End of Year Boxes

Both kids wrapped up school this past week. On the last day, both of their teachers sent them home with a big box of their stuff from throughout the year. Below were my two favorite things they came back with...

Natalie's Flat Stanley Project Photo. The project was to create your own Flat Stanley character (Flat Natalie) and send your character someplace far away on a trip. Natalie sent Flat Natalie to Anchorage Alaska to her friend Flora. Flora's family was the perfect choice for the project and captured the photo below...With school campus closed indefinitely, we weren't sure what would happen with all the Flat Stanley projects that were out there. Definitely my highlight in Natalie's end of year box was to discover Flat Natalie had made her way safely back to Redondo Beach....btw...Natalie's first comment when she got the picture back was "I should have made Flat Natalie pants and a jacket."

This one was in Maya's box. The Redondo schools do a great job with the WATCH DOGS program (DOGS = Dads of great students)...You spend the whole day on campus, starting with unloading kids out of cars, then you split time between your kid's classrooms, and all the recesses/lunches. The kids love it and it is great perspective for the dads to see their kids in their element. This year all the talk was about Kobe Bryant, but I do remember one girl asking about the Corona Virus... And the highlight is at the end of the day, you take a picture with your kids and it goes on the wall for the rest of the year... This year I volunteered on Feb 26, basically two weeks before campus closed for the year...Our picture never made the wall this year, but looking back at all the things we missed this year, I am extremely grateful I was able to get this one in before the quarantine started...And even more so, I hope the program continues next year as they scope out what the new norms will be when the kids return to school at some point...