What goes on inside Eli's head

Eli: If I had a pet snake, I would kill it and sell the skin for money. Then I would make shoes out of the skin. One shoe would cost $5 and the other one would cost $5. So the pair of shoes would be $10.

Me: Oh, $10. That's a good price for a pair of shoes.

Eli: Yeah. And if someone wanted to, they could buy just one shoe for $5 and then someone else could buy the other shoe.

Anyone want to buy one snake-skin shoe? It's only $5!

The first day of first grade

Yeah, that was yesterday. It went surprisingly well! Eli picked out a special outfit for the first day. An R2D2 shirt and Wall-E pants aren't exactly the combination I would have picked out (and I tried to talk him out of the pants), but that's what he was really excited about. He said it was cool because they are both robots. He does have a good point.

Last year

This year

Wow, he looks so much older!

I got to pack him a lunch. It wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. I did include a little love note though. Since he can't really read yet, I just put "I love you" and a picture of the two of us holding hands. (We were in stick figure form) He has a thing with pictures of him and Mike holding hands. I hope it worked with me too.

When it was time, Eli was happy to get on the bus. Noah was the only one to shed tears because he didn't get to go on the bus. When he came home, Eli was still happy. He said it was way cooler than kindergarten, just a lot longer.

We celebrated the day with corn dogs and macaroni and cheese for dinner. Then we went to Thanksgiving Point to get some ice cream cones and play with friends.

Noah's little friend, Nadia, helped him take his mind off the whole bus thing.

Noah's Photo Shoot

Noah's considering a career in modeling. Here are some of the more recent shots from his portfolio.

The charming smile

Full body shot.....for the ladies

The pensive look

Just one of the guys

Pics of the Faves

A little experimentation

During our lab today in Bubble Blowing 101, we experimented with a new bubble recipe and some unconventional bubble blowers. Let me review what my students' findings were.

First, our new recipe was as follows:

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup liquid dish soap

1/4 cup light corn syrup

Note: This is only HALF of the original recipe. If we do it again, we will reduce the proportions by half again because it made quite a bit!

Items used as bubble blowers:

Spatula with holes

Slotted spoon

The claw-like spoon used for pasta that has a hole in it (this is the technical term)

Beaters from an electric mixer

Pipe cleaners

Twist ties

Drinking Straws

Here are some photographs taken during the experiment:

The Results:

The Recipe

The recipe worked well. It attracted some bees at first, due to the corn syrup, but they quickly flew away. It was very sticky, so make sure you have a hose or some other source of water near by for clean-up.

The Bubble Blowers

The best bubble blowers were the slotted spoon and twist ties. We connected several twist ties together to make a circle with a handle.

The worst bubble blowers were the beaters and the pipe cleaners. The beaters didn't make any bubbles at all, we think, because we couldn't completely submerge them. The pipe cleaners just soaked up the bubble solution.

The students were graded on participation. Leah unfortunately received a D for Distracted. She only participated for a short time and then left to play on the playground that is right next to the "lab". Noah earned a C+ for Concentration. He tried really hard to blow bubbles. He only succeeded a few times in that endeavor, but managed to get the messiest. Eli earned an A for Attentive. He stayed with me the whole time and was really interested in the experiment. He helped me perfect the twist tie bubble blower and made sure all the bubbles were popped in a Ninja-like fashion. He was the only one who was sad when it was time to clean up.

Eli's grade, however, had to be lowered to a B for Bummer. When he was questioned later by the Professor's spouse, Eli claimed to have not enjoyed the experiment at all.

There is a chance for each of them to earn extra credit to help bring up their averages. Perhaps a few extra chores tonight will give them the additional percentage points they need.