Last Friday I took most of the day off school. That was actually the first time I've ever taken a day off school. (Okay, last year I did take two days off for my Ireland trip, but that doesn't count because I wasn't in the country and was too busy to worry about my students. That and they were hanging out in Mr. E's room.) This time, they had a sub. Well, kind of a sub. Ms. J volunteered to substitute for the day. I made the schedule pretty simple so she just had to supervise the 5th graders.
I did go to school on Friday. I went to chapel, did a little read-aloud, then took off for Mankato to watch my sister graduate college. Not surprisingly, I had a hard time leaving. I'm sure Ms. J was thinking, "get out of here already!"
On Saturday, I stopped by school to see what the classroom looked like. Still in good shape. The classroom printer was still on, so it was a good thing I stopped! I checked for progress on the piñatas... I didn't see much difference from when I left. This morning, Ms. J gave me the update: it took almost an hour to do the mile run for the Presidential Physical Fitness, so they didn't have a lot of time to work on the piñatas or the special activity (making cards for next year's students). One of the 5th graders puked during the run, so I'm sure that added some time to the event.
Today we were on the Ecology Bus all morning. We did go out to Swan Lake even though it was windy. There was some torrential rain too, plus thunder and lightning (we stayed on the bus for those parts). Our topic was "soil." We took some soil samples and examined the percentage of sand/silt/clay (very muddy). We did a skit depicting how soil forms (Mr. E and I were bison closely followed by two "dung beetle" students). Other actors included an ice berg, worms, plants, wind, rain... I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but you get the picture. It's too bad it was so wet out! That really put a damper on the day. :)
Since it was so wet and icky, the Ecology Bus staff recommended the bus stay at school for the afternoon insect session with the younger grades. The woods behind school are an excellent place to find insects, even better than Swan Lake. I heard there were tears in the 3rd and 4th grade room when they found out they weren't going to get to ride the bus (they did get to sit on it! even though it didn't go anywhere). Afterwards, the younger grade teachers kept exclaiming how great the program was and how much the kids loved it! So I'm guessing we're going to do it again! Maybe every other year though, unless we can get funding for it every year. This year, the trip was entirely funded by the Nicollet Conservation Club. Which reminds me... we need to write a thank-you note.
Unfortunately, the prairie grass planting area will not be ready in time for us to plant seedlings this school year. I'm super bummed! The area was sprayed with Round-Up and then someone mowed the area a few hours later without checking to see if it should actually be mowed. I think they had to re-spray it. And the grass isn't dead yet; it's slowly turning yellow. The plan is to have planting nights on Thursdays in June. Anyone who wants to help plant can show up and help! Hopefully I'll be able to make it to a few of them.
The 7th and 8th graders have one more lesson of notes to take. This afternoon, I didn't feel much like teaching. The 7th and 8th graders didn't feel much like learning. So I gave them the choice: we could take notes today and have the worksheet due on Wednesday; or we could do something else today, take notes tomorrow and the worksheet is still due on Wednesday. They chose the second option. Today, I handed back their Mystery Class answers/certificates and we watched part of an episode from the TV show "How the States Got Their Shapes". It's pretty interesting. The one we watched was about the Mississippi's role in shaping Illinois. They built a canal to connect the Illinois River to the Great Lakes. This in turn connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, making Illinois a powerhouse for water transportation. Sweet! Only now there are jumping fish that threaten the entire fishing industry in the Great Lakes should they get past the locks in the canal. So tomorrow we'll do our last notes session and the next day we'll finish the episode. Same stuff accomplished, just in a little different order than originally planned. Ah, the joys of teaching!
The 5th graders got a lot accomplished this afternoon! We extended our history time. We're learning about the civil war and there's SO MUCH STUFF TO TALK ABOUT! I love the civil war, so it's pretty hard for me to cut it so short. Thankfully, the 5th graders love it too, so they're not bored out of their minds when we go over the normal history time. Today's special activity was to use beanbags all day, so the 5th graders put those beanbags to use! I found this neat site that digitally animated all the battles of the civil war and has a commentary to go along with it. And just in case you're as nerdy as me, here's the link! We watched the one on the Battle of Antietam (the bloodiest day of the war). Originally, we were only going to watch the first two sections of the video, but when I moved to pause/stop it, they all shouted, "No! Can't we keep watching it? We have to know how it ends!" (Me internally jumping for joy), "Oh all right. I suppose we can..." I'm pretty sure I wasn't able to hide the smile on my face.
That put us at about an hours worth of social studies and not that much time for science. But we made it work (We skipped recess... they were outside all morning! That counts as recess, right?). The 5th graders had been bugging me to show them what was in the strange black case under the lab table for about a week. Finally. Today was the day they found out. We sped through a lesson on wind instruments and then I whipped out Ivy's old trombone and tried playing a few notes on it. I also had my old tuba mouthpiece, so I buzzed a bit on it. Of course they wanted me to use that mouthpiece on the trombone (it didn't fit). They kept asking if I had any other instruments I could show them/play for them. Maybe next year we should take a field trip to Nicollet and see their band room!
The end is in sight! The 5th graders have one more science lesson and two more social studies lessons and two days to do them in. I think I can squeeze them in!
Tomorrow's special activity: break open the piñatas! I bought Jolly Ranchers and Life Savers to put in the piñatas. Only one of them is done though! Poor C. He's been working on his pretty much all by himself since his partner has the tendency to avoid her math corrections (so she has to do them instead of art). Thankfully, the other two 5th graders volunteered to help him. Actually, I volunteered them, though they didn't argue about it.
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