Education Facts

This is what I discovered pertaining to Florida Education/schools:

1. A law was passed in 2002 mandating class sizes.

here are the limits:
Grades K-3=18
Grades 4-8=22
Grades9-12=25

although they have until 2010 to fully implement this, almost all the schools have. This is a big improvement since it seems the big complaint I heard was "class sizes too big."

2. Foreign language starts in grade 6 in the PBC district, or at least in the middle schools I checked into in Boca. still have to find out if this is the case in ALL the PBC middle schools.

3. Teacher salaries have increased, and they are working on a new law to make a minimum starting salary of $35,000. This was the other complaint I heard- teachers are underpaid, so they don't care.

Fun Facts:

Boca Middle school, one of the possibles for MS for Shayna (have to find out what happens with gifted Ed. as far as where she goes): has an award winning band, they perform at Disney world every year. They also have an award winning math teacher, who uses creative and innovative teaching methods.
where do they go for thier 8th grade trip? Islands of adventure (cool newest part of disney designed by Steven Speilberg.
Spanish River High- possible for high school- just opened up a new $9million theater to have thier theater/musical/drama productions.

Making cookies

we needed to make palm tree cut out sugar cookies to bring to the world bazaar. we had left over dough, so we used it to make more cookies, this time with Skyler participating. we had him use a heart shaped cookie cutter, since its easier to handle. He really enjoyed himself, and was able to do most of it himself including placing the cut out cookie onto the cookie sheet.

World Bazaar

Shayna had a girl scouts event tonight for thinking day* called the World Bazaar, that they have every year. This year each participating troop was to choose a city anywhere in the world and then have a table at the event. They did the event round robin style this year, where each troop went together to 5 tables (rather then the crazy run around in mass chaos of the past). They have a food item, an activity, and things to buy related to the city/country at the tables. Shayna's troop did Manila, Philippines.

Here is Shayna decked out in tropical style, holding a fan and the filipino flag. she is wearing her "palm tree" skirt, has on her beachy necklace from Jami/FL, and her sandals have that woven straw stuff as the base/platform. no I am not a cruel/irrational mom having her wear summer stuff in the NE cold, she changed when she got inside- she had leggings and boots under the skirt and hoodie/jacket that she took off.


The troop:

At the Hawaii table:

*Definition of Thinking Day:
February 22 is World Thinking Day or just Thinking Day for Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world. It is a day to think about the meaning of Guiding and Scouting and about Scouts and Guides in all the countries of the world. Many troops use it as an opportunity to study about other countries and cultures.

Archaeologists in Training

Shayna and Skyler had fun unearthing the 2 Egyptian artifacts from the kit she brought home from the museum: here are the 2 artifacts:

Speaking of archaeologists in training, I found that through the science explorium in Boca Raton, they have organized family trips, one of which is for a family fossil dig at a site. They also have trips to the Kennedy Space Center.

http://www.scienceexplorium.org/

http://www.scienceexplorium.org/peace.htm

SIP Field Trip

Shayna went on a field trip today with the entire 4th and 5th grade SIP classes from all the schools in the district (maybe 40 or so kids total) to the U. of Penn Museum of Archaelogy and Anthropology to see the Amarna exhibit and also other exhibits in the museum. The Amarna is the sister exhibit of the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute.

Highlights /what Shayna liked the best:

1. They saw the 3rd largest sphinx in the world and it was so heavy that when they brought it in the museum room it cracked the floor.
2. In the China exhibit, there was a sphere that when you see through, shows you the people on the opposite side like glass, but showed them upside-down.
3. There was a wood and clay model that showed what an ancient Greek house looked like.
4. There was a mummified 7 yo girl that was so small she looked like a baby.

They got to go to the gift shop. Shayna bought a Egyptian Artifacts kit and a present for Skyler: a flute. We have been looking for a flute for Skyler for a while now, because when she practices her flute he always wants to join in. As you can see, he really loves his new flute! He is holding the artifact kit.

Link to the Museum: www.museum.upenn.edu

If you go under the "exhibit" section you can see the details on the Amarna exhibit. Its also a fun web site to explore and it has great online activities for kids.

