Here are Mrs. Megan and Ms. Snap in the midst of teaching the kids more about stop-action animation, and a few shots of us just being silly with the kids. All of these pictures were taken in the much talked-of "Yellow Room" - the first couple of pictures were taken on the stage of Drama/Dress-up Area. There was a group of boys in drama area today that had me in stitches with their "play" - it was very political and chivalrous in nature - I kept hearing phrases like "it's the only way to restore peace with Spain" and "there's the dutch ambassador - arrest him!" How they come up with this stuff... (*sigh) I love kids.
The windows in the picture above look out onto the playground. Behind me, you'll see the Guitar and String Instrument section of the room where we have four acoustic guitars, three electric guitars, two ukuleles, three auto-harps and a couple of dulcimers. The child in the blue striped shirt is leaning on our keyboard table and behind him are hand drums, tambourines, triangles, maracas, cymbals, an electric drum set and various other noise makers.
The three tables in the background of the picture above are where we eat lunch and snack and play a good many card and board games. Yesterday we had a jeopardy tournament at those tables. You'll see the sign "Design Central" which is positioned directly over our Lego Area.
The area the kids are gathered in is the reading/hang-out area. It is positioned in front of a rarely-used T.V. (we are simply not allowed to use the T.V. unless there is a higher-learning motivation behind it). Today we watched Wallace & Grommit as an extension of learning about stop-action animation. Our final ninja film was 1 minute and 33 seconds - it took 435 still pictures strung together to make it. When I told the kids this information and then told them to think about the film we were watching, which was 1 hour and 25 minutes long... they were staggered - it was awesome to see that I had made a dent - it was one of those "Yes!" moments.
The only corner of our room not pictured in the shots above contains our class pet - a rabbit named Pepper Bunny. The windows above the yellow wall look out into the hallway that connects us with the rest of the building and the other rooms (Turquoise, Purple and Lime).
In the picture above, we're setting up - my baby shower "crew" (Mom, Jacque, Allison, Nikki, etc.) worked so hard to make it a beautiful shower.
Above are the centerpieces for the tables - the animals are home-made chocolate lollipops.
One of the games we played was "Name That Poo" - Jacque melted 4-5 different candy bars into diapers and we had to guess by sight and smell which were which.
Another game was a "Sippie Cup Chugging Contest" - we had four adults and four kids try to be the first to finish lemonade out of sippie cups. 
Poor Catey! One of the Sippie cups sprung a leak.
Jacque made balloon animals as a part of the decorations.
The cake was made and decorated by Jacque's mother, Allison - it came out incredible!
Everyone blew best wishes bubbles for baby Jack.
I got some wonderful gifts!
Here are some souvineers I brought back from Germany for my crew!
Above is Jacque in her new dirndle, the official "German Barmaid Dress."
Here we are singing with the family.
And last but not least, here are the Grandmothers-to-be.
More pictures of the trip will be posted as they are taken - I'll be back in Germany on August 29th.
