Saturday, July 11, 2020

WOTM Golf Tourney Coming Up!


This week we want to remind everyone that the Women of the Moose, led by our dedicated friend and supporter, Patti, will be sponsoring their 5th Annual Golf Tournament on August 1st!  It will be at Ford's Colony this year, on the Blue Heron Course.  All the info you need to sponsor or join a team is on this graphic.  Just give Patti a shout at 757-561-8947, or email her at poolstarter@msn.com and she will take care of you.  Thank you, Women of the Moose (Williamsburg Chapter 1755), for your continued support of The Arc of Greater Williamsburg and our Arc of Abilities Day Support Program.  We are especially grateful that you are moving forward with the tournament during these uncertain times.  Yay for golf being an outdoor sport that allows for social distancing!!!

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Tuesday

We had a fun time on Zoom Tuesday morning when the Th/F group joined us from home for a lesson called "Are Unicorns Real?"  Here's a picture of Xavier, the T/W group at AFCC, Drew, Devin, and Abraham when we were wondering if unicorns were real? 


Turns out that recent fossil discoveries have revealed that as "recently" as 39,000 years ago, a rhino/buffalo-like animal with a horn on its head roamed the grasslands of Eurasia with humans!  (Our source is Mystery Doug!)  Here's another picture of our Zoom group, after we had unfortunately lost Abraham due to a spotty connection, and gained Becky, who made it "better late than never!"  As we always say, it's GREAT to see you guys and thanks for tuning in from home!!


During the quarantine shutdown, Elizabeth reported baking delicious sugar cookies and when we returned a couple of weeks ago, she asked if we could make them here at the AoA.  We told her to research when (or if?) National Sugar Cookie Day is and let us know.  Liz found out that it's on July 9th, so we used her recipe to make sugar cookies this week!  Here, she keeps an eye on Kacie as Kacie follows her recipe to the letter!


The sugar cookies turned out well, and we had fun decorating them with a dab of frosting and some sprinkles.  Cameron had already started eating his by the time the sprinkles made it to his table.  That's how good they were!


Spreading icing isn't necessarily a natural and easy thing to do.  But we liked Sam's perseverance as he worked on his cookies!


We did double time in the gym today...on account of those sugar cookies!  Alexis and Liz walked laps during round 1, and during round 2, they played corn hole.


Laura had also walked during our first visit to the gym, but this time she chose basketball.  Patrick chose basketball both times...no surprise there!


Kevin did a little bit of walking and a little bit of shooting on his two visits to the gym today.  


Sam and Cameron had balls earlier, but were walking this time, as was Kacie.  Kacie really enjoys bouncing the big ball as she walks.


We still hope to entice the hummingbirds.  Carol and Liz whipped up some fresh sugar water and refilled the feeder.  We spotted just one last week, and only one time.  


Wednesday 

We saw the hummingbird again today!  It seems to have been the same one we saw last week, but again, it was too quick for us to get a picture.  We're encouraged!!  Maybe it will bring some friends...

After our dance warm up, we made a birthday poster for the AP at the school, Ms. Vallone.  Her special day is Saturday.  We didn't know we would run into her when we went to the gym this morning, but she popped in to say "Hi" and introduce us to the new principal, Mrs. Washington!  Ms. Vallone is between Alexis and Liz and Mrs. Washington is between Liz and Kacie.  We were happy to meet Mrs. Washington.  She said Mr. Stutt told her wonderful things about us!!!  We look foward to developing a working relationship with her.


Our state of the week is the Beaver State, Oregon, which was number 33 to enter the Union. We may have been subjected to a few extra video clips and "discussion" about Oregon since it's Lisa's favorite state!  😉   So, we learned lots of cool facts!  One thing we thought was interesting is that Oregon is the only state that has pictures on both sides of its flag!  And what a cute beaver, we thought!


We also learned that Oregon has beautiful landscapes, including mountains, valleys, high plains, plateaus, desert areas, forests, and the Pacific coast.  It also has more ghost towns than any other state!


We were pretty happy to learn that the "Ore" in the Ore-Ida brand stands for Oregon and that tater tots were "invented" by a couple of brothers who owned a frozen food factory in Oregon.  They went to the 1954 Potato Convention, all the way in Miami Beach, to test their creation on a bunch of "potato men," and it was a big hit.  Tater Tots were born!  We made a casserole with them for lunch and gave thanks to those brothers who came up with this tasty way to use potato scraps!


At yoga time we wiped down our mats.  Everyone either brings a mat from home or they use the same one each week at the center.  We keep the T/W mats separate from the Th/F mats for easier handling.  No one else uses the mats, so we feel comfortable with the safety and cleanliness factor!


We turned to Jaime, from Cosmic Kids Yoga, again this week for our session.  She had a new episode called "Handwashing Yoga."


