap for each year
of a child’s age, so Maddie should be shooting for four laps.


She stated yesterday that she feels confident she’ll reach
somewhere between ten and twenty.

This is part of my series, Staying On Top
of Family Meals. We’ve covered Planning Ahead, Cooking Ahead,
and Breakfast, and now we’re moving up the timeline to Lunch
and Snacks. You will quickly realize that everything comes back to
Planning Ahead and Cooking Ahead, but let’s get going.


Lunch. This is probably my least favorite meal, for a couple of
reasons. First, it’s the time of day when I’m fast
approaching my frazzle limit, and as I start to make lunch and the
little monkeys are dancing around my legs I feel as if I
can’t make that stupid peanut butter and jelly fast enough.
Second, I often make lunch early in the morning: packing school
lunches, packing picnics for the arboretum, packing poolside
lunches for swim time. I am heartily sick of slapping together a
huge assembly line of sandwiches, and I am even more heartily sick
of said sandwiches.

Yesterday we went to our local arboretum,
where they make every Monday a Mommy and Me Day. Because yesterday
was a holiday, they added a bonus – a local musician to come
do a kids’ concert that morning at no cost to us. We’d
been to hear this singer before and the girls liked him, so we were
excited about going back.


So we went to the park, and the time came for the concert.
It’d been raining so the park had moved the concert inside,
and we ended up spread out on the carpeted floor eating our picnic
lunches and pretending there weren’t two hundred kids all
around us doing the same thing. It’s one thing outside with
the sun shining and the grass tickling our feet, listening to music
in a big stone amphitheatre; it’s another thing when
it’s in a conference room – some of the charm is
lost.