Research for the Move to Florida

I have been doing lots and lots of research lately to narrow down the town we will move to and also on the school districts, schools, and gifted programs. also looking into the magnet schools in each county. Since we heard horror stories from former SE Florida residents (only 2 so not a scientific study at this point) I delved into the school research with a vengeance. Just as background for those not familiar with Florida, SE Florida has 3 HUGE school districts, and the ones we are looking into are Broward (around Fort Lauderdale up to Deerfield Beach) and Palm Beach County (starting at Boca Raton going up to Palm Beach area and Jupiter). So eahc district has 100s of elem. schools, much different then here in PA where the districts are much smaller and organized mainly by the towns.

We have narrowed down the area to Boca Raton for a combination of reasons, including schools, neighborhood, and location. So far what i have found out is that PBC district does have a full time gifted program for elementary school, and then after that (middle school) there are gifted classes but not 100% gifted curriculum (but from the sound of it mostly gifted i.e. math, social studies, etc. are still gifted). I found out that the better schools are found in Boca Raton, Palm Beach Gardens, and Jupiter. also that there are certain elem. schools that have the gifted program, so if not zoned for that school, but a different school, your child goes to the school that has the gifted program. Did not find out specifics yet, but that the gifted kids move at a faster pace and may have some enrichment. No math league, no music lessons and no choir or band (at least at a Boca school I called, one of the A rated schools). I found out that the 2 schools that are in the area of Boca we are looking into, are both A rated "10" schools that have the full time gifted classes. also found out they do have a "gifted advisory council" which has meetings every so
often for the parents/teachers/administrators (they have this also in Bensalem and its wonderful). I am waiting to hear from the ESE woman at the Addison Mizner Elem. school (one of the schools Shayna may go to mentioned above) for more details on what the gifted kids do. Gifted is part of the Exceptional Student Education dept. (In Bensalem same thing as Special Education).

we also found a great (we think looks great on thier web site) Magnet Middle school in Broward County for Marine Science. Of course, there are summer programs/camps in Palm beach area for marine science so that may be an option if we decide on PBC.

In my research it seems that the "bad" neighborhoods and also poorer schools are located in West Palm, Boynton Beach and Delray. Still trying to find out more on this topic.

The BIG cool thing I found out about Florida's education system: they have FREE Pre-K for ALL Florida 4 year olds!!! It is voluntary of course. I think its a great thing! You can choose ANY pre school you want out of hundreds. YAY! Thank you Gov. Bush for that bill you passed in 2002. the only other states that have this are Georgia and Oklahoma.

I joined some local Yahoo groups to meet some local Broward and Boca moms. So that seems very promising. They have play dates and outings, and a few have kids the same age as Skyler.

Another nice thing about Boca (besides wonderful parks, nature center, Sea Turtles, great snorkeling, playgrounds (one is 3 stories with water play inside it), water parks, museums (both art AND science and children's), theater, concerts, NYC quality restaurants, amazing mall -I mean best mall-food court has crepes) is the town has standards for the way it looks and the architecture and rules to keep it less trashy: like no car dealerships allowed and no billboards allowed, and the homes follow a standard following the Spanish/med. architecture style of Addison Mizner making it a very aesthetic town. Hence, we have been finding the most aesthetically pleasing houses there...the kind that make you say "ahhhhh" and give them names like "The Three Palms."

Anyway, if anyone stumbles upon this that knows ANYTHING about the area and ANYTHING about the schools in SE Florida (either district) or knows ANYONE who lives there or has lived there...please let me know what you think about it, any information will be helpful!

Cereal

Skyler has started to ask for cereal in a cereal bowl lately. Only he does not eat the cereal, he only "eats" the milk with a spoon. Or maybe he just doe not like Honey Comb enough to eat.

Shayna's Party: Sports Section

This was the 3rd part of the party, after the party room (workshop, lunch, cake) and the Isaac Newton exhibit area in which the party stayed for about 20-30 minutes. The party stayed here for about 20 minutes or so. Pictured below you can see Shayna driving the race car with baseball throwing cage behind her. Solomiya driving a race car. Behind her is the simulated surfing and the climbing wall.

There was also an ice skating spin simulator and one of Shaq's shoes on display. Not sure what else!

Valentines Day Present

No, not the typical store bought flowers or candy. We got a small snow on Valentines Day, enough coupled with icy conditions to close the school. Our Valentines present was Shayna going outside in the bitter cold and cleaning off my car, shoveling a path from the porch to the car and to Skyler's side of the car, and taking out the trash. This is in addition to the other extremely helpful things she already does, like helping watch Skyler, make him his nuggets and/or waffle, and cleaning up his mess.

