Science Olympiad 2016 Wrapup

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One side of the gym at Pioneer filled with parents and friends. We filled the gym four times during the day.

On May 14, we held the 14th Annual Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad (WESO). Over 2000 students from 40 Washtenaw County elementary schools participated.

We had some good press coverage this year from MLive and the Ann Arbor schools news sites.

MLive coverage

Ann Arbor Schools


A picture of me and some volunteers at the WESO tournament site. The woman on my left is a long-time volunteer who helps supervise the academic event hallways and check-in.

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Tech Twilight


A few of us represented WESO at Ann Arbor Hands On Museum's Tech Twilight, which was May 20. We had a lot of visitors, young and old.

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Lots of Little Things

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Dremel Router Base Project


I got a new Dremel tool for Christmas and I'd like to use it for a project or two where I need to cut recesses in wood. I don't have a router base for it, which is necessary, so I looked around the internet and found some people making their own. The ones I found online are nicer than this, made of metal or plexiglas, but I think this one, made out of wood, will work fine. I made it from scrap wood and a few dollars' worth of nuts and bolts from ACE.

There are several commercial router bases available (here, here, here, and
here), including one that Dremel makes, so I may find myself eventually graduating to one of those offerings. The reviews I've read of the Dremel brand base are not good, but the others get good reviews.


Getting Out of the House

I went to the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor a few weeks ago to see a band, Spiraling Suns. Two of the three band members are coworkers of mine in Dexter, and it was fun to see them playing. They're normally quiet and unassuming, but when they get going, they really belt it out.

Science Olympiad
The Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad event schedules are out, the culmination of quite a few hours of work. This year we'll have 38 schools in the tournament, like last year, and we expect well over 2,000 students in grades 2-5. The fun never stops!

Fun Links
These miniature cities take the "ship in a bottle" genre to a whole new level: test tubes.

Since my eyeballs are getting older, I'm craving one of these. I already have a magnifying lamp that I use all the time. But who couldn't use a little more magnification?

The batteries for my cordless drill keep conking out immediately after they're charged. I've had the drill and batteries for 18 years, and I think it's time for a new set. Maybe this set would work. Cordless drills are so much lighter than they used to be.

Stay warm, everyone!

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Catching Up for the Fall

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Let's start this off with some cats. Here we can see Rigby and Mesko wondering why I won't leave them alone so they can sleep.

School started, and I stopped adding to this blog. Here are a few things that have happened in the last 6 weeks.

M

M is the sax player the to the right as you look at this picture.
M marched at the Pioneer High Homecoming football game, his first time doing so. They did a lot of practicing, and looked great.



M also went to the Homecoming dance with his girlfriend, whose first initial is O. They both cleaned behind their ears and dressed up. I promised M he was in charge of distributing pictures. If you want one, let him know...

K
K continues to play tennis twice a week with his Rec & Ed team. He's also back for another year of Math Olympiad. This year his class has 30 students, which is his largest so far. A few other parents and I grade the homework, and it's all we can do to get done before the end of class.

MATHCOUNTS has also started up again, so he's joining that group after school once a week. Add in violin and piano lessons, and he's got a full slate.


This is the Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad mascot, Weso the Owl. I'm told that Weso is a girl, in case you're wondering.
Science Olympiad planning has started up again. The event will happen on May 14, 2016. We already have schools contacting us asking for more information, but there's a lot to do to prepare. This is our new website, and it will grow as we build it.

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Science Olympiad and Muddy Pipes

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Finally!
First, what you've all been waiting for: the boys playing their recital pieces. They had their recital a few weeks ago, so they dusted off their pieces and made a special recording.


Clementi's "Sonatina" Op. 36 No. 6, played by M


Schumann's "Winter-time (II)" by K

Drainage Update
I know you're itching to hear the update on the French drain that runs between our yard and our neighbor's. It's been backed up for a while, and we hired someone to put a camera in the tube and see what was in the way. They identified an area where silt and roots had pretty much blocked off the pipe, so we opened it up and cleaned it out. I just cut the tube in one place, pulled the ends up one by one and cleaned them up as far down as I could reach (yes, it was gross.) That was a few weeks ago. I have been waiting for a break in my schedule to finally put in a clean-out PVC "T" in the problem area. Here are a few pictures of today's muddy adventure.


