Kindergarten Rules! April 4, 2008

Got to spend the day with Cassidy at Kindergarten as part of her “Star of the week”.  It was the best ever.  We did crafts and words and the 5 senses and show-and-tell and all sorts of stuff.  

One thing I learned: the kids are 100 times smarter than I expected.  They are doing stuff I didn’t do until grade 3 I’m sure.  They actually understand how molecules line up in iron to create magnetism!  Crazy.  But they’re still kids, and we had a blast goofing off.  I can relate to kindergarten age. 

 At lunch we had Macaroni & Cheese and I pretended my noodles were sailors and piled them on my bun, which was a ship, and then I was a giant shark and I bit half off and ate it real noisy and messy like a shark, and then the rest of the sailors were diving off and screaming.  The kids at my table really dug that, and pretty soon lunch was getting outta control so we had to settle down.  Then I did some magic tricks and that got a good laugh. 

Recess was super-fun, we played hide-and-seek, dug for dinosaurs, fought with the “big kids” for the playground. 

Recess at a K to 9 school is like a history-of-Europe-from-1910-to-1946 condensed into 15 minutes!  From the moment they get out the door, there are little alliances, skirmishes, wars, truces, new alliances, spying, land claims, betrayals, and deals going on everywhere. 

Just one little episode I witnessed (before I had to help a kid who peed her pants): First the grade 2’s and 1’s took control of the tower and slides.  Then the kindergarten boys, plus Cassidy, stomped up there to demand access. Then the 2’s got greedy and kicked out the 1’s too, who shifted allegiance to the K’s.  That worked for a while until the K’s noticed somebody digging in “their” dinosaur pit, and the battle shifted to the eastern front. 

I was gassing out, and they took it so seriously.  I won’t forget little Ethan trying to explain to me:

“You don’t get it!  They TOOK the top slide.  It’s THIERS.  We can’t get it back” He explained. 

“Why not?”  I asked.  Then Cassidy and another kid piped in:  “Because!  Just because! They took it, it’s THIERS now. That’s it.  Nothing we can do.” 

Then the K-boys stormed the slide from the bottom and the war was on…

SuperIncredibleKids – The Movie April 2, 2008

We’re making a movie. 

It started pretty innocently, but like everything in our house, it went out of control pretty quick.

Just after supper the girls said that they wanted to make a play, and mom and I would be the audience.  Then they said “let’s film it.”  I told that if you film a play, it’s a movie.  Well, that set it off the rails. They lost their minds. “A movie!  Yaa!! Let’s make a movie!!”

For the rest of the night, they jumped and ran and acted and screamed and argued around the living room while I wrote it all down.  It’s all their ideas, 100%.  I just asked stuff like; “What kind of story? (Pirate/Princess/super-hero/scary/sports?) Who is in it? Why are they good/bad? Do they have any special skills or powers? Where did they get their super-power?  Why do they do that? Who will play them?”  They just kept going on and on.  I can’t wait to start. We’ve got it all mapped out, we just need to do the dialogue and make the costumes and set.  Even if it take forever, I think the process will be the fun part.  They get to paint the background and sets, make the costumes etc.  They’re excited about that.

Here’s the story so far:

A good wizard is dying, and he knows that an evil mad scientist is going to try something.  In his dying moments, the good wizard transfers all his powers to a group of kids who are having a dance party.  They don’t realize it so they discover their new powers by accident, and each only gets one or two of the powers, each something different, stuff like; the power to turn invisible, turn into various animals, become Bruce Lee (seriously – my daughter loves his movies), shoot lasers, etc. When the evil scientist poisons all the food in the world, the kids decide they are going to find a way to save everyone.  They go on a quest to find the evil scientist and along the way they have all kinds of adventures and meet; a dragon, a robot, two aliens, a pirate, a witch, and a few others…I couldn’t write fast enough, they had so many ideas.

This is gonna be the funnest project ever…woohooo!!!