Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Chinese New Year


Despite calling several weeks ago, I waited too long to make a reservation to celebrate Chinese New Year at my favorite Chinese restaurant (Yantze).





But Ms. Price and her kindergartners came through for me!  Last Thursday, they enjoyed the day in a really big way and were kind enough to invite me to the party.  



The room was bedecked in authentic Chinese décor where tall people (obviously not me…but several administrative team members) were at risk of clocking themselves in the head with several fabulous ornaments hanging from the ceiling.

The nature of my job made me late for the festivities but I was in time to see one of our resident experts (kindergartner Caleb) and his mother Jennifer passing around Chinese items for the kindergartners to handle and admire.  

Jennifer LeSuer and Makenna Benner show the students a beautiful headdress. 



There was oohing and aahing over the Chinese money.  












There were marvelous percussive sounds emanating from the passing of the bolang gu hand drum. 





Mrs. LeSuer courageously passed a fragile terracotta warrior, its slight frame a replica of the famous statues depicting the armies of the first Emperor of China.  Ms. Price wisely required her students to sit on their bottoms with "pretzel legs" for the small warrior’s perilous adventure of being delivered from one set of eager hands to the next.






The much anticipated golden dragon parade included hand decorated masks. Firecracker sounds were snapping as jubilant kindergarten feet stomped enthusiastically on the bubble wrap creatively lining the beginning of the parade route. 





Two of Ms. Price’s kindergartners have come to their forever families (and because we’re truly blessed…to us too) from the country of China.  









Caleb and Makenna were smiling broadly as they shared the land of their birth with their classmates and the visiting adults.  






Makenna’s mother Jessica read the class a story and shared a movie about the life of a child in China.  

Caleb’s mother, resplendent in her authentic Chinese garb, prepared rice and shared stories and interesting items with the class.



 Jasmine rice and mandarin oranges were being dispensed when I was unfortunately called away.  I was so sorry to miss observing the children as they attempted to eat their sticky rice with the beautiful chopsticks. 













Caleb’s mother reported that his sister Hayley (also from China) was able to eat effectively with only ONE chopstick when she joined their family a year earlier. 

Clearly the Chinese are a nimble-fingered people!  I’m told our kindergartners showed some impressive effort in their attempts to get the rice from the paper dish to their waiting mouths using only those smooth skinny sticks.  Pretty plucky for a bunch of kids raised on forks and spoons. 













It was a Penn View family affair.  Some 8th grade friends stopped by and used their math skills to help the kindergartners create a Chinese calendar.  

Later in the day, some of the 3 year old children from the Early Childhood wing stopped by to share a story. 









Attendees received parting gifts!









So it turns out I didn’t need Paul and Ruby Chen’s wonderful vegetable lo mein to make my Chinese New Year memorable.  All I needed was a short visit to a delightful kindergarten classroom for a dose of culture, fun, and celebration.  



Wednesday, February 18, 2015

SNUG AS A BUG IN A RUG

Rag rugs have been shaped by enterprising folks since before the first immigrants arrived on the shores of North America.  Making a fabric rug sounded like a complicated procedure to me, but as I learned from seventh grader Miguel, a rug is “easy to crochet and easy to fix if you mess it up.”  Miguel is seen in the photo below and his fingers are flying so quickly between fabric and hook, I should have used a sport setting to capture his photo.




One of the 8th period activity options in Middle School is a group which gathers for the creation of t-shirt rugs.  

Middle School art teacher Mrs. Keppley instructs her students to collect a small bag of colorful t-shirts they no longer need.






She shows them how to cut a ball of “t-shirt yarn” from the shirt.







Meg is just beginning the cutting process with a bright red shirt.



Katelin tells me these rugs are fun to make because they “don’t require much concentration.”  Multitasking Miguel adds that it is something a person can do “even while watching television.”



Huge crochet hooks are employed in the process.  I've never seen a crochet hook so large.  Seriously Costco-sized. 



Elizabeth and Alyssa have done this before and are getting down to work while Mrs. Keppley gives instructions to the "newbies."

It is important to try to get the rug to lay flat.  “If your rug is lumpy-bumpy, people will trip over it”, Mrs. Keppley warns.  Apparently if you add too many stitches, the finished product gets “ruffled.” One of the students wondered aloud if ironing is a possibility.  

Their practical teacher had a different approach.  “I’ve never tried to iron one, I just stomp on them.