We really enjoy working out with Jaime and listening to her stories.  She does lots of "real" yoga moves, but sometimes calls them something else.  It doesn't matter to us.  She's fun and keeps us moving and attentive!


The T/W gang was excited to take a Bingo Kit home!  On Thursday when we Zoomed with them from home, we were planning to play Summer Bingo.  The Cheerios were to use for markers, and then have for a prize/treat after the game!  


It was a quick couple of days with the T/W group!  It's nice to be busy and engaged, even if the time flies!

Thursday

We love to take requests during our dance warm up, which we have every morning first thing.  Today, we played some oldies from the cartoon Spongebob, which were requested by his friends on behalf of Xavier!


We turned on the lights long enough to get a shot of the guys getting down to Spongebob tunes!  Masks are optional in "your personal dance zone," but Xavier and Devin really like their Arc gaiters!


In the spirit of the pandemic, and because we were celebrating National Kitten Day, we made our own masks out of cardstock today.  We also had some Eaton work delivered that needed to be sorted.  Can you tell that's Drew hard at work?!


Annmarie and Xavier worked at this sorting area, but they weren't crazy about the cat masks and soon had their gaiters back on!


These "cool cats" are Devin and Kate, who stayed across from each other and at opposite ends of the table during their turn at sorting.  The cat masks covered their faces and noses, but weren't snug enough for them to be too close.  


We couldn't leave the Th/F group out of the Sugar Cookie Day celebration!  Yum...Annmarie said the sprinkles were just what she needed!


Of course, we got plenty of gym time!  Kevin's mom, Debbie, added 3 big balls to our collection, so we played socially distanced kickball.  With the extra balls, our workout was even better!



Drew covered a whole corner area of the gym.  He was here, there, and everywhere keeping the balls going when they came his way!  


Thank you, Debbie, for the new balls!  They are perfect for our new version of kickball, and they will also work great for other games!  We love how colorful they are, and that they are soft.  Summertime fun!!


The Th/F group made "missing you" cards for Meemaw, but we made sure to sign everyone's names.  The T/W group had done the same for Becky, and last week we sent Nina some cards all the way to Arizona.   They all miss us, and we miss them, too.  


Friday

What a joy this morning when we got to see Meemaw in person!  We were thrilled to see her and give her the "missing you" notes we made!


Meemaw was busy during the quarantine settling into a new home, but now she is SOOOO bored.  She asked if we could "spare" some Eaton work, so we happily loaded up a few tubs of parts and gaskets to send home with her.  Thank you, Meemaw, for your help!  We are so happy we have lots of work to share.  You do a great job!


Annmarie was helping too!  She held the door for everyone!


These are the pretty birthday cards we made for assistant principal, Ms. Vallone.  The green one was made by the T/W group and the blue one by the Th/F group.  It's been a while since we made one of our big poster cards.  Aren't they great?!


The Th/F group was just as happy as the T/W group to make a Tater Tot casserole.  Kate carefully placed the tots to cover the top of the casserole.


Alexis sprinkled some cheese over the top, leaving one corner "plain" for our friend, Xavier, who avoids dairy in his diet.  We wanted to make sure everyone would get to enjoy this pan of goodness!


Here's the final product.  With the green beans and watermelon, it was not only a tasty lunch, it was colorful, too!


Here's the state animal of Oregon, the beaver.  We learned that Oregonians respect the beaver for its intelligence, strong work-ethic, and creativity. 


While we're on the subject of animals, we finally caught a picture of a hummingbird!  We're not sure it's the same one we saw last week, but this pretty green one came around throughout the day on Friday.  Can you spot it on the feeder?  Maybe more will visit next week!  That's a tufted titmouse on the songbird feeder, too.


The Th/F group ended the week with a fun and relaxing session of "Handwashing Yoga" with Jaime.  Here's a picture of them showing the various ways to "hug your knees" as a way to stretch the back!


It was a quick two days with the Th/F group, too, as we wrapped up another successful week at the Arc of Abilities!  Next week will be here before we know it.  Here's what we'll be up to:


Tuesday/Thursday:  We will Zoom with our at home friends, practice measurement skills to mark Tape Measure Day, and learn about horses and ponies for I Love Horses Day.  Psst:  You don't want to miss Thursday's Zoom session...we have a super surprise guest joining us!!!  We're also going to celebrate Jell-O Day and National French Fries Day, since A LOT of our guys love fries and we rarely serve them.  So, for lunch, bring a sandwich and some veggies (😃), and we'll provide sides of fries and Mandarin Orange Jell-O!

Wednesday/Friday:  We'll enjoy a yoga session today so dress to stretch.  It's Kansas Day (state number 34), and it's known as American's Breadbasket for all the wheat they grow, so we're going to have flapjacks with eggs, sausage, and fruit for lunch.  We'll also squeeze in a game for World Emoji Day and make cards to celebrate old friends Mr. Howard and Moose Patti, and new friend, JRES Principal Mrs. Washington.  They all have birthdays in July!