The french drain before the repair. It was cut open a few weeks ago to clear out a blockage.


This is after the first of two cuts. Mud Pies for all.


The full repair. The drainage tile is connected to the PVC with a rubber connector and hose clamps, and PVC part is a "T" shape with a screw-in top, so I can dig it up a little bit next time it gets clogged and clean it out from there.

Science Olympiad
This year's Science Olympiad had a new schedule: 3 hours each for grades 2-5. This gave us a 12-hour tournament day, with a few hours surrounding that schedule, so many of us were there for a solid fourteen or fifteen hours. Add on the 6 hours for setup the evening before, and that was a lot of standing and walking. I enjoyed a lot of sitting the following day.

The tournament went very well. We had a completely revamped schedule, a brand new computer programming event, and over 2000 Washtenaw County students participating. Things went so smoothly, in fact, it would be easy to forget we're an all-volunteer organization, from top to bottom.


I have six Honorable Mention medals lined up and ready to present. Those went to two different teams with three team members each. If you don't split them up like this, they're easy to get tangled. I'm not wearing my glasses in this picture because it was the end of the day, and we had been loading the truck in the rain, and I took off my glasses so they wouldn't get all rainy.


Here's me giving some students Honorable Mention medals at the third grade awards ceremony. The colorful, tie-dye shirt is our uniform of sorts - it makes it easy for people to find us if they need something.

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Happy Mother's Day!

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A few cranes have returned to the pond near our house. I’ll post pictures of them when I get a good one. In the meantime, here’s a picture from Mattias Adolffson.

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Happy Mother's Day!

Speaking of famous women, a common lament in the science community is that the question “who is your favorite female scientist?” is usually answered with “Marie Curie”. Was that your response? I have a different one. Among my favorite female scientists is a computer science instructor I had at MSU named Helen Spence. She was programming computers in the 1940’s, and teaching Physics and Computer Science at MSU starting in the 1950’s. She retired shortly after the second of two classes I took from her – the first was CPS311, where we learned two languages: C, and a Motorola chip’s assembly language. The second class was a continuation of that class, in which we dived into the details of the PDP-11 machine language.

Her ability to plainly explain the topics, and her no-nonsense approach to exercises and exams, made her one of my favorite instructors/professors of my college years.

Mrs. Spence passed away last year.

On this site, there are sound files that capture a series of interviews with her. . I haven’t been able to get to all of them yet, but I like the MSU project that produced these recordings.

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A Jacquard loom at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.

Speaking of female scientists (and engineers), I’m reading a biography of Ada Lovelace, a friend and collaborator of Charles Babbage, who invented (but wasn’t able to build) a computer that was run by perforated cards, which we would now refer to as “punch cards”. It was based on the input cards that drove the Jacquard Loom.

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Spring Happenings
Now that spring and summer have both arrived, basically at the same time, the boys’ activities have moved outside. M is back playing with the Ultimate Frisbee team (he did play some cold games, though), and K is playing outdoor tennis, after having been inside all winter. K tried out a few different new racquets at his last practice – as kids get older, they sometimes need to get a new racquet that’s heavier and helps them produce more power. K’s current racquet is very light, and won’t work well for most older teens or adults.

Since I’m now one of the people in charge of making sure the Science Olympiad runs like a clock, I have been occupied with formatting schedules, drawing maps, and staying in close contact with the others who are responsible for other parts of the tournament. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. May 30 is the big day.

Links
You might find this site useful: if you want to make a poster out of an image or document you’ve created, you upload it to their website. You tell it how wide you want it to be, and it creates a PDF file that contains pages you print at home. Then you tape them all together and you have a poster. h

You probably knew there were some WWII Japanese subs that actually carried airplanes with them, and the planes could be launched into the air from the sub itself.

