Four Square

My kids were off the wall today!  Behavior-wise they were good... they just had trouble concentrating and using their "inside voices".


The main drama today came from finding rides to the soccer game after school in Faribault.  No volleyball, just soccer, so the driving pool was very limited.  Many phone calls later, everyone was squared away.


I taught my kids how to play four-square.  Only one had ever played before.  The worst part was drawing all the squares on the parking lot!  I wanted everyone to play the whole time, so I made three squares.  And then came the problem of which balls to use... There is a surprising lack of kickballs at ILS.  The one we use for kickball is really hard and doesn't bounce well; the other ones we have are foam.  But... God was watching out for us!  Some rubbery kickballs had been ordered and they arrived just in time for us to use them!  Just for fun, we did a quick mini-game of kickball before heading in, just long enough for everyone to kick the new ball.




This morning in English, we finished the calendar page activity we did a few days ago.  The girl who was sick yesterday was glad we didn't do it without her.  They worked in pairs to match up the writing they did earlier with the calendar pages I had taped on the board.  Most of them were pretty good!  Very vivid descriptions.  Of course, there were some that were pretty basic and simply listed everything they saw.  Overall, only a few got mixed around.


A hairy visitor dropped by today.  We were in the middle of Daily 5 rounds when one of the 6th grade girls screamed.  The boys close to her quickly gathered round and then began winding their way around the room as if they were following something.  And they were; a pretty big wolf spider.  Someone suggested squishing it.  Instead, I grabbed a cup and paper and trapped it, releasing it outside our classroom.  The cup was clear, so once it was contained, the class gathered round to look at the enormous spider up close.  It was pretty cool.  Though now that I think about it, maybe we should've kept him around to eat all the flies that have been getting into our classroom...


The bookmobile brought me a lovely gift: "The Blood of Olympus"!  For those of you who don't do Percy Jackson, this book is the last in the series "The Heroes of Olympus" (the second series involving Percy Jackson, written by Rick Riordan).  Too bad tonight is my correcting papers night! 


I got an email this morning from the volleyball people in Northrup.  One team dropped out of the tournament on Saturday, so now we play at 8:30 instead of 9:30.  None of the girls were happy about having to get up an hour earlier.  I hope the parents don't get too upset at the late notice.


My shopping trip to Walmart last night wasn't as successful as I'd hoped.  They had arrows. They had cheap arrows. Just not the kind I need for my bow.  Pottery was good too.  I was surprised how many people were there.  This class is definitely going to be a lot louder than the last one I took!  Four ladies who work together signed up for the class and they're a chatty bunch.  Then there's the grandmotherly lady and her daughter? daughter-in-law? friend?, and a college senior (or high school senior, it's hard to tell), a lady who was in my class last year (we sat by each other), a friend of the teacher, and a guy who's been doing wheel pottery for 45 years.  He showed a lot of the ladies how to throw clay.  I thought about going over, but there are some hand-building things I want to do first.


Well, that's enough for now!  It's about time I headed home to see how my kids did on their spelling this week.