First Grade Picnic

This year, the first grade at Smunch's school had the distinction of having the first end-of-year party. Traditionally, the kids all walk to a nearby park for food, fun and games and then walk back to school for popsicles. As one of the room parents this year, I had some responsibility for organizing this event. The other organizers must have recognized the dazed "overvolunteered" look on my face because the tasks that fell to me were...getting butcher paper from the work room and procuring some pens and crayons from the classroom. Despite the fact that these were ridiculously easy things to do, I still felt like maybe it was all too much for me to handle. Duh.

I ended up going to the park early to help set up. That meant I got to see the inordinately cute sight of a line of 80 first graders parading into the park with their teachers and chaperones. We were ready for them too. There were building materials, spin art, face painting, Wedgits, fishing, velcro darts, and, of course, drawing materials. Not to mention pizza, lemonade, fruit and Rice Krispie treats. There were also field games. Smunch participated in one or two of those before lunch, but seemed to prefer some of the other activities. After all, they saved the best for last! You might remember that last year, at the kindergarten picnic, they had this hilarious game of getting the kids to eat donuts hanging from strings, with their hands behind their backs. This year, that game was replaced with the Whipped Cream Relay.This game, which was clearly met with much enthusiasm, involved having the teacher sit at the far end of the field with a spray can of whipped cream...which she used to cover chocolate Hershey's Kisses on little plates. Each kid had to run down the field (see Smunch, above), dive into the plate with their hands behind their backs... (O.K., not quite behind his back, are they?) and eat through the whipped cream to get to the Kiss.I think Smunch took about four turns at this relay. Obviously, everyone won!

Just before leaving, the kids all played "Splash Ball"...getting as wet as they possibly could while soaking their classmates on the other side...or the parents running through the middle, whichever was available. Last, but not least...for me anyway...we made a presentation of the year-end gifts to Smunch's teacher. She was very pleased and loved the pot. After working my butt off to make sure everything was ready for giving the gift at the picnic, I realized just how ridiculous it had been for me to stick to that artificial date for gift giving. I think many of the classes waited until the last day of school rather than doing it at the picnic. And with the first grade picnic falling a whole week and a half before the last day of school, it was totally unnecessary to give the gifts there. But it was done and I was off the hook...at least until the Author's Breakfast at the end of the week!

Crafty Overload

In all the spare time I had during the cake planning and decorating process, I needed to put together a class gift for Smunch's first grade teacher. If I was better about delegating this sort of stuff...and if I'd really understood the convergence of all the activities at the end of the year...I might have tried to give this job to someone else. But I'm a little clueless about this stuff. I started soliciting donations from other class parents early on in the process, but didn't have much idea what I was going to do other than buy a gift card from a garden store.

I didn't do it at the holidays, but I wanted to try and get the kids to make something for their teacher. It would be a lot more personal (and cheap) than the gift card. But I didn't want to do anything that was too big a deal. After all, what would she want with this item in 5 years or 10 years when she barely remembers who these kids are? Here's what I came up with:This is a plain ol' $5 terra cotta pot. I borrowed some acrylic paints from a neighbor, painted a grassy background and some lettering, then had each of the kids pick what kind of bug they wanted to create. They did the fingerprints. I did the details...antennas, legs, eyes, etc. and wrote the name of each kid next to their creation.It took me showing up during lunch two days in a row to get most of the kids. The last one was conveniently a neighbor who could drop by for a minute. I sprayed the whole thing with a clear acrylic glaze and then went shopping for plants to put in it.While I was doing fingerprinting, I also had all the kids sign a card and make a few ink print bugs for decorations. Too bad I didn't take a picture of the inside of the card. It was really priceless!*Phew*! It was a cute little project, but more work than I was really up for with an impending school-wide event to coordinate.

Although I had some trouble finding enough volunteers to help out in the classroom during the year, the class parents are monetarily generous. I was able to get that gardening certificate, a gift card for a nice Italian dinner, a manicure/pedicure card, and a gift card for Borders. Then, of course, it was up to me to find some kind of ridiculous crafty way to present these cards. Why I have a problem with handing someone a gift card or even a pile of gift cards, I'm not sure. I decided it needed to be a folding card with pockets. And this is what I came up with...It was kinda cute and garden-y. I stitched the pages together with yarn and then designed the whole thing to be a brochure of suggestions for summer activities. Cute. Maybe too cute.I got all these things together in barely enough time to be presented at the 1st grade picnic on Monday. Yeah. That Monday after the Spring Celebration on Friday. Ugh. The picnic was great, but that'll save for another post...