Christmas is only 7 months away. Maybe you should buy me one of these lockpicking practice sets now, just in case.

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Happy Mother’s Day! And safe travels to Mom and Mary! Take lots of pictures!

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A Graduation, and End of the Year Honors

M outside the school, on graduation day

Graduation Day
He finally did it - M completed eighth grade on Friday! There was a ceremony in the gym with all the students, and it was a packed house with parents, grandparents, and quite a few siblings who had taken the morning off school to see their brother or sister.

We were proud to watch M receive honors for being one of the top science students in the grade. He also was recognized as one of the 31 students who received all A's for every quarter from sixth through eighth grade. Last but not least, he was nominated for the "Golden Bear" award - two boys and two girls are named "Golden Bears" for being all-around great students, citizens, helpers, and just plain good people. They are nominated by teachers, and each teacher gets to vote for the winners. As they say at the Oscars, it's an honor just to be nominated, and the fact that M's teachers felt highly enough of him to nominate and vote for him makes his parents extremely proud.

During his three years at Slauson, M played soccer, volleyball, and tennis. He was a member of the Science Olympiad team for two years, the second of which saw him get a medal at the State competition. He was one of five students who made the morning announcements each day during the past year. He is going to do some volunteer work this summer at Safety Town, a class for preschoolers who will be in Kindergarten next year. He will also be going to band camp in August.

He has made a fine impression on his teachers and classmates in middle school, and we know he'll do the same next year at Pioneer High.

Great job, M!



M plays a sax solo with the Slauson Middle School Jazz Band before the graduation ceremony.

Math Olympiad Wrap-Up
On Saturday, another (long) year of Math Olympiad ended with a ceremony and lunch celebrating the hard work that all the students exhibited in the name of math education. This ended K's second year in the Math Olympiad program, and his second year of receiving a medal for being the top student in his class. His "top" status was determined by test scores, attendance, participation in class, homework, and other factors.

K has a special talent for math that he is going to continue to grow in the years to come. He was taking seventh-grade math this year as a sixth-grader, and next year will take eighth-grade math. In eighth grade, he will likely go to Pioneer High for first-hour math, then go back to middle school to take his other classes.

Congratulations to K on his high level of achievement in Math Olympiad!


K (third from left in the front row) has two medals - the one with the yellow lanyard is for being the top student in the class


K outside Tappan Middle School, where the Math Olympiad classes were held every Saturday morning during the school year.

Slauson Science Olympiad at the State Competition

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Science Olympiad: State Competition

The awards ceremony in the Auditorium. The entire main floor was filled with middle- and high-school teams and their head coaches. The rest of us sat in the upper level.

Yesterday, M took a road trip to Michigan State University (on the banks of the Red Cedar!) to participate in the State Science Olympiad competition, along with 15 of his classmates, parents, coaches, and friends.

M competed in Mission Possible (Rube Goldberg machine), Boomilever (structural building), and Metric Mastery (math problems).

He and his friend Michael won a 5th place medal in Metric Mastery, and they got to go up on the big stage at the MSU Auditorium to receive the medals. A number of his teammates were called to the stage through the night, and we cheered and clapped every time the school name was called.

Slauson Middle School earned a trophy as the 9th overall finisher, a tremendous accomplishment in a field of 48 schools.

Congratulations, M and Slauson!

Pictures

M and his teammate, Tony, show off their Boomilevers. A bucket is hung from the narrow end, and filled with sand until the structure breaks.


The inside of the Mission Possible "machine". A quarter is dropped into a slot to start it running, then various switches, motors, chutes, balls, BBs, pulleys, and other devices deploy/run/roll/bounce/etc. until the process is complete.


From left, M, Aditya, and EmJ prepare the final run of their Mission Possible contraption.

Science Olympiad Wrap-Up! And So Much More!

