Sean's Special Day

Since Sean's birthday is coming up Sean needed some pictures for his 'Special Day' at school and since I didn't have any pose-y shots of him, I 'had to' take some pictures of him. I took a few shots of him straight on and then a few fun shots. This shot of Sean and his bf David is a really great shot. I love it! For Sean's 'Special Day' I went in to his class and talked about Sean. I sent in this bunch of pictures earlier in the week to be put on the bulletin board. So I mostly talked about the pictures I'm puttiing in the next post (at first I was going to put them here and then I realized that there would be way too much going on here).

Then I read 2 books to the class. The first one was 'Green Eggs and Ham' by Dr. Suess. Then I read a book ('A Brandon and Sean Mystery') that I had written from a story that Brandon and Sean had told me last summer. It was all about a book that was in a different place and how it had got there. The kids LOVED it! Not so much Sean. I think he doesn't know how to act about the book. His classmates thought it was so cool to hear a story about someone they knew. It was a hit!

After the books was the highlight of the visit. I shared some experiments with them! Since that is my kind of thing, I love sharing it with others and seeing their eyes light up in excitement when they see what happens. We did a few different things with baking soda and vinegar. We did your basic volcano in a clear vase so you can see the bubbles going up. Then I did the same reaction in a bottle with a balloon on top. You put the baking soda in the balloon and the vinegar in the bottle. Then you put the balloon on the top of the bottle. Once the balloon is securely on the the bottle you shake the baking soda down into the bottle and watch what happens. The balloon starts to fill with the gas released by the baking soda/vinegar reaction. Naturally, the kids were excited to see if the balloons would get so full that they would burst. While some of them got really big (it depended on the amount of baking soda/vinegar used) none of them exploded. It seemed that when the balloons were really big the pressure had pushed the mouth of the balloon to the edge of the mouth of the bottle so there was no longer a tight seal and gas was escaping at that point. Too bad! Maybe with more baking soda/vinegar, bigger balloons, and a tighter seal we can get a balloon to explode. Maybe I'll try that at home first though!

All in all a very successful 'Special Day' for Sean. Between the 'Brandon and Sean Mystery' and the baking soda and vinegar experiments Sean's classmates thought it was great! I can only hope that his future birthday visits go as well.