The Wrap-In and the Christmas Convo

Last Friday, a week ago, our entire school participated in our fourth annual Wrap-In.  It's a community service initiative that brings together the whole school and it ultimately benefits several local charities:  Redlands Christian Migrant Association, the Head Start Programs at Jackson Springs and Town and Country Commons and Dover Elementary School.  

What is nice about the project is that all the divisions get to mix it up and be together, an upper advisory group with a lower classroom, middle advisory with upper and so on.  This year, like our other years, we were lucky and got paired with one of the pre-k classes and a middle division class.  

Richie and Kelland sit with Coach after writing letters for their gift bags.

Coach's job was to go around and let all the kids pet him and to behave calmly and sit.  He did very well.  When he started to pull on his leash about 9 am, I figured something odd was up and took him outside.  Yep, that was a classic Coach poo signal.  Yea Coach!  Pooping in the pre-k classroom, while not unheard of, would have been a bad thing!

I met one of the most delightful pre-k little girls.  She is sitting on the chair next to me.
She had red sparkly glasses like mine and was a real spitfire.

Mostly our older kids helped the younger kids write and decorate letters to the put in the gift bags for the kids to receive on Christmas. It is a nice community-building experience for us.

Here's what a 1,000 plus filled Christmas gift bags look like! Very colorful. (Photo by Chris Woods BPS)

And in the end, our kids our very generous and we donated over 1,000 presents.

Coach is lying on the wooden gym floor thankful there is no more piping going on .

Later in the afternoon we went to the Christmas all school convo.  That was almost a screaming disaster.  Evidently, the new piping instructor has tuned the bagpipes or the pipers are now playing them differently, because for the first time ever, Coach nearly lost his shinola in the gym!  We were about 10 seconds from bolting from the convo: I had gathered up all my stuff was about to get up, Coach had sat up and was shaking his head and seemed poised to let out an ear piercing howl, when the pipers stopped playing.  

Sweet silent night.  

Coach went back to sleep and all was well.  Happy Holidays!!

Jam's First Week

What a week it has been! On Monday, Jam rode with me to school to his first day of a school filled with students. It was quite exciting.



As you can see from the photo above, Jam has taken his full water bowl and flipped it over preferring that it be a chew toy. Of course, now, it looks like he had a giant pee on the floor! Great! This is what the morning crazies are about. Jam doing crazy things and me trying to get him calm to start the day.

Because our convocation was at 8 am and he usually has an 8:30 poo, I needed to make sure he had done his business and was extra tired out. The morning crazies can last from 7:30 to 9 am. So we did several sets of stairs and series of left-lefts and right-rights and hallways so that his little brain would be exhausted by the time we hit the auditorium.

Then we started our walk to convo. It was pretty cool the looks that Jam got. What was even more impressive was the way that the middle division students remembered all the rules. As I was walking down the hall, there was a great big group of them and they all caught sight of him at the same time.

"It's the new puppy!"

"You can't look at him!"

"Don't say his name."

"Turn around!"

So they all straighten their posture and turn around. They were so cute. We passed on by and entered the auditorium.



I thought that Jam did an exceptional job of dealing with the crowds, the clapping and the pipe and drum corps band. Both Bingo and Berkeley had some reaction to convo. Bingo would surge forward at clapping and Berkeley would get bored and bark to be taken back to my office. Jam was very calm and quiet.



But by the end of the day he was so tired that he couldn't hold his eyes open. He was comatose!



Later on in the week we did a small photo shot with some middle division faculty for his presentation to middle. Of course, I was a complete dunce and when I went to go up on stage because I started calling him Berkeley:

"Berkeley, forward. Pause. Good boy. Berkeley, sit. Long pause. Good boy. Berkeley forward up."

The kids were aghast! I had no clue I was even doing it and was wondering why he wasn't following directions well. BECAUSE I WASN'T SAYING HIS NAME! The Middle Division Director told when I came up to the microphone. Horrors!

Sigh. In front of 350 people I did this.

Then on Friday, he attended his first class with me. He was awesome! I was running the computer and lecturing when I noticed there was a little current of Ahhhhhs spreading through the room. I looked up at the teacher.

"Jam's watching the screen."

Sure enough, Jam was focused on the screen watching my explanation on how to set up an iGoogle page. He was fascinated by the mouse movement. When the mouse finally got low enough he leaped up and tried to grab it.

The kids loved him!



Here he is at my last class of the day. Calm and quiet.



