Note: Pet Fest tomorrow

Braves Day is tomorrow.  We're breaking out the blue and gold to get into the spirit!  Our school is putting together a pep fest after lunch and each class is going to come up with a cheer.  The kindergarten girls thought Mrs. E said we're having a "Pet Fest" and they wanted to know if everyone was going to bring pets to the Pet Fest.  They were a little disappointed to find out there are no pets involved in a pep fest.

Mrs. E had another exciting moment this morning.  One of my students found a small matchbox car on his desk someone had left there in the night.  He was going to throw it in the garbage, but I stopped him.  "Well what should I do with it?" he wanted to know.  One of the girls piped up, "Oh! Give it to Mrs. E!"  Of course, this 6th grade boy wasn't just going to hand it over.  He walked into her room and asked, "Hey Mrs. E, want a new car?"  She replied, "I would love a new car!"  He handed her the car, "Here you go."  She tried to make a deal with him to get her a new big person car, but he told me that was impossible because they cost "like a million dollars."

Speaking of new things... yesterday I came to school and found a phone in my room!  Actually, it was on my desk and the IT guys had moved my cans of pens/pencils to the way other side of my desk.  I was a bit put out to say the least.  But it is kind of nice to have a phone in my room.  I even have my own extension.  If people call our school, there is now a menu so they can press a button and get sent straight to the person they want to talk to.  Mr. E is frustrated because the IT guys had said nothing about phones to him.  They were supposed to be getting a SMARTboard for the school.  And now the phones are having issues.  Anyway.

In science, we made crystal hearts out of red pipe cleaners, borax, and water.  We had to super-heat the water, so we made the trek to the kitchen and heated it in the microwave.  While we waited for the water to warm up, my 6th graders read aloud their Valentine's circular stories.  Earlier that day, each of them wrote a part of their classmates stories (we traded papers in a big circle) and since it is Valentine's Day, we had specific words that they had to include associated with the holiday.  The words were: love, heart, pink, cupid, Valentine, sweet, candy/chocolate/flowers.  Some of the stories turned out really cute!  But back to the science experiment...

When we got back to the classroom, my students mixed borax into their hot water.  While we stirred, they predicted what would happen to the solutions:  the red fuzz would fall off, it would all freeze into one big cube, or nothing would happen.  One of the boys freaked out a little; he was stirring with his scissors and all of a sudden the water started turning purple (the color of his scissors).  He yelped, "Ahh! My scissors is wrecked!"  It wasn't.  I think he had just cut some things with markers and the marker dye was still on the scissors, or something like that.  We left our hearts on the lab table to see what would happen.  The 7th and 8th graders were all curious when they saw the cups.  They first of all wanted to know if they were going to get to do it.  And then they wanted to know how it worked.  I told them they'd have to wait until Tuesday until the 6th graders found out what happens.

We had a Valentine's party at the end of the day.  Here's a picture of the valentines I made last night to give to my kids.

In return, I got a whole bunch of that Fun-Dip stuff, a Hershey's chocolate apple, a small box of chocolates, and some other assorted candy... PTL donated cookies for the students to decorate, so we did that.  Then we played Pictionary for the rest of the day.  My kids get SO LOUD when they play that game.  Yikes!  We quick ran out to the Bookmobile, ran back inside, and then it was time to head for home.  Whew! And THEN we had a faculty meeting.

Tomorrow is day one of our school's tournament.  So after lunch we're going to shove everything in one corner of my room and hide all the writing utensils.  I was so proud of my 6th graders.  After lunch, two of them got all worked up about the Interesting Word Wall (something I thought they lost interest in... we still do it, but they don't seem too excited about it).  They were worried that people might try to write stupid things on it or draw on it.  I told them we were going to hide all the writing utensils in our room so they couldn't write on it, but the two 6th graders still wanted to take it off the wall and hide it in the closet.  Who would've guessed?  I suppose I should try to find more interesting words for them...