Picture Day!

Today was picture day.  You would think that a little thing like getting your picture taken wouldn't disrupt your entire day, but trust me.  It does.  Don't get me wrong, it was nice to see all the students gussied up for school.  Girls wore skirts instead of sweatpants, and a handful of the 8th grade boys wore polo shirts to school! 

BUT.  There was no specific time for each class to go.  It was kind of, "we'll come knock on your door when it's your turn."  This, of course, completely threw some students off.  I guessed our turn would come at 9:30am.  9:30 on the dot, one girl raises her hand in the middle of a lesson, "Miss Heintz, you said we were going to have pictures at 9:30."  The rest of the class reminded her that I had only guessed what time pictures were, and they'd come knock on our door when it was time. 

Two minutes later.  "Miss Heintz, shouldn't we go for pictures?  I thought we were going at 9:30."
The same thing happened five minutes later. 

Finally it was our turn!  We lined up in alphabetical order and filed into the gym.  Our photographer was a super nice guy, really funny.  He even let us look at our pictures before he called the next person forward.  I was called a few times to help arrange the girls' hair.  He made a joke that I'd have to go on the road with him to fix all the girls' hair so he wouldn't have to do it.  I don't think my 6th graders got the joke. 

After their turn was over, my 6th graders didn't really know what to do with themselves.  I gave them a choice, "You can go back to the classroom and read a book, or you can sit on the bleachers until we're done."  I was pleasantly surprised how many wanted to go back to the room and work.  Since I am the teacher, I had my picture taken last.  When I walked in the room, I was overjoyed to see everyone sitting quietly working on reading.  The small group of students I had been working with was waiting patiently for me to sit in my seat and continue where we left off.

That was pretty much the only calm part of the day.  It was pretty foggy, so we stayed in the gym for recess.  That riled them up even more.  We had a review day in MN history, and the boys started yelling out answers.  It was very toasty in our room, so I propped our outside classroom door open.  Unfortunately, that let in a ton of flies.  I spent about ten minutes at the end of the day swatting flies.  And they are still buzzing around my head!  I'm sure the boys will have a blast catching flies tomorrow morning.  Their teacher last year taught them how to be "fly whisperers."  This explains why they always try to sneak up on the flies instead of just swatting them. 

The 7th and 8th graders had a review day too.  They also had a sub for the day so Mr. E could observe classrooms.  Wow, they were super amped up.  My 6th graders came back a little early from math, and they ended up sitting in the hallway/back of the classroom doing their math while I finished up with the 7th and 8th graders.  After they left, one of the 6th graders commented, "wow, they sure are loud."  That is a bit of an understatement.

We did line puzzles in art.  The idea came from an old art book my mom found at a garage sale (thanks Mom!).  It actually has tons of good ideas.  This one involves drawing lines on a piece of paper, cutting out pieces on the lines, and gluing them down with a little space in between.  For some reason, the 6th graders were having so much trouble figuring out what to do.  I did this same thing with the 1st and 2nd graders yesterday, and they had just as much difficulties.  We're going to do this project another day, so we'll see what happens then.