The only crochet skills needed are the simple chain stitch and the single crochet stitch.  I think even I could manage this if I could part with any of the t-shirts in my very sentimental collection.  
(I can’t).



Hannah is experienced in the ways of t-shirt rug making and shows us her fabulous vibrant creation here.





I am humbled by the finished products these students manage to coax from a bag of old t-shirts. 

A little side story on the art of crochet.... My brother-in-law worked for an electrician when we were barely out of our adolescent years.  He somehow attached a regular household lightbulb to the 
roof of his car, transforming his broken interior auto light into beams so bright I could not bear to sit in his car. When the door of the car was open, the light was positively blinding.  I used my less-than proficient crochet skills to make him a lightbulb cover, not just because I love my brother-in-law, but because I preferred my retinas to remain intact when he drove me from one place to another.  Wish I still had a photo of that....



With a very solemn expression, dear Alyssa asked her teacher “Why does mine look like a peanut?”  Ever the diplomat, Mrs. Keppley had the answer.  “It’s a free-form rug.” 


No worries Alyssa.  We think your peanut is beautiful. 



Some students end up with something quite unique.  Last quarter, Bryce created a fabulous bowl-shaped formation which apparently has more uses than one might imagine.  He took it with him on a recent family outing to Stowe, Vermont. The photos tell the story better than I can.







Here’s Bryce, snug as a bug in a RUG. 














So maybe you know the answer.... Is Bryce's awesome creation a rug?  Is it a French fry cozy?  Is it a prairie-style bonnet or perhaps a reggae-inspired ski helmet cover for sporting one's ingenuity while riding a gondola? 








































Who knew?  And we thought t-shirts were just for wearing....




Wednesday, February 11, 2015

100 DAYS OF SCHOOL

When we drag our sun-kissed faces back to school each August, we and our freckles find the looming180 days of school to be a mind-numbingly enormous number!  But time does fly and before we know it, we are more than halfway through the school year. They say this is what happens when you’re having fun….  This past week we found ourselves rejoicing over the much-celebrated occasion of the 100th day of school!




Nowhere is this merriment more evident than in Kindergarten and First Grade. Some years this monumental pinnacle is celebrated with geriatric attire.  


For one day, these grade levels have historically come to school dressed like wizened Centenarians.  




Let me tell you, nothing makes me smile broader than seeing a six year old slowly cruising down the hallway with white-powdered hair, a borrowed walker, and a pair of overstretched knee-high stockings. (Knee-highs which for the preceding several hours have been comically accumulating around scrawny first-grade ankles….)  It’s fabulous. 


(All of these "elderly" photos are borrowed from prior years).



I suspect our teachers may be growing weary of itchy wigs and looking twice their age every February, because to my confessed disappointment, THIS year the festivities did not include hairnets, canes, and marvelously dapper suspenders and bow ties.



Apparently there are other less embarrassing ways to mark the occasion. 



Thirty years ago, Laura Numeroff authored the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, a massively popular circular tale which launched more than ten additional books.  This year, our teachers used a similar template to celebrate our young students and the multitude of things they have experienced after attending 100 days of school. 




The selected costume for this year’s festivities included ears and whiskers. The children rotated between the kindergarten and first grade teachers who each used a different Numeroff book to launch book-specific activities in their classroom.  






Along with the mouse and his cookie, there was a cat with a cupcake, a moose with a muffin, a pig with a pancake, a dog with a donut and finally, a pig having a party.  It was a regular zoo.  Pun intended.















Long-term substitute teacher Mrs. Newswanger-Freed noted that in all her years of teaching, this was the first time she could say she was “glad to have a classroom full of mice.”




Gotta love the pig tails....




Kindergarten Aide Mrs. Landis noted that she experienced a bit of “liftoff” when walking too quickly in the hallway with her long canine ears.












Mrs. Miller’s classroom was celebrating giving a cat a cupcake and when I stopped by, they were walking around with clipboards playing “I spy.” The cupcake sprinkle toss was soon to occur. 






Large dice were being rolled in Mrs. Price’s room as the students colored the corresponding number of pennies, hoping to total 100 cents in their piggy banks.












In Mrs. Landis’ classroom, children were gluing chocolate chips onto huge cookies.  










The cookie containers at the doorway nearly stopped me in my tracks.








Penn View teachers find hundreds of ways every school day to bring a smile while teaching children. 

Whiskers and floppy ears are optional.