The other present from Shayna is her desire to make me happy. She said to me on at least a few occasions, that she tries to make me happy all the time and loves when she can make me laugh and be happy. She loves it also when I am silly (Skyler too) and of course reality means I am an adult and responsible parent, and owner of a company which pays our bills, so real life sometimes means I must be serious. So in light of that fact, I try my best to have fun and light up my childrens days like they do mine.

Happy Valentines Day

Have a sugar cookie:


Shayna's 1st ever valentine card heart holder, made at age 3 at childventure preschool in Fort Washington, PA:

It seems february is full of holidays:

1st: national freedom day (no idea)

2nd: groundhog day

3rd: Tu B'Shvat

12th: abe lincoln's bday

14th: valentines day

15th: susan B. anthony's bday

18th: chinese new year

19th: official presidents day

20th: mardi gras

21st: ash wednesday

22nd: george washington's bday

Good news: only 34 days until spring!

Path of Destruction

Just to show you what keeps me so busy...Skyler has a tendency to wield a path of destruction as he goes about. here is tonights extra messy path he made. about 15-30 minutes after this photo was taken, he added marker all over the wooden part of the top of the table. Thankfully, I know about GOO GONE, which took it right off (after soaking for a bit and wiping off with water). Just for fun, lets see if you can ID everything (kid related) in this photo: here it is, afterwards, nice and clean (but not vacuumed). Lets see how long this can last.

Info about goo gone. this stuff really works! it also gets off labels stuck on, etc.:
http://www.magicamerican.com/googone.shtml

Guapo

Shayna got this very amusing talking Toucan for her birthday. It repeats whatever it hears. as you can see, Skyler really has taken a liking to it. I named it Guapo.

btw, skyler is wearing the knights cape because I was trying it on him for him to wear to the Purim Program at his preschool on March 2nd. His teacher, Mrs. Greenburg, said they will make them crowns. When Shayna went to the preschool, for the Purim program she dressed as Queen Esther. We still have the cape we made for her to wear. Skyler will be King Ahashverous. each class will sing a song....this should be interesting.

Nuggets

Skyler finally got his appetite back after his bout with the stomach virus last week, when he hardly ate a thing. It was nice seeing him back to normal, and in fact, he ate more then his norm. I was talking with Olga (Shayna's friend Nancy's mom) and she said that David (Nancy's little brother, also 2, he is a little over 2 months older than Skyler) had the stomach flu and the next week ate even more to make up for the previous week. Skyler ate 7 1/2 chicken nuggets and 2 or 3 waffles today.

Loco Motor

Shayna rediscovered her K'nex recently after Skyler started to play with it. Shayna got her 2 sets of K'nex for her 7th birthday. While I was IMing with her Uncle Mike, she had finished her homework and was waiting for me to take her over to her classmates house to work on a school project. This was in a time frame of maybe 15 minutes and she made this Loco motor from the guide book. Coincidentally, she used the very same K'nex set that Uncle Mike and Aunt Christy gave her for her 7th birthday. I asked her later about it, and she said that she is older now and more able to follow the directions to build more complex things.

Blue Man Group

I got tickets today for the Blue Man Group concert coming to the wachovia center in philadelphia on April 19th, for all 4 of us. The tickets went on sale Saturday but I didn't know, so almost the entire floor seats were sold out, only the back of the floor was left. So I got the Club Box seats, which are actually closer but higher up. I also think it will be a bit more convenient- with Skyler - since there is a lounge, private bathrooms, bar, waitress service, and VIP entrance and elevator. Those seats were actually cheaper then the floor seats, which would probably have been too loud for the kids. Shayna and I saw a short BMG show many many years ago at Moby's Area 2 concert. I am really excited- they are a really fun and entertaining show with a lot of audience participation.

For those of you not personally familiar with BMG, here are some links.

1. The general BMG web site:
http://www.blueman.com/

2. Video page- click here to see an instant short video summarizig the BMG concert/show experience:
http://www.blueman.com/multimedia/video/

3. Very fun BMG art page, where you make your own online art:
http://art.blueman.com/message.php

also, a new thing (to me at least) when you are buying tickets online, not only can you see the seating chart (before completing the purchase when the best seats come up and you have to decide whether to take them), but you can use the virtual seating chart, in which you can really see the seats (not a photo but CG images) and what it looks like from that section/row. In the past, when going to concerts, I have always tried to get within the first 20 rows, have had great luck in the past, but don't think skyler is quite ready for that yet!

