Wade's 3rd Grade Science Fair project

 

Wade did a nice, easy science fair project this year on light.  He learned that when light passes through a curved surface such as a magnifying glass or eyeglass lens, it bends.  This is how you correct vision problems such as nearsightedness and farsightedness, so that images can get closer to the retina where they need to be.

 

 

His next big project will be a Famous Americans assignment, where he does a report on someone and then dresses up like that person for the school's "Wax Museum" in March.  Stay tuned!

 





 

 

 

 

 

Piano! Baseball! Science Fair! Medal! Trophy!

It's time for a massive blog update.  What can I say, life gets a little busier (if that's possible) in May!

Rhiannon had a piano recital on May 21st (Happy belated birthday to Uncle Jordan and cousin Alex!).  She did a fantastic job playing "Red Robin Rag."  I'm sorry--I didn't get video this time. :( 

Our sweet girl is making good progress in piano.  Her teacher paid her a compliment at her lesson this week--she hadn't been making notes like she usually did because she was enjoying Rhiannon's piano playing too much!

Wade's team finished up the season on Tuesday at the championship game.  It wasn't a pretty game (the other team scored a LOT and the Dodgers didn't get any runs), but the kids were pumped about making it that far and were excited to get some nice 2nd place trophies.  After listening to the other team's coaches, I was again thankful to Coach Jones and Coach Martin for their efforts--they did a good job keeping the kids positive and didn't bark at them too much.

Wade got his first HIT of the season at the last game, too.  Even though it was a foul ball, the whole team AND his coaches were excited for him to make some contact!!! 

Baseball started for us back in February--it's been a long 4 months, but it's been full of great memories, too.  Will Wade want to play again next year?  Stay tuned!

 

Rhiannon made a model of the heart for her science fair project this year.  There were some wonderful resources online--once she took the time to study all the materials her mother had gathered for her, she was off and running and had a good time with it!

Rhiannon also won some awards at the last school assembly yesterday.  She got a third place medal for AR points for the whole year (translation:  that means she read A LOT of books) and also was honored with her 4th million "dollars" for reading that many words over the school year.  Congratulations, sweetie!

I hope she won't kill me for the bedhead pic--I wanted to get this blog updated quickly! :)

Toby the Herbivore

Ahhh, science fair projects.  Wade had fun learning about animals and trying to figure out what they ate by studying their teeth.  There were lots of fun Internet resources and one cool book from the library that he looked at.

I thought Wade did a great job with this chart!  He used info from skullduggery.com's "Animal Bites."

Toby gets to pose in front of the science project done in his honor!

I'll get pictures of Rhiannon's when she brings it home.  She studied the heart and circulatory system and made a model of the heart with play dough.  It turned out pretty cool!

Time to buckle down and do it!

We have a really wonderful hometeacher named Brother Robins. He visits often and gives great lessons, and he's great about talking with the kids and getting to know them. Yesterday he came by and talked with us for several minutes about dealing with fear. See, he had read this book about how the brain works, and how the author illustrated that fear and excitement cannot be felt at the same time. He tested the theory by going to an amusement park with his wife for his birthday. Rollercoasters always scared him, but he decided to choose to be excited instead of scared--he said he'd let out a big war cry whoop as the ride began, and then he just enjoyed the whole experience from start to finish.

For his birthday, he CHOSE to not be afraid and conquered a life-long fear he had. (He said that taking some Dramamine helped, too! :)) We all shared fears that we had, everything from getting hit with a baseball to needles to shots to difficult sub jobs. Then Brother Robins reminded us that we could face those fears by choosing to think about them in a different way. Of course he also talked about the Savior, and how He knows what we're going through and is there for us, how we're not alone!

It was a very timely lesson, since the CA Cushing household has some "opportunities" coming up that could be either scary or exciting, depending on how we look at them!


--Wade has an opportunity to overcome his fear of getting hit at bat. He got hit on the hand by a pitch at Wednesday's game and was pretty skittish at the following one! His dad had a long talk with him and challenged him to practice his batting by swinging 50 times every day, before he plays video games. I've been outside with him for 3 days now, throwing him pretend pitches, and I can already see a difference!

--Rhiannon will be giving a talk on what Easter means to her at our stake conference for church this coming Sunday. This means standing in front of 400+ people and speaking for 5 minutes, something she's never done before. We are positive that this will be a good experience for her, as long as she chooses to be excited about it and puts her energies into preparing for the talk, instead of being afraid of it. So far she is incredibly confident!

--Jason...is he scared of anything? We're not sure. We do know that he's already mastered the "fear or excitement" idea. He's a great example of buckling down and just getting things DONE.

--Me...well, it's that point in the school year again where I get to be the Science Fair Project Cheerleader. Rhiannon wants to build the circulatory system out of play dough. And Wade wants to study animal teeth to figure out what they eat.   EEK!!! Oh, I mean, "YAY! I CAN'T WAIT TO HELP THEM GET STARTED! WOO-HOO!"

Wish us luck!