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Science Olympiad 2013

A real scientist and his dad

We spent our usual April Saturday at Pioneer High School competing and volunteering at the largest elementary school Science Olympiad in the country. This year, there were 26 elementary schools for a total of 1700 students (more or less). All the Ann Arbor public elementary schools were represented this year, as well as some private schools, and even a group of home-schoolers. The teams ranged from 100 students to some with only a few.

K did outstanding this year as always. He took second place medals in:
* Science Jeopardy, where they play a game with buzzers, answering with questions, and Final Jeopardy,
* To Infinity and Beyond, an event covering astronomy, complete with a planetarium dome test (there's a planetarium inside Pioneer!), and
* On Target, in which the students create small missiles from drinking straws, paper, and clay, and then launch them with a small forced-air plunger. Their goal is to land their missiles as close to a set target as possible.

This year, I was one of the head coaches at Lawton (there are four of us), and while we all put in long hours with it, it was rewarding and fun. Any difficulties and frustrations we might have felt with all the administration and organization usually fade into distant memory when we watch the students taking medals and thanking their coaches for their hard work. We are fortunate to have so many great parents to coach the events. Many of them are learning the subject matter for the first time themselves, and most of them already have full-time jobs and other lives outside of Science Olympiad. The school is lucky to have them, and as many families move on to middle school, we can already see the next waves of parents ready to take their places.

M and I volunteered at the academic check-in and events area, where I have volunteered and helped coordinate for the last four years. I did the coordination myself for two years, and the organization provided another coordinator, Karen, last year (is there such a word as co-coordinator?). This year, Karen returned to co-coordinate again, and we added another outstanding "key" volunteer, Jennifer, so we could cover all the ground without breaking a sweat. I guess that makes Jennifer the co-co-coordinator. Karen and Jennifer will run the show, perhaps with someone else's help, next year, as this is my last year with a student in elementary school.

It's bittersweet - I did enjoy a lot of the aspects of Science Olympiad, and the amazing work of its Board, but there are also plenty of new opportunities to be found in middle and high school in the coming years.

Raise a glass to Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad. Cheers!


A whole buncha scientists, at the afternoon awards ceremony.

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When M isn't practicing for his own Science Olympiad competition for middle school, he's either helping me run students up and down stairs at Pioneer, or playing flag football. His team had mixed success this year, and didn't make it through the playoffs to the final game. At the brief recognition ceremony the coach conducted, he said M had consistently the best hands of anyone on the team. He had numerous tackles, catches, and other great plays this season. It was a season that was overshadowed a few times by other big events, but he enjoyed it.

And, just as with the elementary Science Olympiad, this will likely be M's last year with flag football. On to bigger things!


M is in the back row, far right

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What else? It's been a long time since I've posted anything, partly because I've been so busy with Science Olympiad. I've read a few books, travelled to Pittsburgh with the family to see J's grandmother on her 99th birthday, and watched some of M's volleyball games (did I mention M is playing volleyball for his middle school team?).

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Last, but not least, J and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on April 3, which just so happens to be her grandmother's birthday. We had a joint celebration in Pittsburgh, and are going to plan a romantic getaway for two sometime in the summer when we actually have some time to do so.

20 years? Wow. It's been a great 20 years, with two great kids, and a wonderful home that, quite honestly, she has a lot more to do with maintaining than I (even though I was the one who got the bird out of the bathroom fan vent this morning.)

I'd post a picture of her, but she'd appreciate it if I don't. It didn't take me 20 years to learn that.

I love you, J.

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Happy Easter!

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I got a new computer recently. It's all mechanical. This is what the web browser looks like.

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Science Olympiad competitions are coming up - the elementary school competition is April 20, and the middle school state competition is on April 27. Those are going to be two long days, but they'll be fun and rewarding for students and parents. I just wish the state competition was at UM instead of MSU so we wouldn't have to worry about the weather and getting up before sunrise to get there on time.

Meanwhile, M continues to play volleyball with the 7th- and 8th-grade team. They're pretty good, and fun to watch. He has a few more flag football games coming up, and is getting better at the sax every day.