Crafty Holidays

Compared to many mommies I know, I'm hardly a crafty one, but I really went overboard for the holidays in 2008. I always drive myself crazy with projects at the end of the year and this year, was no exception. Instead I went exceptionally overboard. It's a wonder I made it to 2009 with any brains left at all.

It all started with the chocolates...I've made truffles every year for the past few years. They look really impressive, despite being pretty easy and they make great gifts for the teachers. Some cute little boxes from Michaels and a little menu of all the goodies inside, all tied with a festive bow. I don't know if the product really measures up to its appearance. I try not to eat many out of self preservation. But they sure look nice!Then came the cookies. I always make a whole bunch of cookies and have fun letting the kids decorate them with me. This year, I offered to take cookies to the staff appreciation luncheon at Smunch's school, so that put a little more pressure on. Still, I made far fewer cookies than I've made any other year. I just had too much other stuff going on. Just sugar cookies, gingerbread, white chocolate raspberry bars and something my family calls Graham Sensations.

I found a really fantastic gingerbread recipe this year and it got all kinds of raves. Too bad it was such a pain in the rear to deal with! And I didn't like how the cookies held up, despite having lots of flavor and remaining moist and chewy. Still, they were cute when they were all dressed up.I brought this platter of cookies to the luncheon, leaving precious few for my neighbors, who probably expect cookies from us by now.As happy as I was with my little tray of cookies, I felt really bad when the other mom who brought cookies indicated that she thought hers just looked too ugly next to mine. I bet they were just as tasty and she didn't spend her whole evening decorating. In some ways, her cookies were almost certainly the superior product.

Then came the class gift. In a moment of supreme volunteerism, I signed up to be the head room mom for Smunch's classroom. I like it. I feel like I'm "in the know". But it's a lot of work. I won't be doing it next year, I'm pretty sure, but then I've got another opportunity with an incoming kindergartner in Mam. I really like Smunch's teacher, so this isn't the biggest chore I've ever had. I'm just not super at delegating. Anyway, I digress. As room mom, I'm responsible for the class gift for the holidays and at the end of the year. I made things super easy for myself by sending the teacher a questionnaire at the beginning of the year, asking her about all of her favorite things...stores, restaurants, hobbies, etc. So I collected the money and set out to buy her a few gift cards for her favorite places. Naturally, I couldn't let this get by me in an uncrafty sort of way. I got a cute little rosemary bush at OSH, dark chocolates, gift cards to Macy's, Starbucks, iTunes, Target and her favorite Mediterranean restaurant. I added a bow. It turned out like this:It was a blast putting this together and seeing it turn out pretty well, but as you'd imagine, my head was swimming in "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens..." and I couldn't let that little opportunity pass me by. Seriously. How could I not find a way to put this creation in a brown paper package tied up with string?? Am I the only one who would see this as an imperative?To cap that whole little theme off, it turns out The Sound of Music is actually another one of Smunch's teacher's favorite things...but I didn't know that until after the gift presentation.

Last, but not least, I had this brilliant idea that I could get more moms to volunteer to help out at the annual classroom gingerbread house-making activity if I could make the younger siblings feel welcome. So, I offered to put together a few extra houses for the little kids (including Mam) to decorate. Because, you know, I was already making all the icing for the classroom anyway. What's a few extra houses, right?Turns out, it's really not that hard to make little gingerbread houses when you're not trying to do it with a bunch of first graders. I put together four tidy little extras in no time. But wait...at the last minute the teacher also told me she wanted all the candy I'd solicited from other parents to be sorted into one bag per student. Ack! Good thing it wasn't like the holidays were coming or anything!Fortunately, the big kids had a great time decorating the houses they'd made that morning...and the little kids were thrilled to join in. Even the one little sibling who showed up unannounced had his own house to decorate. It was sugary and messy, but such a success!

