[day 30 ... january 30]

Tonight was "Family Night" at The Little School. Cory's class especially has been eagerly looking forward to it all week. To the point where Cory was telling me every morning, "I can't *wait* until Friday. It's Family Night, you know." LOL!

Family Night is a relatively new event at TLS. It's like a mid-year Open House, where parents and children come to school in the evening and visit not only their own child's classrooms but any other classroom they'd like to check out as well. The little guys and I picked up Tynor from the Houghten Park-and-Ride, headed to the Subway near school for dinner, and then over to school. Cory wanted to see *every* classroom, and didn't want to spend much time in each one. So we'd just get chatting with a teacher or involved in an activity, and he'd be tugging on my sleeve, wanting to head to the next spot. Here Niall is checking out some "experiment" jars in Steve's class.

But we did spend some time in several classrooms, playing and visiting, and had a good time. The teachers all enjoyed seeing Tynor again, since he hadn't been back since a day he spent on campus last Fall. And it was fun playing in the classrooms and seeing what the kids are up to. There's so much variety, as every teacher and every group of kids is interested in different subjects, and there are all the age ranges as well.


The classroom where we spent the most time was Stephen's room. He's teaching half-day 4's and 5's now, and has some very cool things in class, including this fabulous ancient adding machine. He's had it as long as I've known him, and Niall and his classmates loved it the year he had Niall in class (when Niall was 4). It's such a satisfying feeling to punch the number keys down and then pull the long handle to stamp the number. Cory could have spent all night there. :-) Niall also learned a new number game (which I think Stephen has also had for awhile, but we'd forgotten it) with dice and levers, where you try to flip all the levers up (numbered 1 to 12) and have the lowest total on the levers when you get stuck.

One of our last stops was the oldest kids' classrooms, where Niall showed us how he's learned to create music with Garage Band on the Mac. Garage Band is one of the Friday music specials, and a younger child pairs up with a child in one of the oldest classes to choose instruments and tracks to create their own songs. Niall is really enjoying it (no big surprise there, given how much he's into music and Rock Band at home). In the "full circle" department, Tynor also enjoyed creating songs with Garage Band in his last year at TLS.