Now that indoor soccer is over, K is about ready to wrap up Science Olympiad season and continues with Math Olympiad. He's decided not to participate in any activities that don't have the word "Olympiad" in the name. He's also sawing out tunes on the violin for 5th-grade strings.

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J and K are using some of their time off work and school to catch up on the TV show "Downton Abbey" about an insanely rich family who live in a "house" the size of a city block. They have a gaggle of servants and, between the upstairs and the downstairs, provide enough drama for a lengthy television series.

We're starting to talk like them now. When I gave K his hot chocolate this morning, I said "Here you are, m'Lord" in the deep voice of Carson, the family's butler. That might backfire if he expects me to talk to him like that from now on. Which he probably does.

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Links
Motorcyle made out of Guinness beer cans.

How to build your everything really fast.

Ships in bottles - interview with the maker.

March Update: Science Olympiad, Soccer, Flag Football, Snow, Rain, Links, You Name It

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Science Olympiad News

In recent news (this afternoon), M's very own Slauson Middle School took first place overall at the Science Olympiad regional competition at Hillsdale College. There were six other schools competing.

The results for events in which M competed include sixth place in Mission Possible (a Rube Goldberg machine-building event), fifth place in Boomilever (in which a wooden structure is built that can support the most weight without breaking), and 1st place in Metric Mastery (a math-heavy event in which students measure objects and estimate numbers). It was a huge day for M and his teammates, and is the culmination of many weeks of practicing (and a last-minute frenzy build on the Mission Possible machine Friday evening).


M with his awards - one of the medals around his neck is the school's overall blue medal.


M's boomilever, post-competition. The vertical part of the boomilever, shown at the left of the picture, is fastened to to bolt protruding from a fixed vertical jig. Then, a hook is attached to the far end of the structure (the right side of the picture), and a bucket is hung from the hook. A device pours sand into the bucket until the boomilever breaks. The weight of the sand/bucket/hook divided by the weight of the boomilever itself is the score the students receive. The trick is to build something really light that holds a good load, because the equation that produces the score favors a small denominator more than a high numerator. Finding the balance is difficult.

Slauson will be going to the State competition in April at Michigan State University.

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K is playing indoor soccer this year - they play with a small ball, about 1/2 the size of a normal soccer ball, and they use middle-school gyms instead of outdoor soccer fields. It's very fast-paced, and tends to be high-scoring. Today's game ended in a 7-7 tie, for example.

K continues to go to Math Olympiad on Saturday mornings and is doing well on his assignments and tests. He's enjoying it, and I'm learning a lot from attending the practices. Sometimes, I'm put to work grading homework when I go to the practices, as all parents are asked to chip in and volunteer in one way or another.

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M has started playing volleyball for the 7th- and 8th-grade team. His practices have overlapped a little with Science Olympiad practices, and we're working on balancing those. He's also playing Flag Football, his favorite winter activity. This may be his last year, as he's getting too old to play in the league that's available.

Links

Table with a farm-machinery theme.

Tiny houses with clever designs.

Scale gasoline engines - these aren't models, they really work.

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Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year

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Make Way for the Olympians

I’ve been busy with Science Olympiad lately – pretty much every night the last few weeks I’ve had something or other to do. That should end pretty soon for several weeks, and I’m looking forward to a little break.

K is starting indoor soccer (aka “futsal”). It’s soccer played in a gym with a half-size soccer ball. If it sounds like a loud sport, that’s because it is.

M is now sporting braces on his top and bottom teeth, and the orthodontist says he’ll be done this year. We’ll be paying until he’s out of high school, but can you put a price on straight teeth? Yes, you can. It's rather high.

Mesko and Rigby are doing fine. Why wouldn’t they be doing fine?

Links, Pictures, Neat Stuff
A lot of miscellaneous items today...

Some old owners manuals. I had higher hopes for this gallery than I should have, but they’re fun to look at.

I’ll take one of these.

Great picture of a red-tailed hawk.

I love this tiny house built on a rock in the middle of a river.

Owl!

I like looking at these boats. I don’t have a good reason, I just like them.

