Yes, we had bowling and snow this week...just not at the same time! We went bowling on Tuesday and ended up with a snow day on Friday, even though most of the snow came for Saturday! Oh, well. It was still a great week!
Tuesday
Ahh, a day we had been looking forward to for a long time - the return to bowling. Lisa had been frustrated trying to set us up with the new manager, but Carol stopped by on Monday, January 3rd, and snagged him. They agreed on pricing for games and pizza, and he wrote it down! He told us to email and voicemail him just to make sure...which we did! THEN...when we arrived today, he wasn't there and our longtime friend and assistant manager, Liz, seemed surprised to see us!
Long story short, the ball (haha) got dropped on AMF's end, but Liz took care of us!! She gave us lanes 3 and 4 because 1 and 2 were being worked on, and that was fine as there were only 10 bowlers today. BUT, she regretted to inform us that the ovens were out of order and being repaired later today, so no pizzas could be made! Good grief!! But not to worry, Liz said she would allow Papa John's to deliver if we wanted to order from them...which we did, as we had to feed our excited and hungry bowlers!
Laura and Annmarie found themselves bowling side by side a few times. They enjoy being bowling buddies!
Michelle was on the lane here, while Liz was about to pick up her ball. We didn't get too many action shots today because of all the snafus we were taking care of, but everyone had a blast being back on the lanes. When everything was said and done, we only had time for one game, but we will be back in February, and we are on assistant manager Liz's calendar! She said she will be here every Tuesday morning. 👏👏
Hello from Sam and Devin, who are also great bowling buddies!
Here's a view from near the middle of the lanes. We felt very safe here today, as we were well-isolated on "our" end. There were some league bowlers on the other end, but we kept quite a socially distant space between us and them! They were gone by noon, and we were the only ones remaining until we left a little after 1:00.
Another highlight was getting to see Tracy and meet not one, but two new interns of hers, who are seniors at ODU! That's Madison in front of Devin, and Karryna beside her, with the black mask. They will visit us at AFCC tomorrow to see what our program is about, and both will get opportunities to work with us this semester. Yay!!! We enjoy working with interns!
From bowling, we drove over to Freedom Park to check the broccoli and cauliflower. The cauliflower looked like it had died, but one of the broccoli plants had a crown at the top. We cut it, but it was not very firm, and it smelled kind of funny by the time we got back to the center, so we decided maybe the frost had gotten to it and we wouldn't be eating it. It was cool, though, to see how brocoli grows!
It's been cold lately, but we've also had some mild days and a couple of weeks ago we had a few warmer days. Is that why we saw daffodils blooming at the garden today?!
We did not expect to see this!
We always enjoy checking the Fairy Garden. It looked neat and tidy today, and the succulents have definitely "gone to sleep," but we know they will come back in the spring!
We spotted this sign on the bridge back to the parking lot. We weren't worried about it for today, but maybe later in the week?!?!?!
Wednesday
We had a good time learning about the Scandinavian country of Sweden today! The video we watched informed us of many interesting things including: a Swede invented the 3 point seatbelt, Sweden was the first European country to establish national parks, and the companies shown below are all Swedish.
Of particular interest to our guys was that the musical, Mamma Mia, which is a favorite of many, was based on the songs of ABBA, a Swedish pop music group that was popular in the '70s. On your feet, everyone...and then this song will be stuck in your head for a while!
With Sweden as our focus, we definitely had to make Swedish meatballs for lunch, and we found a copycat recipe of IKEA's! First, Sam and Drew had to brown the meatballs.
Next, Liz and Alexis whipped up the tasty gravy. 😋 Our room smelled so good by now!
Michelle and Laura worked on coloring small pictures of meatballs on paper napkin rings so we'd have a festive touch added to our place setting today.
Laura also stirred the instant mashed potatoes for us! They were delicious, and no lumps! 😂
Xavier browned some gluten-free meatballs for his lunch. He's also dairy free, and since our Swedish meatball sauce had sour cream in it, we prepared some marinara sauce for his, along with gluten-free pasta, since the mashed potatoes were made with milk.
Devin was in charge of making sure we had a green veggie, so he cooked green beans. Lisa said they were some of the best we ever had, and everyone agreed!
Here's a sampling of our worksheets on Sweden. We worked on these both with partners and independently. Something else we learned about Sweden that is cool was that it's national animal is the moose!