Christina looked at him from behind and said he had some "junk in the trunk" and perhaps he needed to move up to the big boy coat.

He is a little big in the booty, but the big boy coat is still a couple inches out on his tail, so it's the puppy coat for a few more weeks. Although he is in the middle of a growth spurt, so who knows.

All in all it was a successful week.

Holiday Happenings at School

Today we had a couple of holiday things that were planned. First off we had what was called a wrap-in. That is where all three divisions come together in small groups and bring gifts for different charities and we all decorate gift bags for them. Our upper division advisory group was paired with a pre-k class, which turned out to be a Godsend because they were soooooo cute. They just oozed the holiday spirit!

So we showed up with donut holes, OJ, presents, gift bags, upper division students and Bingo. They had all the decorating supplies and oodles of enthusiasm. And very small chairs to sit in. Here he is with his biggest teacher fan (although the World Languages Department would have a fit and contest that statement, wouldn't you ladies?! 8-) as we are trying to get him to sit still for a photo. I took Bingo's coat off for him to visit with every table, but since he is a moose, he kind of intimidated some of the kids even though he was pretty good and sat to be petted and wasn't too mouthy (he's a licker, but even that can be intimidating to a small child). He did have some fans. A couple of the boys had some dogs and were comfortable around big dogs his size (he's 58.3 pounds now!). One boy was very excited to get to pet him and later said that Bingo was his friend.

Bingo seems to have gotten the concept of coat and no coat, even though we were told they don't understand that until 6 months. he may not fully understand it (I'm hedging my bet here!) but he does seem to be cognizant that while in coat, he won't be petted and while out of coat, he will get attention. It makes a difference in his demeanor.

Although, in the next photo, he was still a bad boy and was going for the tissue paper (he LOVES to tear apart paper!), but I stopped him before he got a mouthful. There was one funny incident that happened when we were walking the little kids to drop off the gifts. One of my advisees asked the little boy she was with to hold her hand and he said no. She asked him why and he said, "I haven't washed my hands and your supposed to wash your hands after you pick your nose."

After the wrap-in we went to classes and ended the day with the holiday convo. It's a fun convo, with lots of singing and load music and general revelry. A good exposure opportunity for Bingo. We got there a bit late and had to force our way through a crowd of juniors. Fortunately, they will do anything for Bingo. I just look helpless and point at him and say, "I need to get over there" and then I push him in that direction. They part like the Red Sea. It's so nice.

I sat on the first bleacher and Bingo was on the floor. We had several lovely, long haired girls in front of us (this will be important later). It was pretty clear from the start that of all the all school convos, this one was going to be Bingo's most challenging. The girls were very sweet because Bingo would lie down and stick his nose in between them as you can see from the photo at right.

The girl on the right has her hair in a bun. Unfortunately, there was some singing and clapping, which made Bingo sit up, and her bun was at eye level and she turned her head quickly. She has lots of really pretty hair and it makes a lovely bun that is slightly kong shaped, if you get my meaning, maybe on a DNA level, a little bit reminscent of wild things, because it is more of a freeform bun, loose and a bit low. Yes, Bingo hit that bun like a greyhound wants to hit the rabbit at the racetrack, only more gently. Slightly. Fortunately, I'm on very good terms with her and she likes Bingo quite a bit. It was a quick bite and release. A loud NO! The two other girls quickly pulled their long hair in front so that Bingo couldn't get to it. 8-)

The video below was taken by my friend the religion teacher who doesn't realize you can't put video in that direction. But I'm still putting it up because you can see how Bingo is still a bit interested in her bun, but mainly for his complete disinterest in the pipe and drum corps and the fact that he ends up sleeping through it.

Bingo and the Bagpipers

We had our first pep rally on Friday and I was a little worried about Bingo's reaction to the Pipe and Drum Corps. I had been told by a former student who plays with a pipe and drum band at his college in Canada that the pipes drive dogs wild. So I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The music the cheerleaders danced to didn't create any reaction, nor did the cheering itself.

In fact, he mostly chilled out and looked like this:

His fan club was in attendance, two the world language teachers, one of the English teachers and a religion teacher all stayed with us to watch the pep rally.

Bingo really excelled today. He showed no reaction to 1400 screaming, cheering children. He showed no reaction to cheerleading booty/dance music. He showed no reaction to a very loud pipe and drum corps, which included an electric guitar solo and a loud drumming segment. All in all, I would say he did a damn fine job.