M and I are going to do this for his locker. The problem is the LED light strips the person suggests are really expensive. I’m sure we can modify this plan to make something bright enough to help him see his books, but that will still run on a battery.

Looking for a project? Try this site.

Science Olympiad and Flag Football

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K triumphantly holds his school's trophy aloft triumphantly*

Science Olympiad
The 2012 Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad was held yesterday at Pioneer High School, and, usual, K and his fellow competitors from Lawton did very well. K earned two gold medals. His first was for Straw Towers, in which straws and straight pins are used to build a structure that is both tall and able to support a certain amount of weight. His second was for Write It, Build It. In that event, two students write a detailed description of an object, and two other students build the object with only the writing to guide them. The objects are typically collages of foam, paper, and other materials, with no particular order or pattern.

Lawton, for which I am a co-head coach, received the overall second place trophy for the 2nd and 3rd grade events, and the overall first place trophy for the 4th and 5th grade events.

I'm so proud of K and his teammates, who studied and practiced very hard, and I am really grateful to be a parent at a school where so many parents devote huge chunks of their free time to coach and volunteer.

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M's flag football season has come to an end. His team did well, finishing 4-2, although their last game was a loss in the playoffs. Mark had an outstanding year on offense and defense, and he (and I) liked the coaches and the other players. It was another good experience for flag football.


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Now that Science Olympiad is complete, I have to figure out how I'll spend some of my free time. K's soccer season has already started, so I know I'll be spending Thursdays and Saturdays at practices and games.

We're going to do some work in the basement one of these days. Some painting is in order.

It's also time to get back to the small-scale elevator project, as I've neglected it long enough.

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I hope everyone is having a great spring so far - our lawn almost needs to be mowed again. I'll put that off for a while. Maybe it will stop growing.

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* Yes, I know I wrote "triumphantly" twice.

Have a Belated Merry Christmas and an Early Happy New Year!

For Christmas, K got a Fushigi, and M got a Chia Obama. Remember Chia Pets? This is the same, but with a Barack Obama head. (Yes, it's a real thing.)

A Frasier fir - no word on Niles or Lilith.

Christmas
Christmas Day is past, although we haven't had all of our family gatherings yet. We've had a fun vacation so far. We saw the new Muppet movie yesterday, met Laurie's new cats (Granger and Tonks), and are regularly visiting the front window looking for signs of snow. We've had a little, but not enough for sledding, skiing, snowboarding, or anything-ing. The closest we've come to snow is the ice we got a few nights ago, but ice is no fun.

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Science Olympiad 2012
This year I agreed to help play a bigger role for Lawton's Science Olympiad team, and the other Head Coaches and I are working our way through the signups (over 90 students) and trying to sort out who will be starting out on what team. It's challenging but fun.

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Air Hockey: Battery Hog
In the tree picture above, you can see a table-top air hockey game. It was a present from J to the rest of us, although she's pretty good at it herself. We were not thrilled to find it takes six AA batteries, so M and I are plotting to add an AC adapter and plug to the internals, and mount a switch where it's accessible from the outside. (The current switch is underneath the top, and you have to turn it over to reach it.) We have the adapter and 2.1mm connector to hook up to the motor, we just need a switch. I'm sure I have one somewhere downstairs we can use...

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Happy New Year!

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December So Far

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Lots of little things going on in December.


Mark's Mouth
The biggest news is probably M's oral surgery yesterday. I don't want to tell his story (because it's his) but it went well and his recovery is coming along just fine.

Family Stuff
We bought and decorated our Christmas tree today. K disagreed with our choice of a corkbark fir like last year's and he was right for a change. We got a frasier fir (no relation to Frasier Crane) and after decking it out with lights and ornaments, it is gracing our dining room in its usual spot.

Science Olympiad
Last week was the official kickoff meeting of Science Olympiad at the elementary school. I'm playing a bigger role this year than I have in past years, and am part of the parent committee to organize all the students, coaches, and practices for the school. Last year there were almost 100 students who participated, so it's not a simple job to manage it. I'm working with three other parents this year, two of whom did all the work themselves last year.

