We were very proud of our results after our cooking and baking challenge on Thursday, and ready to eat, too!
Since we're out of school and don't get "summers off" anymore, it's not that exciting to us, but the JRES kids were over the top with excitement (according to Heike) since Wednesday was the last day of school! For us, it means Heike and her team will be cleaning the AFCC from top to bottom, including refinishing the floors, so we have to move to a room on the school side of the building for a couple of weeks. We spent Friday rounding up supplies and relocating to Room 144! Earlier in the week we had a great lesson on bugs with the master gardeners and a special guest, volunteered at GCOC, arranged flowers for Commonwealth Senior Living, and had a cooking and baking challenge! We also enjoyed Frosty treats from Wendy's, courtesy of our friends at the Williamsburg Moose Lodge, who recently gave us some "treat funds." It was a splendid week!
Tuesday, June 10
It was a warm and breezy morning as we headed to the Williamsburg Botanical Garden at Freedom Park for our session with the master gardeners. They had a special guest for us today, Luke Gladden. Luke is an Associate Extension Agent, Agriculture and Natural Resources, who serves New Kent and James City Counties. He graduated from NC State last year with a degree in Environmental Science, with a focus on Entomology. We learned entomology is the study of insects!
Luke kept our attention as he explained that insects have 3 body parts (head, thorax, and abdomen), and 6 legs. It was fascinating to learn that the legs are attached to the thorax, three on each side, and insects have different kinds of legs that are modified for different functions such as jumping, swimming, walking, running, digging, and grasping. He showed us pictures to help us understand.
We enjoyed hearing Luke talk about the varieties of butterflies we have in our area. He had pictures of them, also!
Luke had a bug board, too! It had moths, butterflies, and all kinds of beetles and other small bugs on it that we could touch. We learned that beetles have wings under their shells, and that they aren't very good or fast flyers.
Something else we learned from Luke is to beware of fire ants and the spotted lanternfly, but most types of ladybugs are very helpful! (The spotted lanternfly isn't in our area...yet, but Luke and fellow entomologists are on the lookout!)
Thank you, Luke, for this educational and interesting presentation about insects! We enjoyed chatting with you, and even hearing about the gross stuff like how flies regurgitate their last meal on their next meal to help break it down! Thanks for all you do to help people understand about sometimes misunderstood bugs!
Before we ended the session, Barbara and Joanne shared beautiful flowers they picked in their gardens this morning. Barbara had gladiolus, colorful blanket flowers, snapdragons, and a type of salvia called hot lips! In Joanne's vase were coneflowers, daisies, and lantana. We love bringing the pretty arrangements back to our center!
There was just one more thing to do before we left...sing "Happy Birthday" to Krafty Karen! Her birthday is on Thursday, and we hope all of her wishes come true!
Here is Carolyn's beautiful journal page reflecting the great time we had today. As always, it captures the session beautifully! Thanks for sharing, Carolyn!!
We returned to the center for lunch, and JRES had just finished its 5th grade graduation ceremony. Our dear Mr. Howard, who was our first custodian supervisor "back in the day," was here to see his granddaughter graduate, so of course, he stopped by to say "hi" to us! Not everyone had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Howard, but these six remember him well and were thrilled to see him!
,Shortly after Mr. Howard stopped by, we welcomed another visitor, Pam! She was thrilled with the card she had asked us to make for Britnee, who works at Williamsburg Landing and is on the Arc 5k team. Thanks for your kind words about our creation, Pam. We appreciate your trust and enthusiasm for our work!
Our last activity for today was a lesson to celebrate National Herbs and Spices Day. We saw a video and recognized a lot of the herbs and spices mentioned, and we learned that herbs are generally the green, leafy parts of certain plants while spices tend to come from other parts of plants such as the roots, seeds, stems, and bark. We had to really think about the answers to some of these quiz questions, but we used the process of elimination and also information we had gained from previous answers to help us!
Bingo and brain work! Herbs and spices are very interesting! We're looking forward to experimenting with them in the kitchen this summer!
Wednesday, June 11
It was a typical Wednesday morning. One group went to GCOC to bag food, and the other stayed at AFCC to arrange flowers. We like our Wednesday routine!
Setting up for arranging flowers: Patrick and Sam raise the table height by putting risers under the legs; Liz adds water to the jars; Erik cuts open the packs of flowers; Sam and Patrick remove excess leaves from the stems.
After one group leaves for Grove, we cut and arrange the flowers. Alexis and Gail picked pretty stems. Thomas, Abraham, and Drew held the finished arrangements. They had helped with some of the arranging, too.
Here's a snippet from the morning activities with they boys still in dance mode, while Alexis, Emma, and Gail got started on arranging!