Happy Weekend to All,

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang




Saturday, July 4, 2020

Welcome July!

Community 4th of July Celebration | City of Great Falls Montana

Happy 4th of July, Everyone!  We had a great week leading up to today's American Independence Day, including a pre-celebration complete with hot dogs!  We must still split our time, having only 1/2 of our friends each day, and our air-conditioning was on the fritz for part of the week.  But nothing got in the way of us enjoying, and being grateful for, our time together! 

TUESDAY 

 We had an active day on Tuesday.  After our dance warm up, we Zoomed with our at home friends, and then spent some time in the gym.  The air-conditioning in our big room was being repaired, but Heike had outfitted us with several fans (two of them called "Tornado"), so we were comfortable all day.  But the AC in the gym was on full blast, and it was a pleasant place to be more active.  Patrick chose to shoot hoops.


Cameron, Carol, and Laura walked laps, as did Kacie.  But Kacie also bounced our giant ball while she walked!  Elsewhere, Liz, Alexis, and Sam were also walking, and Kevin was shooting hoops. 


Since it is July already, we worked on updating our calendar and adding more color to the room.  Alexis and Patrick searched the internet for pictures, Sam glued details on the calendar squares, and Cameron worked on July 4th decorations.


After Kevin colored a burst of Fourth of July stars, he asked Nan to read a book with him...but he did all the reading!  Great job, Kevin!


Here's a close up of Sam gluing the details to our calendar squares.  He's good at handling those little pieces of paper!  

 
After lunch we talked about folk tales, and watched a classic Disney video about Paul Bunyan.  Besides being known as a lumberjack, he is widely credited with creating the Great Lakes, the Grand Tetons, and all of Minnesota's over 10,000 lakes! 😉

Then it was back to the gym for what we called a game of "socially-distanced" kickball.  It was hard to get a good picture, and Sam is missing from this one, but he was in the lower right corner.  The object of the game was to keep the ball in motion by...kicking it!  Kacie (playing the middle of the court) had just sent it toward Kevin, who's getting ready to kick.  The ball is partially blocked by Cameron, who was walking up and down his lane so he would always be in a good position when the ball came to him!  We enjoyed this game, but decided we need to get a couple more of the big balls so we would each have more turns to kick.
 
  
Our last project for Tuesday was creating summertime crafts of ice cream cones and popsicles that will serve as more decorations in our room.  It's hard to tell, but behind their masks the girls were cracking up because we were using miniature foam balls for sprinkles and they were going every which way except on the ice cream when Carol tried to "pour" them out.  Static electricity got a hold on them!
  

Wednesday

We moved on to studying the 32nd state to enter the Union on Wednesday:  Minnesota.  From our United Tastes of America book, we learned that fishing is very popular in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.  (But when we watched our video about Minnesota, we learned they actually have over 20,000 lakes!)  Minnesotans are even known to set up icehouse villages on frozen lakes in the winter, complete with televisions so they can watch the Vikings play football! 

Another thing we learned is that the Bundt cake pan was invented in Minnesota, so we baked a Bundt cake for dessert.  We forgot to get a picture, but we'll have another chance on Friday! 😉


Laura worked diligently to color a picture of the flag of Minnesota to put on her folder.  She thought the blue background of the flag was very pretty!


We also talked about July 4th, or Independence Day.  We watched a facts video, and then successfully completed a trivia game about the holiday!  We're so smart!  For lunch, we had hotdogs (pig-in-a-blanket style) and were kind of shocked to learn that Americans eat 155 million hot dogs on July 4th!  Everyone had to wrap the dough - after handwashing with soap and water - around their own hot dogs, as demonstrated by Kevin in this picture.  We labeled our hot dogs on the baking paper, so everyone got the ones they wrapped when it was time to eat!

 
Charles Schulz, who created the 'Peanuts' cartoon, was from Minnesota, as was Prince, Judy Garland, and Bob Dylan.


We made July 4th necklaces using some beads and colorful straws we had on hand.  Patrick concentrated as he followed the pattern for assembling his necklace.


We're planning to resume our yoga practice on Wednesdays and Fridays.  Patti is no longer working with us, so we will tune in to Jaime and some other online instructors in the weeks to come.  


Today, we joined Jaime in her latest video, "Yoga Disco."  It was a great combination of yoga and dancing moves, and we had fun with it!


Earlier in the day, we got this video when we danced to a Beach Boys concert clip.  We knew between the hot dogs and the cake, we would have to be extra active today!  (We also had free time in the gym before lunch.)  We took this video with the new video camera Sam's family gave us during the quarantine.  We're still getting used to not moving too quickly when we film, but you'll enjoy our joy in the moment!


