First Day of School Party

Aunt T and I like to kick off a new school year with a little celebrating. Both of us plan to do Oceanography at some point this year, so we came up with a (loose) theme of....Fish.

We had a chance to join a group of kids to take a tour of a Fish Hatchery. Fish. Ocean. It worked. The guide described the process of harvesting eggs, incubating them and then putting them in the "raceways" to grow. There wasn't much room for racing. I was disappointed.

Things picked up when we were given a chance to feed them. You'd have thought that there were piranha rather than trout when we tossed in the food.

(I...can't...resist..."Heil, Fishler!" I'm sorry. Please forgive me.)



There. I can go on now.

After the tour, we went to a favorite summer snack bar to get some lunch. We took our lunch to an ocean-themed playground (what else?). Good. My master plan was falling into place. While the kids and Aunt T ate, I laid out the clues for a treasure hunt. We got a cute treasure chest with fish items at Oriental Trading. J and Miss Girl worked together to follow the clues.

Here, the "Waterfall" clue:

and the "Sea Monster" clue:

Those clues, amongst others, ultimately led to the treasure map:

10 steps forward, 10 steps left, 10 steps left again, and Eureka!

It's now official: J is in Second Grade and Miss Girl is in First Grade. Where does the time go?