Farting Bookshelf

You may have heard of the "belching bog" but have you heard of the farting bookshelf?

I asked the 5th graders to pick out some books they wanted to read, and they all happily began perusing the shelves... and then the giggling started.  Immediately suspicious, I sauntered closer and saw one student dragging the book back and forth across the shelf, and yes, it was making a sound that sounded very much like a fart.  They completely lost it.  And kept moving the book until it stopped making the sound. (Thankfully, it didn't last too much longer).

Other than that incident, our classroom was pretty calm today.  We got a ton of stuff done and actually learned some things today!  Since Wednesday is Joe the tortoise's bath day, I taught the 5th graders how to give him a bath in his ice cream pail.  They all gathered around to watch him go to the bathroom (the signal that he's done). But the lure of the gym was too much for the boys, so they went out to recess with the 3rd and 4th graders.  The girls kept watching.  And they were the lucky ones to dump out his bathwater!

We let him go for a walk at the end of the day.  He almost got stuck under the bookshelves twice.  Man, that tortoise is such a distraction for these kids!  But he'll lose his novelty after a while.

It's amazing the difference between 5th and 6th graders.  I keep comparing these kids to the ones I had last year, and I keep coming back to the idea that they got that way from their previous teacher.  Hopefully this year I can teach these kids to be more independent and to think through their problems (and of course to love reading).