Birthday Party Videos

Since my camera was lost or stolen, I do not have any photos from the first 2+ hours of the party. So all I have are the videos that my dad took. I had intended on using those photos I took for the thank yous, and since I did not discover the camera missing until afterwards, thinking I had all those shots, I now do not have photos of most of the children...so will post what I do have but that is why they will feature mainly Skyler, Shayna, Manny, Nancy, and David (since they stayed with us until the very end)- with one or two of Solomiya, Annmarie, Tory, and Brianna (though not good ones of all).

here is the video of the host setting off the rockets that the kids made in the party room:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YWu81-l3JI

Video of singing happy birthday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzIxGJPuyZE

Do a Dot Art

I finally gave in and let Skyler do the "Do a Dot Art." He had gotten a hold of them and pulled a Curious George, painting all over the playroom including the new wheelchair about to be delivered. We also still had the art book that goes with it. Shayna did this around age 4 or so, it was hers. After using the page in the book, he used them on the big yellow paper (he colored on it during Shayna's birthday party).

Shayna's 10th Birthday Party

A great time was had by one and all at the Franklin Institute for Shayna's 10th Birthday party. It was a bit chaotic and crazy overall but fun for the kids. I led the guests through a maze of elevators, steps, and people to the locker room only to find they removed the lockers, but luckily there was now a coatroom. seems the FI is a chameleon - always changing. Thats what makes it so fun- it never gets boring and they keep adding new things to see and do.

After meeting everyone and the Host Maggie in the Atrium by the IMAX movie and ticket counter, we all went up to the 3rd floor and walked through the long funky multi colored hallway into Isaac Newton's Loft, and on into the party room in the back. The room was nice and big and decorated.

First, the kids made rockets, that is they colored in and decorated the outside of thier rockets. I handed out "magic scratch" paper and they all seemed to really like that, some adding the stickers onto thier rockets. Michael (from SIP, Rush) used it to make a mustache and beard on his face, and also he and Abhinov were writing each other messages.

After they finished making the rockets, the host, Maggie shot them off one by one while the kids excitedly counted off. they all seemed to really like this!

They had pizza and popcorn and cheese doodles with punch, and then we sang happy birthday and had the cake...see below:

Then it was time to explore the museum!

Around 2pm, we started off in the Isaac Newton exhibit just outside the party room. They seemed to like this dark room with tunnels to crawl from one room to the next.

Next, we ushered everyone into the Sports Challenge room. The kids had fun surfing, using the climbing wall, driving racing cars, seeing how fast they could throw a baseball, experiencing an ice skaters spins, and seeing Shaq's real huge sneaker!

Then everyone went downstairs to the 2nd floor into the big Heart/body exhibit.

At 3pm it was time for the IMAX movie, Mysteries of Egypt. I think it may have been a bit slow for these active kids but the parents liked the break and some of the dads and Skyler fell asleep.

After the movie, we gave out the goodie bags, and most of the guests left (sadly) but a few stayed: Nancy and her parents and brother David, and Robbie and his dad, and Brianna and her dad.

We all went down to the Space Command exhibit, and then on to te Kid Science exhibit. By 4:45 Manny was getting tired (he has been sick) but Skyler could have kept going on and on. he had a blast in the museum- in each exhibit there was something fun for him to do. So we called it a day and said goodbye to the Franklin Institute, until March 17th when we return to see the King Tut exhibit and maybe will go back and play and learn some more.

Later that night my dad came over to our house and Shayna opened her presents. I was really impressed by her gifts this year. they were really well thought out and really seemed to cater towards Shayna's interests. Some of the highlights: Big Brain Academy Nintendo DS game, an Imponderables Book, fiction books having to do with ocean, dolphins, florida, and art painting set with dolphins in the art, a plug and play (TV) fashion design game, some nice clothes, a nestle crunch journal (happens to be shayna's favorite candy bar), and a funny talking Toucan that repeats whatever it hears.

I discovered later that night that my camera was missing, I am pretty sure it was stolen from the stroller, I left it there after my batteries died and began using my dads camera. So I have mainly photos from the second half of the party, and the videos that my dad (thankfully!) took. when we get them, I will post links to them on U tube.

I will post some highlights of the party, from the photos I do have, through out the next week or so....so keep coming back and checking!