Piñatas and Water Fun

In preparation for CC this week, Josiah drew some pictures for his friends.  Two classmates received Mario-themed drawings of Bowser and Toad.  Another wanted a picture of herself from the Gala.  He asked if there were more requests, and he's been busy with portraits ever since.  

At CC, Josiah's classmates spent part of their day reading each other their short stories.  His director had printed a spiral bound booklet so everyone had copies of all the stories.  Josiah also collected the signatures of all his classmates in case they got to be famous some day.  They took a brief break for lunch, and afterwards had their blue book exams Escape Room style.  Josiah was in a group of three and they seemed to work together well and escaped first.  He is officially done with Challenge B and moves on to high school (gulp) in the fall!  

While Josiah was busy in class, Henry, Caroline, and I were setting up for our end of year party.  Caroline helped fill the piñatas.  I helped with the filling of 1210 water balloons.  

Before the fun was to be had, we came together as a community to hand out certificates of achievement and took a lot of class pictures.  Caroline was not shy during her picture with her Essentials tutor.  Here, hold this over my head.  

Henry received his certificates for Foundations, Essentials, and Memory Master.  He also graduates from Foundations/Essentials, so we have a tradition on our campus to make timeline cards for the kids.  In CC, we sing (parts of) the timeline song each week.  The song is 12 minutes long on the CD as it tries to jam pack all the major events from the history of the world.  These kids have been learning this song since they were four years old, so they know it well.  To commemorate the event, we make the graduates their own timeline card with a description of their life thus far on the back.  Henry moves up to Challenge A next year.  

From there we gathered outside to destroy the piñata.  Henry was tasked with getting the rope around a tree limb.  The first tree proved to be too difficult because he could never get a clear shot of the limb, so we moved on to choice number two.  He succeeded much faster with this one.  He was also not about to let go of the rope and so became the piñata teaser/rope puller for everyone.  He had a tendency to pull it pretty high for the kids he knew best.  That included his sister.  Despite everyone's best efforts, despite going through all the kids and all the adults, the pinata had not broken.  Everyone had hit the belly area thinking the candy was in it.  Meanwhile, the candy was safely tucked away in the head.  To finish it off, they let the son of the piñata maker have a go at it and he decimated the head.  The intensity of his blows were so hard that the candy was quite decimated as well!

At some point the Challenge kids came out to try their hand at the Elmo piñata.  And because Josiah is the saver that he is, we now have remnants of the Elmo piñata in our garage.  I'm going to use it for something...

After the candy was horded, we had a big potluck lunch.  Caroline had her favorite hot dogs that make their way to each of these events.  Then came the water fun.  They tried a water balloon toss to start.  After a few minutes, they switched gears and just let the kids go at it.  The battle, though brief, was on.  1200 water balloons lasted about 8 minutes.  Then came the fun part of picking up 1200 shattered water balloon parts.  This took slightly longer than 8 minutes.  Henry was not keen to get wet during this time, so he watched the battle perched up high.  He stayed there until his friends decided to start throwing balloons in his direction at which time he ran for the safety of the church.

To keep the fun going, there were water guns and a big bouncy house water slide.  Henry finally changed into his water clothes so he could have fun, too.  Somehow I have no photographic evidence of it.  

By the time everything was all over and cleaned up, we were a tired bunch.  But not tired of water games, because the following day, the kids asked to play with water in the backyard.  Benson joined in the fun as well.  

Josiah earned another stripe on his belt.  He has also officially grown out of his gi and moved up to adult sizes. Kid sizes were fun because the pants had an elastic waist.  The adult gi pants have fat cord belts.  

Caroline finished out her week at her Awana award ceremony.  She earned her Book 2 Excellence Award and afterwards enjoyed the cookies and lemonade with a friend.  She is definitely sad for the end of all her activities.  She really enjoys her CC and Awana friends.  Many play dates must be made to make it through the summer.  

And so a new week begins.  CC is done, but school is not.  The kids are thrilled.