Before saying goodbye to the T/W group for the week, we masked up for a quick group photo op.  Happy July 4th from (bottom row):  Sam, Kacie, Laura, Kevin and (standing):  Patrick, Liz, Cameron, and Alexis!  
 🎆🎇🎆🎇


Thursday

We welcomed the Th/F group on a warm and muggy Thursday morning, but were happy to discover that the air conditioning was up and running!  When we Zoomed with our friends at home, we got this great video of the Th/F group dancing, and they didn't even break a sweat in our cooled off room!


After our Zoom with friends, we had to finish the July calendar.  We are still just as busy as ever, even though we are on a modified schedule.  Kate had found a picture for Kitten Day, and Carol was helping her remember how to resize it to fit our calendar square.


Devin was concentrating intently on finding pictures for Baked Beans Day, Chicken Wings Day, July 4th, and Yoga.  He inserted and resized them like a pro, even though his mouth was watering thinking about all that food!


Drew and Xavier worked on July 4th pictures for our wall.  We have so much wall space, we always need colorful masterpieces for decorating!



During gym time, Drew practiced hitting his shots.  We are working with him at a lower basket, and trying to convince him to throw with a little less force!


Devin and Kate had a friendly competition.  Not sure what the final score was, but they were both pretty good at getting the ball in the basket!


Xavier took a break from shooting hoops to check in with Annmarie who was kicking the soccer ball around the gym.  She got a lot of steps!


On Thursday morning a hummingbird was spotted at our feeder, but we didn't get a picture in time, and we didn't see it again the rest of the day.  We hope to see it on Friday, and maybe some hummingbird friends, too.  We did grab the camera in time to catch a quick picture of this goldfinch before it flew away.  We had to zoom way in for you to see it.  It was beautiful, and the first one we've seen this year as well.


Friday

This is how our day began on Friday (after our dance warm up, of course).  Remember last week when we mentioned that if we outline a picture for Drew, he's making progress with coloring it in?  Well, for various reasons, no one could assist him with the outlining this morning, so he was told he'd have to do it on his own.  We reminded him that he's a smart guy and knows that the sun is yellow and sand is brown, and that he should use lots of different colors.  He acknowledged his task and a few minutes later, brought us this.  LOOK at his masterpiece!!!  He was so proud, and we were proud of him!  It should be noted, that Drew doesn't like coloring all that much, but he does his part to help when we need to decorate our room, so that makes this even more wonderful! 👏👏
  

We have posted our guys' masterpieces throughout the room, which is definitely updated from March to July now!


Not everything we make is a decoration!  Just as the T/W group did earlier this week, the Th/F group also prepped their own pigs-in-a-blanket "masterpieces" for our July 4th lunch. 


It was a masterpiece, indeed!  Baked beans are a classic on July 4th, and they also allowed us to celebrate July 3rd as being National Eat Your Beans Day.  We also had Caesar Salad, because its national day is July 4th.  Did you know Caesar salad was created in Mexico by an Italian immigrant named Caesar?! 😋


Devin didn't cook the baked beans, but he helped clean up after we used the slow-cooker that was recently donated to us by his Aunt Sam!  Thanks, Aunt Sam.  The baked beans were so yummy today!


Here's a picture of the beautiful Bundt cake we made to honor Minnesota on Friday.  Lexi has been enjoying this lemon-flavored specialty of Nan's her whole life.  This week, all of us at the AoA enjoyed it!  Thanks, Nan.  It's was perfect for Minnesota Day!


When this group made 4th of July necklaces, Kate said she was going to give hers to her brother.  How thoughtful, Kate!  Hope he liked getting a little red, white, and blue on America's birthday!


Our guys loved Jaime's new yoga dance video!  Just like the T/W group, they got down to the music and sang along with Jaime, too!


We usually watch Homeschool POP to learn important stuff.  But not today... 🤣🤣🤣


That's a wrap on our 2nd week back!  Happy Independence Day from Drew, Xavier, Kate, Annmarie, Devin, and Alexis!  Enjoy your holiday weekend!


Here's what we have planned for next week:

Tuesday/Thursday:  We will Zoom with our friends at home and have fun celebrating Kitten Day and Sugar Cookie Day!  We'll also watch a Mystery Doug episode on kittens, and follow it up with some brain work.  Lunch on your own.

Wednesday/Friday:  We are resuming weekly yoga and turning to Jaime and others online for instruction, so dress to stretch.  We'll also study the 33rd state, Oregon, and make birthday cards for the assistant principal of James River Elementary, Ms. Vallone.  She'll be excited to find them waiting when (if?) she returns to her office!  Tater Tots were invented in Oregon, so tater-tot casserole for lunch with a side of fruit and salad! 

Have a great weekend, and stay safe!

Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang