And the winner is . . .

Penguin Girl in the 50-yard Fly! She was so happy to win her heat. This is only the second time she has come in first in a heat. As a prize, she got a coupon for a free bagel with cream cheese which she thoroughly enjoyed.

UPDATE:  Coach K handed out ribbons at practice and Penguin Girl got her first ribbon for coming in 5th overall in the 100-yard Breast! 

Happy Halloween!

After about 3 or 4 years of me saying this costume would be cool and Penguin Girl saying she'd rather fashion her own costume, she finally agreed that it's a pretty awesome idea.

A New Teacher

Penguin Girl has diligently practiced for her piano lessons with Miss R for 4 years and it's time to move on. With the help of Ms. C, Penguin Girl's preschool teacher, we found Mrs. L who teaches at a nearby college. When we met Mrs. L for the first time, she asked Penguin Girl if she said a proper good-bye to her old teacher because that is very important. In response, Penguin Girl began bawling!

Miss R has been a part of our lives since Penguin Girl was 5-years-old. We got to know her when Miss R came to us one summer to give Penguin Girl swim lessons. At the beginning, those lessons were 20 minutes of crying and 10 minutes of splashing around while being held by Miss R, who was infinitely patient. By the end of the summer, Penguin Girl could swim a basic freestyle and backstroke. Penguin Girl graduated from Miss R's swim lessons to learning how to play piano with her. Penguin Girl has done quite a bit of growing up with Miss R and we'll miss her. 

But Mrs. L is fantastic and after just one meeting, Penguin Girl is infused with new enthusiasm about music and is really looking forward to lessons with her new teacher, even though she is sad to leave Miss R. I can tell that Mrs. L is someone that Penguin Girl will be able to grow with for years to come.

She (finally) did it!

Half the summer is over and Penguin Girl has paid off her lost library book. She undertook two mornings of pulling ivy out of the backyard and filled up 3.5 garbage bags to earn the last $7. My deal with her was $2/bag since she's too much of a slacker for me to pay by the hour. She wanted to immediately go to the library, but all branches are closed on Sundays so she had to wait until the next day. She was very relieved to have some books she could take on our roadtrip to New York.

Good-Bye 4th Grade!

Penguin Girl is on her way to 5th grade. Unlike previous years when schoolwork seemed to disappear during the last couple of weeks of school, Ms. C was real old school and had the kids working until the very end. Penguin Girl was up late on Thursday night working on a presentation about how silk fabric is made. She made up a Power Point presentation in Chinese. I don't think I even used Power Point before I got my first teaching gig a few years ago. And I would have no idea how to input Chinese characters onto the slides. Assuming I could figure out how to translate my English thoughts with a Chinese dictionary in the first place.

Doh!

Since Mr. Destructo's school year has ended, I'm taking him on a road trip to visit my dad and we're leaving tomorrow. Mr. Destructo is so excited. When I asked him why, he said he was excited to go to Flushing to partake of an icy drink with rainbow jellies from the bubble tea shop. 

Part of my preparations for a road trip always includes returning all library books that would be due while I  am away since I am in charge of the kids' borrowings. This time, I asked Penguin Girl to provide me with the 3 books that are due tomorrow. She handed over 2 and told me the third is at school. I've talked with her many a time about not taking things like library books to school for various reasons. I told her to go look for it to make sure it's not in the house because I didn't want to wait around for her to get it at school in the morning only to have her tell me she can't find it because it's probably at home.

She disappeared to her room. I called her down for an unrelated issue and when she came downstairs, her eyes were all red and teary. Why? Because she knew that she lost the book at school weeks ago so she would not be able to produce it tomorrow morning! Of course, she did not think to tell me that she lost it. More likely, some other kid stole it. All of which could have been avoided had she kept the book at home as she should have.

