Tag Archives: shafter elementary

Robotics Regionals

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On Saturday Mckenna had her regional competition for her robotics team. She has been working after school for two months with a team of students to program a lego robot.  Finally it was time to see if all that work would pay off…

I had to take her to the local high school where the competition was taking place at 7:45am (love waking up early on Saturdays!) dropped her off with her team and then Omar and I had some time to go eat breakfast and he had a soccer game (to WIN, ’cause he’s awesome!). We ended up coming back to her competition around noon, just when the actual competing was going to start.

The competition, it was pretty cool!

It was pretty exciting. The teams went head to head with a two and a half minute time limit to have their robots perform as many programmed tasks as possible. There were three rounds and the highest score was the only one that counted. Mckenna had two different teams from her school enter, and only the top 5 teams get to continue on to state so there was a lot of pressure.

In the first round their robot didn’t do too well, they had a couple of mistakes and weren’t able to get too many tasks completed. Mckenna was pretty bummed at this point because their score put them in 14th place out of 19 teams. Thankfully there were two more rounds and her team did much better, getting up to 5th place. We then had to wait for the judges to tally the rest of the scores, there was a skit, a teamwork score, and robot design.

Well, Mckenna’s school did AWESOME! Both teams made it into the top five which means that both teams go onto state next month.

Terrible cell pic, sorry, if you look close you can see Shafterbots came in first and fifth!

Mckenna’s team also won a best design! This was a huge accomplishment and I am SO proud of her awesome team!

Go Shafterbots Silver!

So onto State! The teams are excited and determined to do just as well!

Oh and here is a bonus, during some downtime the (incredible!) A/V students at Moanaloa h.s. had the teams come down and dance. It was hilarious!

Hawaiian Pumpkin Patch

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So a couple of weeks ago I got to go on a field trip with Omar’s class to the pumpkin patch. I was pretty surprised that there was even a pumpkin patch on the island but it was a really nice local farm that also grown watermelon, corn, onions, bananas, eggplant and sunflowers.

Listening to our speaker tell us all about the produce they grow as well as how to properly pick a pumpkin. {Twist, twist, pull!}

 

The hayride was great, we got to tour the farm and see the variety of produce they grow. Also? Carpet over the hay? Genius, especially since we were all wearing shorts!

What does your pumpkin patch not also grow bananas?

Sweet corn… I couldn’t resist buying farm fresh corn!

 

“My” kids…

 

I don’t know how I ended up with such a great group of kids. They all stayed with me. And listened! I wish it was because the teacher loves me but it was totally random and I was assigned the 5 kids standing closest to me!

 

Now off to picking. I have never been to a pumpkin patch where you actually got to pick your pumpkin off the vine. It was a really cool experience. Except the fact that I was with a very particular bunch of kids. It took us the longest to get our pumpkins!

 

Success!

 

 

One quick pic with mama to prove I was there!

The sunflowers reminded me of Spain. There are a million sunflower fields in bloom around where we lived. So then I was all sad and nostalgic and missing Spain. But I do love it here so very much.

After everyone had a pumpkin in hand we rounded them all back onto the bus and went to the park for lunch. It was beautiful and peaceful and quiet (well it was until our school got there…)

 

And can I put a PSA out there from all teachers and field trip chaperones? For God’s sake, don’t send lunchables on field trips unless your kid can open them! We spend 10 minutes just opening those!

 

We also got to feed some koi. It was a bit insane but the kids loved it.

And this just because. If this picture doesn’t accurately describe my son I don’t know what does…

 

 

Summer is almost over!

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Well for my kids anyways… Believe it or not, school starts July 30th here in Hawaii.

I really can’t believe my baby is starting kindergarten, I just hope he does okay because he can be super shy when meeting new people.

We did our meet and greet at the school yesterday. Mckenna is doing another split this year! When she was in third grade she did a 3rd/4th split and ended up being with the same teacher for 4th. She did great and we LOVED that she had the same teacher for two years. This year she is in a 5th/6th split and the teacher normally teaches 6th so Mckenna may have her for two years. She seems very nice so I’m excited for this year. The school is smaller which many people may not like but since we are coming from a small school I am happy. There are 4 K’s, 3 1st, 3 2nd 2 3rd, 2 4th, 1 5th, 1 5th/6th and 1 6th.  Fingers crossed Mckenna makes friends quickly!

Omar still isn’t assigned a teacher, he had to do some testing along with the rest of the kindergartners next week and his first official day won’t be until August 6th.

I’m hoping that I will make good use of all this free time I’ll suddenly have and get everything unpacked and organized in our new house (assuming we ever move in and get our stuff).