I think my numbers are off... I didn't write a post on Track and Field Day, so technically there are only six days of school left (and we popped balloon #6 today).
Well, I survived sand volleyball last night. Since the court is fairly close to my apartment, I walked. The sun was shining and the wind died down for a while! It was quite a nice walk. No one else wore shoes on the court, so I gave in to peer pressure and took off my socks and shoes. Surprisingly, the sand was not that cold! We lost the first two games of the set (they were close!) and won the last game.
I also made my mac and cheese! Since I'm efficient by nature, I balanced my checkbook while making supper. The battery on my kitchen timer is dead and I was going to keep an eye on the clock. Yeah, I let the noodles boil too long and they didn't taste as good as normal. Oh well.
Today everyone got to school by the 7:45 meeting time. We hustled to End-O-Line and made it there as the new director was just starting to give her spiel. Another school was scheduled for the same time we were; they had about 50 kids. Our guide didn't share all the little tidbits I had picked up during my stint at the park, so I began whispering extra facts that I remembered about the park to my class. The 5th graders were very impressed by the fact I used to work at the park. One of them even said, "I'm going to stand by you so you can tell us the things they forget to tell us."
Let me tell you, it was pretty hard for me to keep my mouth shut and let our tour guide tell us the facts! Our guide didn't have a knack for telling stories; she gave the straight details and left out all the good(in my opinion), juicy details which only made me want to tell the stories more. Having the other school there helped me in that regard (I didn't want to interrupt their tour with all my random facts). Though when I did tell a few stories to my students, the other kids around mine listened.
One downside to being with the bigger group was that they always stood in front of the displays making it hard for my class to see everything. And since we were a bigger group, they skipped taking us into the caboose! Tsk, tsk, tsk. It's one of my favorite parts of the park. The 5th graders were bummed we skipped the grist mill and the courthouse and the church. After our tour was over, our guide asked me if there were any buildings we wanted to look at again. How thoughtful! (She knew I had worked at the park before). The 5th graders were STARVING by that point, so we decided to look around more after we ate lunch. And we did. We spent a lot more time at the park than I had anticipated.
After thoroughly exploring the buildings, we made our way down to Fulda to visit the family farm! I took the back gravel roads to my parents' house and all the 5th graders could talk about was how long the road was. "Are we STILL on this road? Man, how long does it go for, two miles?"
Once we got there, we put on some rubber boots so our shoes wouldn't get messy. Everyone had a pair, although some boots fit better than others. I don't think any of them leaked either! So for the next hour, we wandered around looking at animals. The 5th graders were captivated by the birds. Ducks, geese, chickens... they wanted to pet each and every one. We got to visit the chicks hatched by Mrs. E's room and catch 4-H chickens (they didn't want to leave). They also pet Angel and the two leftover dogs (and reluctantly left the pen). In the hoop barn we corralled a baby calf. The cows got a little riled up by the 5th graders and danced around the pen. There were a few 5th graders who feared for their lives! That didn't stop them from wanting to pet the calves though!
We played a little bit of bale tag (they wanted to play more) and walked past the tractors. The two boys had been griping the whole way down about Case tractors being way worse than John Deere and why did they have to be around the horrible Case? Dad told me he had the red machinery sitting out, just for the two of them. As we walked past our lovely red machinery, I heard one boy say to the other, "I feel for us!" We took a class picture at End-O-Line (with the automatic timer and the camera balanced on twigs I might add) and I wondered aloud if we should take another at the farm. At the time, we were passing a very red quadtrac Case. Dad said we should take it in front of the tractor. What a great idea! The boys refused. But we had to walk right past it to get to the car. I tried to get a picture of the boys walking next to the tractor, so it would look like they were enjoying being around the red, but my camera was too slow. But Ms. J got one! She said the picture looks like the two boys are staring up in awe at the tractor. Ha!
In Fulda we took a detour past the Lutheran school and stopped for gas. The 5th graders took the chance to restock their snack supply inside the gas station. Before we left the farm, I let the 5th graders pick a long peacock feather to bring home with them. Some of them wanted to turn them into feather pens (one did when we got back to school). And many of them were used to annoy people on the way back.
That reminds me about another incident that happened on the way back. Before we even got to Fulda we saw one of the neighbors planting with a Case. One of the boys said, "If I see another Case, I'm gonna scream!" I said, "If you scream, I'm pulling over and you're walking back to school." Well, he saw the neighbor and made a little screaming noise, not very loud, but just enough to qualify as a scream. The car in front of me was slowing down to turn, and I figured, eh, why not. So I pulled over on the side of the road... right next to the neighbor. He looked a little confused, but he waved as we drove away (no one ended up getting kicked out of the car).
When we got back, we cleaned out the car and met in the classroom to pop tomorrow's balloon. Someone looked in Joe's tank and saw there was a spider on his back! At first I thought she was kidding... but lo and behold, there actually was! It skittered all over and tried to go in Joe's shell. When it couldn't hide there, it ran to a corner of the tank. Weird. We don't get that many spiders in our classroom.
Balloon activity for tomorrow: watch a cannon being fired in real life! Our trip tomorrow is to Ft. Ridgely. Last year some of the sessions were a little boring, even for me. I forgot to fill out the evaluation form, so hopefully enough other teachers sent theirs back that tomorrow's sessions will be more interesting!
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