The Bounty

Not every year, but every other year, our big ol' cherry tree decides not only to bloom, but to produce cherries. And, being a rather large tree, it produces LOTS of cherries. They're a beautiful burgundy color and so, so sweet...as long as you can stop yourself from picking them before it's time. The birds eat a lot of them, of course, but there are plenty left for us humans.

This year, the kids decided that cherries would make lovely gifts for their teachers. I'm one of those annoying moms who is happy to contribute to the "class gift", but also feels like we have to give the teachers a little something just from us. Cherries were the perfect solution and everyone loved them. I used plain old brown lunch bags and decorated them to look just a little cuter. Smunch decorated his own. They weren't as cute, but they were that much more genuine. I'll have to remember this...two years from now!

Chocolates

Another random post from before the real holiday. Several years back, I went to a little class in a friend's home on how to make truffles. Turns out, it's not so hard...at least not the way I was taught. Probably not the classiest truffles in the world, but fun and impressive-looking nonetheless.

So, this year, I decided to make chocolates for all of the kids' teachers and speech therapists. I did dark chocolate filled with mint creme. I did swirled milk and white cholocate filled with cappucchino creme. I did dark chocolate with marshmallow and raspberry filling, white chocolate with bittersweet chocolate creme, milk chocolate with butterscotch creme, swirled milk chocolate and peanut butter chocolate with peanut butter creme, milk chocolates with caramel (homemade by Daddy), and big heart-shaped dark chocolates with caramel and marshmallow.


I bought cute little boxes and those little paper cups for candies. I got Christmas stickers for decorating and metallic, elastic bows for securing the more regular shaped boxes. I printed out guides to the candies and their flavors, cut them out, pasted them on high-quality red backing paper. And completely forgot to take a single photo of the finished product!


That means you'll just have to believe me when I say they were super cute and that more than one person said "You made these?" with a tone of disbelief. So, all I've got is these photos Daddy took of me while I was in the initial stages of making these teacher-destined chocolates. I didn't appreciate the camera much at the time, but hey, it's the only way I know it happened. The extras are already long gone...

Oh yeah, I made some really cute Christmas cookies this year too, but forgot to take any photos of those before distributing to the neighbors. They looked something these cookies I made last year:

Home for the Holidays

I'm a little out of order here. We went to Santa Cruz after the kids were done with school for the year. BUT, before kids can be done with school, there must be much celebrating at school. For Mam, that meant participating in the preschool's annual Holiday Sing. The school does four of these each year. One for kids who go to school Tuesday/Thursday mornings, one for kids on the same days, but in the afternoons, one for kids who go MWF mornings and a last one for kids going MWF afternoons. Mam's group represented the final group of about 100 kids, going on stage to perform.

Mam's class is the only class of 3-year-olds in the bunch. The rest are 4- and 5-year-olds. As usual, Mam loved being on stage and seeing Mommy, Daddy, Gram and Grandpa in the chairs below. Also, as usual, the crowd of type-A parents arrived ridiculously early, so even though Daddy arrived to save us seats about 20 minutes early (I was volunteering in Smuch's classroom 'til the last minute), we sat in the back row of the main section.

The kids were predictably adorable singing about a dozen holiday songs with hand motions and piano accompaniment. Afterwards, they got to have a cookie snack in their classroom while all the parents stood around and congratulated them on their performance. One of my favorite moments of the day was when Santa made a surprise visit to the classroom. Mam was visibly in awe...

Who knew Santa came to see kids at preschool and hand out presents too??

Not to be outdone (although he kinda was), Smunch also had a party at school, although no concert. His party consisted of decorating gingerbread/graham cracker houses. And his was the best! Well, no, it wasn't the best at all, but it had character...a character I suspect was influenced by Smunch's rather strong desire to eat his house. It was devoured fewer than 24 hours after it got home!

The highlight of that party was that I'd accidentally gotten myself appointed coordinator of the class gift. I was fine with that, but the presentation was another story. I have no self confidence when it comes to standing in front of a crowd, even if it's mostly just a crowd of kindergartners. So, you can imagine I felt just slightly proud of myself for getting all the kids to chime in and say "Thank you, Ms. Britton!" as we presented her gift. And to the aide as well. Phew!

One final hug for his teacher before he left and we were all home for the holidays...for two weeks...whatever will we do?? Stay tuned...