Zookeeper Jane

Monday afternoon I had the exciting privilege of going to the 3rd Grade Zoo.  In years past, they've done a 3rd Grade Sale for the big project of the year, but this year they decided to switch tactics.  {Apparently, the Sale was ending up costing too much real money to create the items that were being bought with fake, 3rd Grade Money.  Thankfully, our experience was never too bad -- Grace literally painted rocks and wrote words on them and Sophie melted used crayons into star molds to create "crazy crayons" -- and I don't think we spent much of anything on supplies.}

 Each of the "Zookeepers" were set up at their desks with a display board and all their information.

 They sculpted their animals out of clay...

 Decorated their boards...

 And created a power point presentation showcasing all their knowledge.

To take its place, the 3rd graders have been working most of the year on an animal research project  that they presented this week in class.  Jane was super excited to learn all about bottlenose dolphins, and even more excited that I was able to come to check out the zoo.

The "button" to start the presentation.

What she was NOT excited about was the fact that due to having Baby Godzilla with me, I did NOT stay the full hour that the Zoo was in session.  Isaac doesn't exactly like staying still or in one spot, so once he started to get dangerously close to ruining other people's projects, I decided we should probably keep the destruction at bay and go.  We'd already been there for 30 minutes, but Jane was heartbroken when we left and it hadn't mended by the time she came home from school a couple of hours later.  As soon as she walked through the door, she started crying, saying that I didn't stay the whole time and "no one" came to her presentation -- only 5 people, she said, and everyone else had a bunch more.  I thought she'd calm down after awhile, but I think she was extra tired and emotional, because she continued to melt down about it for another couple of hours after she was home.

 Did he stay in his Paw Patrol jammies all day long? Yes, yes he did.

She was so sad, that I decided to let her do her presentation for our Family Home Evening lesson that night.  Of course, none of the other kids got the memo that this was a tragic experience for Jane and I was trying to help her get over it, so there was lots of whining and complaining once she was up there and asking WHY Jane was doing her presentation because no one cared.  So that was fun.  After seeing her cry some more and yelling at them to cut it out, I finally got through to them,  and they shut up enough for her to go through all of her dolphin facts.

And that was our night!  Poor little Zookeeper Jane.  Next time I guess I'll just have to ditch the Dumplin' so that I can stay the whole entire time...