Hula, Soccer, Drums and DI

As school started back up so did our extracurriculars...I'm just a bit behind in getting them posted.

Hula
Lorelei is still loving hula. Ms. Celistine is teaching them many Hawaiin words along with their dances so that is always fun to hear about.

Caught his excitement from his first goal of the season.

Soccer
Makin played soccer at the YMCA this fall. He had three GCA classmates on his team, which was great. After his year off, I was nervous about a new coach and team, but was very thankful for Hunter (a dad of one of Makin's classmates) and we ended up with a good batch of kids. While this is not as competitive as we had in years previous, we enjoyed the season and will likely continue with this group in the future. Makin gave 100% during his games and made us proud.

Coach Hunter talking to the team.

Caption stolen from a friend:
 "When your moms won't let you play football so you watching longingly
 from the sidelines in between soccer games."

Night out to celebrate the season after the last game.

Drums
During the Illuminate recital rehersal last May Makin watched the drums class perform and immediately said, "I wanna do that!" This was, of course, after registration so the drums classes were already full. I kept meaning to put him on the waiting list and forgetting. A few weeks after hula began I was encouraged by another mom to go ahead and put him on the list there in person since I kept forgetting to sign him up on their website. Amazingly, they got him into the class that day! He was sooo excited and he is doing a great job. He has always had a natural rhythm so drums have been very enjoyable so far. He is taking this class with Ryker, Jaedynn's little brother, so its also fun seeing our GCA friends each Monday evening!

Hanging out between hula and drums on a rainy day.
When there is nice weather these guys enjoy the playground between classes.

DI
Where to begin with Destination Imagination. There has been a HUGE interest at school this year. I told Brad he is going to have to dial down his presentation tactics next year as he did too good of a job. ;) We have four groups 3rd-5th as well as a 1st and 2nd grade group of seventeen students. (We decided K was not ideal for a DI group as they are tired after school!) What does this look like for us? Well, it meant a lot of coordinating for Brad and me. Everybody wants their kids to participate but nobody wants to coach! After a few pleas out to parents we had three coaches step up (Brad is #4) and the 3rd-5th teams will compete February 16th.

Showing the team how this structure crushing thing works.

Lorelei's group is doing "Monster Affects" which is the structure challenge. Brad is so excited for her to work on some structures just like he did!

Building a bridge.

Makin's group has been fun for me. I know seventeen 1st and 2nd graders may not sound fun to some, but I really do enjoy this age. I also enjoy that we get to just have fun as we decided not to work on a presentation to compete this year. Our group does "Team Talk" where they take turns answering a question or two I ask the group while they eat snack. Then we do two instant challenge activities. For these I divide them into three groups for task-based challenges and two groups for performance-based challenges. My hope is that they are really working to learn how to work as a team (there is a lot to learn with that!) as well as lots of creative thinking. Hopefully this will lead to some awesome DI teams when they hit 3rd grade and start to compete! (I have way more pictures of this since I'm the one coaching this group.)

How tall can you make your spaghetti tower?

Rock Paper Scissors can help when we disagree.

Designing a catapult.