After arranging the flowers for CSL, we went outside to check our gardens! We have pots of tomatoes, peppers, and cosmos, and a potato grow bag, outside our room window. We added more soil to the potato bag, and watered everything. We have flowers on the tomato and pepper plants, which means (hopefully) fruit will be forthcoming. There are a couple of cosmos about to bloom, too!
The herb garden, which is out back in the Grove Community Garden, is also growing! We will be back tomorrow to harvest some herbs to use in our cooking challenge!
Meanwhile, at GCOC, it was business as usual for our gang as they worked with Ursula, Thom, Peggy, and Joel to pack the USDA food distribution bags. So many hands....so many cans...so many blessings for the Grove community!
We finished our Father's Day gifts today. Surprise!! They will come home on Friday, but don't let the special fathers and other father-figures in our lives peek until Sunday!
What a special treat to get to go to Wendy's for Frosties (or sodas) today! We cannot recommend the Wendy's near Kingsmill enough. All of the staff members there are terrific, and we always enjoy our visits, even if they are busy!
In fact, we love this Wendy's so much that when we got back to the center, we gave them a glowing review by completing the online survey!
Thank you to Moose Patti and ALL of our friends at the Williamsburg Moose Lodge for a recent "treat donation." We are so grateful for your friendship and support of the Arc of Abilities and The Arc of Greater Williamsburg. It had been a while since we got Frosties, and they are one of our favorite treats! 💖💖💖
🏌🏌🏌Thanks also to the Women of the Moose (WOTM) for their ongoing support of us through their annual golf tournament. The 10th annual tournament is coming up on August 2nd, so please let us know if you are interested in supporting as a player, hole sponsor, or other donor! Let's make the 10th one the best one! 🏌🏌🏌
One more thing today...Liz and Abraham had big smiles as we delivered the flower arrangements to Commonwealth Senior Living! When Trader Joe's sends more flowers than we need for the 12 dining room arrangements, we bring the extras to CSL and the residents are able to take some to their rooms!
Thursday, June 11
Check out today's cooking and baking challenges. It was a lot of fun dividing into 5 teams to get the job done and put a tasty lunch on the table!
Members of the breakfast casserole team made a trip to our herb garden to clip thyme, rosemary, chives, basil, and oregano to use in today's recipe. Can we just say now that the casseroles were DELICIOUS, with the flavor of the fresh herbs coming through in every bite?!?! We didn't know how much of each herb to use (it wasn't in our recipe to add fresh herbs), so the team "winged it" and really got it right!
Several of us handled the camera this morning, too, trying to capture the enjoyment of our cooking experience. Here are some glimpses into our cooking and baking challenge!
Carol and Allison organized Team Casserole so ingredients and supplies could be gathered after they had visited the herb garden.
Thomas and Erik cut peppers and onions into small pieces after Allison got them started by first cutting the veggies into strips.
Liz poured the egg mixture over the top of one casserole. We used hashbrowns, sausage, and cheese in addition to the onions, peppers, and fresh herbs. In the smaller dish we made a dairy free version for a couple of our friends with dietary restrictions.
Under Thomas and Allison's watchful eyes, Kate poured egg mixture over the second casserole. She did a good job, as whipped up eggs can come out of a bowl pretty fast!
We were celebrating National Peanut Butter Cookie Day, which was June 9th, but we don't worry about details when it comes to cookies. For our baking challenge, Nan's team made peanut butter cookies using 3 ingredients, and Lisa's team made a recipe that called for 5 ingredients. Nan's group only used peanut butter, egg, and white sugar, while Lisa's group used peanut butter, egg, white and brown sugars, plus a bit of baking soda.
Drew, Michelle, Kevin, and Nan felt confident that their cookie recipe would be the better of the two!
Abraham, Patrick, and Laura were certain their recipe would prevail. In the end, the gang decided BOTH cookies would win...and we weren't surprised by their verdict at all! Each recipe was a keeper!
Short of making a five-course meal, it's a challenge of another kind to include everyone in the cooking parts of our lunch preparation. That's why we are grateful for those who volunteer to handle making napkin rings for our silverware, like Sam, Alexis, and Emma. Gail was a one-woman clementine peeling show, and she did a great job, too! Everyone chipped in to color decoration pictures when their other tasks were done, and it all came together by noon, when lunch was served!
One of the casseroles, plus the dairy-free version, were still baking when we took this photo, but once again, our lunch was (to us) award-winning! 😀😀😀 The decorations always make a nice touch! Great job, everyone!
After lunch Drew shared the postcard he brought back from his trip to Emerald Isle, NC for us to add to our collection! He said it is a very pretty beach, he had a great time with his family, and it has good chicken nuggets, too! 😂
We finished The Wild Robot Escapes and voted to read the third and final book in the series for our next read-aloud. Roz made it back to the island, where she first became a "wild" robot (rather than a "typical" one). We related to Roz on many levels. We want to know what more of an adventure she could have after her escape from being destroyed in this book...all because she somehow adapted to have human-like emotions!