One of the coolest things we learned today was that Sam has a connection to Swedish royalty! His 2x great-grandparents, Claus and Anna, worked in the Swedish royal kingdom during the reign of King Oscar and Queen Sofia in the 1800s. Claus was the king's stablemaster and Anna was the queen's maid. They fell in love, married, and generations later...we've got Sam!
Today was National Popcorn Day, and we celebrated that at the end of the day. First, we used the letters NATIONAL POPCORN DAY to make words. The gang really enjoys this brain work, and we need to remember to do it more often. Carol worked with Laura and Michelle to arrange letters to spell a lot of great words including root, train, and not, which Laura was working on here. We allow them to make proper nouns, so Michelle's favorite word was "Anna" (from Frozen)!
We ended the day with a popcorn snack. Here are our word lists that prove how smart we are! What a fun day it was!!!
Thursday
Today was one of those when getting anyone's attention for more than 5 seconds is hard! Will it snow or be a no?! ❄❄❄ Will we be here tomorrow or at home?! ⛄⛄⛄
We kicked off the morning with a celebration of Disc Jockey Day! Everyone got a chance to introduce their favorite songs using our karoke microphone and their best DJ voices. Alexis and Sam gave it their all!
We also watched a DJ play off where a couple of "professionals" showed us how it's done. We're not there yet...but it was fun to watch!
Since it was looking more and more likely that we would get snow, we decided to make bird feeders using peanut butter and TP rolls. We're so proud of Xavier, who worked independently on covering his roll with peanut butter! He usually likes to wait for help, but took the initiatve to get it done today! 👏
Drew was also getting to work slathering on peanut butter, and he doesn't usually like projects with sticky stuff! It was good to see him holding the tube over two fingers on his left hand, which helps keep the peanut butter off his hands.
Here's our contribution to the birds' winter storm food source. We hung them on the bushes outside our windows, and we also moved our "regular" bird feeders back, because we had spotted a couple of birds in the area yesterday.
Not long after putting the food out, we noticed the birds were back! It's hard to get pictures from inside and on short notice, but there were a lot of them on our feeders and poking around on the ground, too!
We don't know why they came back, but we were happy to see them! Turns out, the roads were predicted to be treacherous, so we would not be at the center on Friday. The food probably won't last until we can refill the feeders on Tuesday, but we hope the birds will come back when we do!
Today's brain work included math activities. Liz and Devin worked on finding consectutive numbers on the snowman that had a sum of 14. It was tricky at first, but then they thought to use colored pencils as maniuplatives to help count, and they aced the assignment!
Laura and Drew sequenced numbers with a cut and paste activity, and then moved on to a game of rolling the dice and racing to the finish line on a hundreds chart. They are a good, and competitive, match!
Who knew "The Floss" could be part of a yoga routine! We loved it! Jaime keeps us moving!
As we wrapped up yoga and prepared for dismissal, we noticed it was still just raining outside. We didn't know yet that Friday would be an inclement weather day, but we suspected it would, as Heike and Dianne had already told us they felt certain the schools would close. So we said, "So long...see ya on Tuesday," and sent everyone on their way. Of course, Heike and Dianne were correct, so this is the end of this week's blog adventure! LOL! ❆❆❆
Here's what we haved planned for our last week in January:
Tuesday: We are going to Jamestown Settlement today for a guided tour! It will be chilly, so bundle up with jackets, hats, and gloves. We won't be outside too long if it's very cold, but our guide is planning to tailor the tour for us, so it should be fun. Of course, the gang will probably think the most fun is lunch: Bring $10 to order lunch in the cafe. Wear Arc shirts, too! (Speaking of Arc shirts, we are exploring a new vendor...stay tuned for info in the next week or so!) We'll also celebrate our custodian Dianne's birthday today with cupcakes for her when we get back from Jamestown!
Wednesday: Today we are going to Eaton to make up for the work day we missed on Friday. Wear Eaton shirts and bring a bagged lunch!
Thursday: Today we'll celebrate two "holidays" that fell on yesterday: Peanut Brittle Day and Green Juice Day. We'll try both, and have some educational activities to go along with them, too. Lunch on your own. NO JRES CAFETERIA TODAY (student holiday).
Friday: It's one of our favorite "days" of the year: Have Fun at Work Day! We plan to do just that with music and dancing, games (some new!), and yoga (dress to stretch). Plus, it's also Blueberry Pancake Day, so we'll have blueberry pancakes (or plain, if preferred) for lunch, along with fruit and sausage sides. We're going to do something fun with our pancakes, too!
We hope everyone has a safe, warm, and fun weekend!
Lisa, Carol, Nan, and the AoA Gang
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.