Yellow Bears

Two of my 5th grade boys spent recess puttsing around in the prairie garden.  They found a bunch of fuzzy caterpillars that looked like wooly bears, but without any black.  Hmm... I told the boys about the old wives' tale of the harshness of winter being predicted by the amount of black on a wooly bear.  They were excited, "So maybe we won't have that bad a winter!"  But then one of them noticed the caterpillar had little white hairs sticking out past the orange fuzz.  Wooly bears don't have those.  So we looked it up once we were back inside from recess.  It turns out, they are a different specie of caterpillar commonly called yellow bears.  Cool! 


One of my students stayed home today because he has a bad cough.  His mom thought it would be too disruptive during school (and I actually agree with that).  It took a little bit of juggling to get all his assignments ready for his mom to take home.  At 11:00, she showed up to pick up her preschooler and brought all his homework back!  "He wanted to watch a movie." was her explanation.  Hey, as long as the work is done correctly!


Bells went a little better today.  The 8th graders are annoyed with me that I'm making them use the actual books with tape over the staff lines.  Sigh.  And they are just raring to go while the 6th graders are feeling left behind... I wanted to work on some of the tricky measures with the bass lines and then later on with the treble clef players.  One particular girl just didn't understand why I wasn't having them all play.  Then they were complaining that the song was too hard.  And they were making fun of the way I was counting the measures... I finally told them that I'm not Mrs. M and it's going to take a while to get used to the new arrangement... so we all need to be patient with each other.  I don't know if it did much good.  Part of the problem is that we don't have enough room in our classroom to have both tables up with enough space for everyone to fit.  Maybe bells would go more smoothly if we had more room.  Food for thought.


Mr. D seemed in a better mood today.  He explained once again why he didn't go out to the garden.  Then I asked him why he didn't send one of his students out to check.  Silence.  "Oh.  Yeah, that would've been a good idea. Wow I'm dumb!"  Later he emailed me and said that must be proof of how little he trusts his class, that he wouldn't even send someone on an errand outside.


Volleyball practice went well today.  We practiced blocking and tipping and the younger girls improved their aim in bumping.  Then we scrimmaged and practiced serving.  I think we'll do okay at our game tomorrow.  Lori isn't going to be there since her oldest daughter has a high school volleyball game, so I'll be coaching solo.  We checked with the girls and there is only one that doesn't have a ride.  I hope she gets one figured out before tomorrow!