Stuck in the Middle

I always like Wednesdays.  It's a good feeling knowing the week is half over and there aren't as many lessons to plan. 


We had a much better day today, attitude-wise.  Math corrections were handed in, memory work was said, the 2nd graders finished their math packet.  They earned their twenty tallies of completely correct workbook pages which means another class reward.  Originally, I planned to let them watch a Wishbone episode, but then I saw their next packet is about symmetry.  There's an awesome Cyberchase episode about symmetry, so we're going to watch that instead.  The 5th graders will probably be a little disappointed.  I made a deal with them: if they get their memory work said tomorrow morning, they'll be able to watch the video with the 2nd graders.  If/when they succeed, they'll have a pretty easy day tomorrow.  We're watching National Treasure as the 5th grade reward for answering enough Challenges of the Week. 


In science today, we discussed symbiosis (two animals living/working together) and mutualism (both benefit), commensalism (one benefits, one is not affected), and parasitism (one benefits, one is harmed).  At the end of the lesson, we looked at animal camouflage and created mini-creatures to hide in our classroom.  Next Wednesday, I'll hide them around the room and the 5th graders will act as predators to see if they can spot all their prey.  It was fun seeing how creative my students could be.  And it was also a chance for them to show me how messy they could be.  We had an overturned glue bottle I noticed a little too late and it seemed like there was more paint on fingers than on their creatures.  Oh well.  They cleaned up their area for the most part and while they went to PE with Mr. E I was able to clean up the rest (Ms. J helped). 


Now it's almost time to head over to church for the Lenten supper/service.  K-8 are singing during the service.  I intended to get a lot accomplished after school today... and then I saw an email from BetterWorldBooks.com for a 40% off flash-sale!  Woo!  Book sale!  So I perused their selection and bought some more books for our classroom library.