Discovery Night

Rhett has been working hard on his project for Discovery Night. They had 3 weeks to make an animal of their choosing. He chose to make a paper-mache crocodile. We started it at the beginning of the month. And even though we tease my Dad about his hoarding, he had a ton of toilet paper rolls (he just happened to be saving) that he willingly donated to help make Rhett's crocodile.
J and Rhett got started right away by taping the rolls together to the form of a crocodile...head, arms, legs, tail, and even the claws. It looked awesome, and I'm mad at myself for not taking pictures at each stage. Then we found a super easy and very cheap recipe for the "glue". 1 part of flour to 5 parts of water, mix together, and boil on the stove for 3 minutes. It turned out so well, who knew. They did this process of newspaper and glue 3 times, letting it dry after each layer. When it was finally ready, they did the last layer with regular white paper. When it dried, Rhett painted it brown. Then we had some green river rocks we used for eyes, pipe cleaner we cut up for the claws, cut up white foamies for the teeth, and hot glue spots for the scales. It looked amazing, and he was so proud of himself.
After making the animal, he had to do the next part of his project, which was research of his animal. I helped Rhett get on the Internet and we found a good article from Wikipedia which had a lot of good info. He read the article, wrote down the facts he wanted for his report, and turned it into his teacher the next day.
Well tonight was Discovery Night, and they had all the kid's animals on display. He was so excited to show off his hard work. He just kept saying, "I really hope I win a blue ribbon. I worked so hard." My mom even came out to support him. He was beaming.


When we got to his school, we went to his classroom and sure enough all the animals had blue ribbons. Luckily his school gives them out to everyone but Rhett just noticed that his had one. He was ecstatic.




Then we went to the cafeteria for free dinner...sloppy joes, chips, cookies, and a soda. It was a pretty good dinner. Then we stopped by another classroom where they gave every kid a free book. Then we headed to the book fair where every book was 50% off, what a steal. So K, Ry, and Rhett picked out a book to buy.


We ended up staying much later than we had planned, but it was such a fun night. We are just so proud of Rhett and all he had accomplished. And more the fact that he was proud of himself and willing to show off his work. Also thanks to my Mom for coming out to support him. It means the world!