Extracurriculars; An Update!

We took a quick trip to the Mini Time Machine Museum in September; here are the girls, admiring the "winter wonderland" of miniature houses & dioramas laid out beneath their feet

The first quarter of school is already over for my girls! Fall Break begins this Friday! It went by so fast I barely had time to acknowledge its existence. I might as well take the opportunity to do so here, and to share some of the highlights of each girl's school year so far.

Lorelai:

Lorelai has been keeping busy and having fun at school and in her extracurricular activities. She goes to Beginning Band twice a week after school, on Mondays & Wednesdays. So far, she is having a lot of fun learning how to play the trombone. It has been fascinating for me to watch her learn to play an instrument with which I have no experience. All the sliding & blowing into the mouthpiece...it might as well be alien technology as far as I'm concerned. However, she can now play "Lightly Row" and "Hot Cross Buns," and I can distinguish between notes. It doesn't just sound like random noise any more! So obviously, she's making progress.

She's also started going to play rehearsals every other week or so. As I mentioned last month, our charter school will be performing Beauty And The Beast next spring. Auditions were held over the last few weeks of August, and in early September, Lorelai found out that her part is *drumroll* the Milkmaid!

 *she's the sassy one who says, "Bonjour, monsieur, how is your wife?" I think that could be fun to perform!*

Lorelai was a little underwhelmed when she got the news, but she's warmed up to the idea. The part is about as large altogether as the several small parts she had in Cinderella last year; this time, she even has a few solo singing lines in the opening song! Her rehearsals don't really pick up steam until later this fall, so we'll see how it goes. So far, she is having fun and enjoying spending time with the returning cast members from last year.
 
Sadly, I don't have a lot of great photos of Lorelai that will be pertinent to this blog post. So I may as well share this image of her beating up an elephant's behind:

It's not a real elephant, of course...it's just part of an exhibit at the Reid Park Zoo's elephant pavilion. However, these elephants are real...

...including the tiny adorable one!

The baby elephant (a female, who was given the name "Nandi") was born on August 20th, and is the first elephant born in the state of Arizona! As you can imagine, the zoo is pretty proud of that fact, and it's been big news in town. Nandi wasn't put out on display for a few weeks, even though we tried catching a glimpse of her a few times. Finally, on September 20th, the zoo had an official "welcoming party" event for the baby, and tons of people (including us) turned out to see her.

My pictures aren't the greatest, but it was really exciting to see this tiny elephant running all over the enclosure. She never liked to be too far from her mama, but she was still eager to explore all her new surroundings. The girls all loved her, especially Aurora, who'd been waiting to see her ever since she first heard about her.

Okay, baby elephant derail over! Now, back to my girls:

Celeste:

Like the middle child she is, Celeste's extracurriculars have been a little overlooked in my frazzled mind this year. She's not able to do dance (her first choice) for budget reasons, and I'm not teaching her piano lessons yet (even though she's asked) because I'm too busy with all my other students this year. Boo! Luckily, she's met with her new Girl Scout troop twice now, and that has been making her happy. I hope it's something she will enjoy throughout the year.

At their first meeting, the girls assembled care packages for a local homeless shelter. Hooray for service projects! They also brought home a homemade "chia pet"...

So far, it's grown a lovely head of hair/grass, and got so shaggy that Celeste actually gave it a "haircut" at one point (with scissors, of course).

For their second meeting of September, all the girls got fancy hats, wore fancy dresses, and had a fancy "tea party," in which they learned about manners & etiquette...

They all looked incredibly adorable! Ironic that my "fancy" daughter, Celeste, forgot to wear a dress to the event! But as you can see, she was beaming and loving it all the same. She has another Girl Scout troop activity coming up this weekend, so we'll see what she thinks of that one. So far, I am not sure how much of a role I am supposed to play in Celeste's Girl Scouting...I've mostly been dropping her off or picking her up. Perhaps I should get more involved, I'm just not sure of the best way to do that. Hopefully with time, that will become more clear.

Aurora:

Aurora's "extracurricular" this year is school...preschool, that is. She's been attending Smart Scholars Preschool for more than a month now and she absolutely loves it. She hero-worships her teacher Ms. Nichole, just as Celeste did before her. And she's obviously learning a lot, too. Aurora's now able to spot letters (and even some words) in books, on TV, and on signs. She is always asking me how words are spelled, and she's usually able to guess correctly about what letters begin words (example: "Gorilla begins with 'G,' Mom!"). Over the last few weeks, she's even been able to pick up a pen or pencil and write her name, along with a few simple words. Best of all...she's left-handed! Two of my three girls are lefties; I wonder what the odds are on that?

Besides getting smarter, Aurora is busy doing a lot of other things at her preschool. She talks to me all the time about all their different crafts and activities, not to mention the "wiggle time" they have in Ms. Nichole's backyard. She's even had a "homework project," which involved bringing home the class mascot, Bearly Bear, for the weekend.

Bearly Bear came with his own carrying case and journal. The kids, with their parent's help, were supposed to share their everyday experiences with Bearly Bear, then write about those experiences in the journal and share the journal with the class. We didn't have any major things planned for that weekend, but Aurora did take Bearly Bear with her to the library:

She also gave Bearly Bear her "place of honor" that weekend: on her pillow, as one of her bedtime cuddle buddies. It was fun to see her introduce Bearly Bear to all her other stuffed animals and help them all make friends with one another. We ended up with plenty of experiences to share in the class journal.

First trip out with the brand-new preschool shirt!

Aurora also had her first field trip with her preschool class just this last weekend. There's a youth gym in Tucson called Tumbleweeds, and they have an "open-play" day every Friday morning. Aurora's preschool class, along with several other Sahuarita preschools, all converged on Tumbleweeds for some rambunctious fun.

I was surprised how little supervision there was at this gym. There were maybe two employees wandering around, trying to keep an eye on maybe fifty kids. Thankfully, most parents were close on hand as well to keep anyone from getting hurt.

Aurora had to try everything: the balance beam...

...the high bar (with foam pit beneath)...

...the rope swing...

 

...and the vaults (also with foam pit beneath).

I spent extra time gossiping with some of the other moms, but I did supervise Aurora...at least a little. I may or may not have been around when she knocked over a smaller child while jumping around on the trampoline. Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt, and a good time was had by all.

She got to play with her friend Taylor, too!

Aurora was so proud that she finally had a field trip under her belt...just like her older sisters! She has another one coming up later this month...to Buckelew Farms in late October, home of the giant pumpkin patch. I hope I'll be able to accompany her on that trip as well. It has been a happy surprise watching her grow and learn so much this year. She may be my "baby," but she is rapidly getting ready to enter the world of the "big kids."