Sunflower State

Let's see if you can guess which state joined the Union on January 29th, 1861 (the 34th state)
1. President Eisenhower was born there
2. Amelia Earhart was born there
3. wheat is grown in great quantities
4. they have prairie dogs
5. meadowlark is the state bird
6. Bat Mastersen and Wyatt Earp got famous keeping law and order there
7. "Home on the Range"
8. "Get out of Dodge"
9. Topeka is the capital
10. there is a slightly famous movie about called "The Wizard of Oz"
11. one of it's cities, due to geographic location, is known as the belly button of the continental US

Today was one of those days where everything went well and I got a lot of residents out of their rooms.

One thing we did was make new table decorations. I was thoroughly excited about this and the results were better than I expected. For February I wanted something to do with Valentines day so we used a mix of red jar marbles, confetti, and paper folds to put into our table jars. Then we folded paper into cones and punched out hearts to tape on top. As always the residents made versions as unique as themselves and we are better for it. To sit the cones I had the inspiration (one night as I was trying to get to bed but unable to turn off my "activities" brain) to spear the small styrofoam balls we have with the flower picks so that the cones would sit at the right height.

Afterwards I encouraged the residents to rest while I cleaned up and then set up for tea. Once everyone had their cups I asked willing residents to write letters to children. This is my latest idea for a program to keep us in touch with the youth: we write letters telling them about our traditions of holidays and they write back to do the same. Many of the residents wrote that they didn't think of Valentines Day as a real holiday and didn't practice giving out candy or going on expensive dates. They are interested to hear how different it is for the second graders we write to. If this goes well we'll do it for St. Patricks and Easter.