Snow and Trees
We got our first real snow of the year early this week. As the snow came down and the wind blew hard, our phone rang. It was my next-door neighbor letting me know that one of my spruce trees was leaning over his driveway at a 45-degree angle. We pulled it back up with some rope and staked it. I couldn't feel my fingers when it was over. I'm grateful my neighbor is such a good guy - he didn't want the tree to block his driveway, but he didn't have to spend his evening getting wet and slopping through my yard, holding a rope while I tied it to a stake. Thanks, Jim!

The tree is still staked up. I'm not expecting it to stay up for long after it's unstaked. Remember this tree? I have a feeling my staked tree has the same root-poor condition. We'll see.

Go State!
I spent the first quarter of the Big 10 Championship game (MSU vs Wisconsin) on the treadmill. I'm spending the fourth quarter on the computer typing, watching the teams beat the heck out of each other. A great game so far...

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Science Olympiad! Soccer! Grillin'! Exhaustion!

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We had an incredibly busy weekend June 11-12. I'm not sure how we're all still standing, but we are.

Science Olympiad

Before Science Olympiad

After Science Olympiad


Saturday was the annual Science Olympiad competition at Pioneer High school. M competed in Circuit Wizardry, an electronics circuits-based event, and Write It Build It, where two students write about an object made of multiple odd parts, and another two students have to build that object based on those instructions. He trained hard for both events, and he and his teammates won a second-place medal for Circuit Wizardry.

K competed in four events: Rock Hunter, which involved learning about the structure, hardness, and uses for rocks and minerals; What Went By, which required students to identify endangered and extinct animals based on their habitat, location, diet, and other characteristics; Estimania, which is all about math, estimating distances and measurements, and estimating the results of difficult math problems (such as 992 x 4005); and Mystery Architecture, where the participants are given odd materials from which they need to build the tallest possible tower able to support a tennis ball.

K was a last-minute addition to the Mystery Architecture team - one of the participants was unable to compete in it due to a time conflict with another event.

K won two medals, both fourth place: Estimania and What Went By.

We're so proud of the work they did, the time they spent, the patience they had at the competition itself (they were there all day) and their (and their school's) sportsmanship.

Lawton school won the overall trophy for the 2nd/3rd grade events, which took place in the morning, and for the 4th/5th grade events, which took place in the afternoon.

I spent most of the day in the academic check-in area, helping to ensure everyone was on time to their events, answering questions, looking for missing fourth-graders in the Map Reading room, sweating more than should be healthy while neglecting to drink enough water, and enjoying helping about 1500 Ann Arbor-area students from 24 different schools. It was a great day for all, and I am proud of the students from all the schools who worked hard, studied, and showed up ready to compete. It is comforting to know that these kids will be running the country someday. I hope they hurry.

Coach Monty (left), M, and Coach Jim

Soccer Headlines
On Sunday, M had his final soccer game of the year. It is also his final soccer game with the team he has been playing with for the last three years. His coaches for the last two years, Monty and Jim, have done a wonderful job teaching the players about working hard, being mentally tough, using your head as well as your body, as well as the rules and strategies for playing soccer. M is very lucky to have had these coaches as leaders and role models. We've met some coaches from other schools for whom we probably wouldn't want M playing.

K's last soccer game was last weekend (they had a game on Saturday, but K couldn't attend). His team won all but one game this season, and has shown a tremendous improvement. K has played well at defense and offense, and he is also fortunate to be coached by a parent who is, first and foremost, concerned with sportsmanship, athleticism, and fair play. K has learned a lot from his coach, and has grown as a player over the last year.

After M's final soccer game, K went to his piano teacher's awards party (M spent the time winding down from his soccer game and farewell party) and then we all went to our favorite picnic of the year, Food Gatherers' Grillin'. We had a peaceful dinner, walked around a little bit, did some shopping at the silent auction, and had some Zingerman's gelato and brownies for dessert.

It was a relaxing end to a hectic weekend.

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