As a consequence, she will have to go to the public library and report it missing herself. It will be charged to her library account. Since it's a hardcover, it will certainly cost more than $5. When you have more than $5 outstanding on your account, your borrowing privileges are suspended. She is supposed to think up ways in which she can earn the money to pay off the fine. So far her ideas are to sell some of her stuffed animals and one hardcover book. 

It may be years before she can borrow books from the library again.

OUCH!

And double ouch. I got a call from the school nurse about Penguin Girl on Monday. The school nurse calling is never good news. Penguin Girl got her index finger smashed by a door while leaving a classroom. The nurse said it was quite painful and suggested I pick up Penguin Girl if I could. When I arrived, the bleeding had slowed down. It seemed that she was in good spirits. Her condition must not have been as awful as her finger looked because she was able to recount for me the name of each child that had visited the nurse's office during her stay and almost all of their ailments. She also very gamely told me that she'd still be able to practice piano with her right hand.

The nurse said she thought the fingernail would fall off. Neither Car Guy nor I have any experience with this type of injury so we shall see what happens. Penguin Girl is definitely on the road to recovery. She went to a birthday sleepover last night and participated in a pillow fight. Since she has no problem in using the injured hand for vigorous physical activity, I presented her with a rubber kitchen glove so she could resume her dishwashing duties.

Fireball!

A certain girl was quite pleased with herself today. Her coach told her that right after spring break, she is going to be moved up to the next skill grouping. Good-bye Nova and hello Fireballs. I asked her why she's so happy about it and she said it means she has really improved her swimming. 

The new coach runs a tougher practice. Hopefully Penguin Girl will be able to pay close enough attention to catch the drills she's supposed to do. Last year she had the same coach for her Saturday practices and quite a few times I noticed Penguin Girl would be doing her own thing while all the other kids swam the drill as described by the coach. It was not surprising to me at the time. Hopefully her attention has improved along with her technique.

And the winner is . . .

At the last swim meet of the short course season, Penguin Girl swam 4 races. The first was the 100m freestyle. She started out strong but seemed to lose a lot of steam. She was very upset afterwards because she misjudged a flipturn and ended up too far from the wall to touch. She knew that would mean a DQ and no official time and getting an official time for each of her races was her goal. We had a talk about how she can't let something like that get her down, that she should still focus and swim the best she can.

Next she swam the 50m butterfly and WON HER HEAT!!!!!! Good comeback! Then she swam a 100m backstroke and got really tired out.

Her last race was the 50m breast, the stroke she likes the best. Soon after the start, her goggles filled with water. I couldn't see that. All I saw was that by the time she was about two-thirds of the way down her lane, she started veering to her right and almost went into the next lane. Then she stopped, pulled the goggles off her eyes, almost got all the way turned around while orienting herself, and then continued the race with her eyes closed. Since she did that bit of turning around, she got DQ'd but even with all that drama, she was the second swimmer to finish. Way to maintain focus!

Web Learning

Last summer Penguin Girl used Khan Academy and did a bunch of math. Until she started messing around too much on the internet and then she got banished to Workbook City. Maybe we'll try again this summer and watch some college lectures, too: edX, Coursera, Udacity, and Class2Go.

Music Lessons

While we were in New York for the holidays, I bought a used violin for Penguin Girl from a guy on Craigslist. It's taken a beating over the years but it sounds okay. I cleaned it up, put on new strings and a new bridge. This past weekend I gave her an introduction to the parts, showed her what you do to maintain the bow, and what rosin is for. I cut little strips of painters tape to show where her fingers go. I recall having 3 different colors of neon tape when I started learning. Hers is not so fancy--all 3 strips are just blue.

I told her we're not going to have scheduled lessons. I'll give her a lesson and material to practice. When she feels like she has practiced enough so that her playing somewhat resembles what I demo'd for her, we'll have another lesson. Yesterday, I gave her her fist lesson wherein she actually put bow to strings and played. At the end I asked her if playing violin is more complicated than she envisioned. She responded with some vigorous nodding.