Grab Your Lassoes and Your Spurs, Partner

Over at Christian's school tonight there was a celebration of the students' dads.  They have been working on special projects, gathering ingredients for soup and cornbread, and decorating the hallways and classrooms for this evening of cowboy fun.  Unfortunately, Mike had a meeting scheduled out of town at the same time, so Christian and I moseyed on over to his classroom and I digitally corralled all the different things we did so that we could share them with Dad, as well as anyone else who might be interested.

There were lots of things for little, and big, cowpokes to see and do in the classroom. 

  

Christian thought it was great fun to wear his bandana, and pull it up over his mouth to keep all the dust out of his lungs.

He made a name tag for each one of us, and then we went around the classroom checking out the different activities.

The first thing we did was make outlines of our hands; his teacher said that this would be used for a project later.

Next, we grabbed some Trix cereal for a graphing activity.  This was fun to watch.  The kids had such individual methods for doing this.  They were supposed to count how many of each fruity color there were and then graph that number and write it at the bottom.  Christian dumped out all of his cereal and then picked which color he would do first (green).  He popped one in his mouth and colored one box.  He came up with this method on his own, and I was really surprised at how quickly he went through each "bite" and box. 

Counting the boxes...

Moving on to the next color...

Other kids separated all their colors out and then filled in the graph.  And one little girl put each color group back in her bag after she was done with that particular one. 

There was also a jar filled with walnuts (I think those are walnuts.  I'm no nut connoisseur).  We guessed how many walnuts were in the jar and put our estimates in a box.  They will count them tomorrow and see who was closest.  I'm really curious to know how many walnuts are in that jar! 

We moved on to another station, at which we were to grab a handful of candy corn and count them.  There was a place on our paper for the number of corn in the "Little dude's" handful, and a place for the "Big dude's" handful.  I thought that this was lots of fun, because I love, love, love the word dude.  I got carried away and called my mother-in-law dude once.  It was an accident, and she was amused.  I think.  At any rate, something very funny happened. 

Christian counted out his handful and wrote the number 36 in the proper space.  I grabbed my handful and started counting the pieces out, and when I got to the last one it was also 36!  We looked at each other and giggled.  It was a moment that I won't forget. 

Hungry cowboys need hearty grub, and the kids had visited the Farmer's Market earlier this week to pick out fresh ingredients for the stew they served tonight.  They also had homemade corn muffins.  And it was all very satisfyin'.  And I ain't lyin'. 

This guy loves some cornbread!

Christian went visiting mid-meal, and showed our amazing candy corn results to a few folks.

The teachers and some of the moms worked very hard to make this such a special evening.  Here is Christian with one of his teachers.

And here he is with his other teacher.

Christian is in a wonderful classroom.  He loves his teachers and tells them frequently how much he loves going to school.

He had one thing to say about the soup...

My funny little cowboy.

I've wrangled up a few photos of the special projects that Christian and his classmates have been putting together.  I love seeing the work he does at school.  His creativity amazes me, and delights me.  And the tribute to his father...precious.