We ended a very busy day with our first "summer vacation" day in the gym! The students and Coach Brown are off for a few weeks, and we hope to keep the gym company while they are gone. We don't know if the floor in here will be redone, but for now, we have game plans! Today, we played a game where the object was to keep kicking the big balls to the opponents' side.
Friday, June 13
It may have been Friday, the 13th, but we didn't have any bad luck today. We did a great job working at Pet Supplies Plus and moving things to our temporary space in a classroom on the school side of the building. After lunch, we had a great time with Christina at The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg!
While the PSP Crew was at the store, the rest of us gathered a few things to move to Room 144, where we will be for the next two weeks while the AFCC is being deep-cleaned.
Many thanks to Thomas, Kevin, Erik, Patrick, Xavier, Nan, Drew, Abraham, Annmarie, and Gail for their excellent moving and organizing skills today!
We took our time moving things, and finding a place to put them in the classroom, which is located beside the Computer Lab!
We made 4 round trips, and didn't overwhelm ourselves by taking took much at one time.
Here's our home for the next two weeks. We're sure everyone will step up and adjust to the smaller space, and we'll enjoy the change of scenery! We actually have plans to be on the road most of the days, so the time will probably fly!
Not to be outdone, our PSP Crew was hard at work helping Scott at the store today!
Kate and Devin stocked shelves with dog leashes and pet combs and brushes.
Emma and Laura assisted Scott in cleaning the filters on the fish tanks.
Pet Supplies Plus helps facilitate a cat adoption process. Our team was enamored with 2 of the 3 kitties currently awaiting adoption into a fur-ever home. They are known as the "Cheese Group," and their names are Parmesan, Pepper Jack, and Pimento.
If you or someone you know is interested in adopting one of these adorable kitties, stop by PSP for more information!
Our crew wants everyone to know that there are plenty of pet toys to check out before you even enter the store! So much fun awaits the furry friends in our lives! Thanks, Scott and Roxanne, for another excellent vocational experience!
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Today's gallery tour featured objects that the artists created after being inspired by the work of other artists. They didn't exactly copy them, but in some cases, they came close. Christina explained that this is ok to do, for it helps artists learn.
These paintings and the ceramic piece are in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Art Museum, which is one of the two museums that make up The Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
Today, we were particularly interested in an exhibit about Eddie Arning, which is located in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the other museum within the building. Eddie Arning drew inspiration from photos in magazines and produced most of his work in the 1960s and 1970s. He would find a picture he liked, and then put his own spin on recreating it...and he drew on construction paper using crayons! (In his later work, he sometimes used oil pastels.)
Sadly, Eddie Arning spent a great deal of his life in mental hospitals due to schizophrenia-like behaviors. An art therapist introduced him to crayons and paper. We were intrigued by his story, and found his artwork very interesting!
For our project this afternoon, we were going to see if Eddie Arning's drawing called TWO.GEESE could inspire us to put our own spin on a drawing of geese!
It seems we were inspired! Our spins on the geese were pretty unique.
Thanks, Christina for another great gallery tour filled with fun and interesting stories about the beautiful objects at the museums. We also thank YOU for inspiring us to be amazing Arc-tists!!
What a colorful way to end the week! We're looking forward to the weekend, and hoping it won't rain too much for Father's Day. We'll be back for another fun week on Tuesday, and here are our plans as we relocate to Room 144:
Tuesday: We begin our 2 week relocation to a classroom in JRES this week, so we have plans to be out and about as much as possible due to space limitations in the room. Today we're going to The Mariners' Museum on our own to try their Scavenger Hunt. If the weather cooperates, we'll enjoy lunch at the park and take a walk on the Noland Trail. It's also National Root Beer Day, so we will have a little celebration for that! Please bring a bagged lunch.
Wednesday: It's Therapy Dog Day, and we are going to meet our furry friends and their handlers at Freedom Park for a walk! We'll watch the weather for lunch plans. Back at the center we will have a lesson about the holiday, Juneteenth. Please bring a bagged lunch.
Thursday: The Arc of Abilities will be closed in observance of the Juneteenth Holiday. Share with your family what we learned about it!
Friday: It's a PSP work day, so please wear PSP shirts. The group that stays at the center will begin preparations for a special event we have next Friday. After lunch we'll have a lesson for American Eagle Day and do some chair yoga activities. Please bring a bagged lunch.
The Arc office and Arc of Abilities will be closed on Thursday, June 19 in observance of the Juneteenth holiday.
The Arc of Abilities day program will be closed the week of July 1-4 for Summer Break, and will reopen on Tuesday, July 8.
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Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang
