Mad Scientists!

Oof, my brain hurts.


Last night after pottery, I bought supplies for today's chemistry lab and then I did grocery shopping.  By the time I got home and unpacked... let's just say I was up waaay past my bedtime.  This morning, I decided to separate egg whites for our lab at home instead of at school, so I didn't have as much time to get things situated before my kids showed up.  Most of the time our lab is with supplies that are already in groups (one marble, one board, one tube) so not a lot of prep work is needed.  This chemical reactions lab took quite a bit of extensive planning and preparation.  I probably went a little overkill with the prep, but I wanted the lab to go smoothly without making a huge mess all over the floor and without having kids arguing over who gets what.  Thankfully, Mrs. B spent the morning with us, so I could dodge in and out of the classroom to get supplies from the science table in the coatroom. 


Our lab table looked impressive, let me tell you.  I had test tubes lined up in their little holders, little jars to hold the liquids we'd be mixing to test for chemical reactions, spoons/pipettes/test tube brushes to measure and clean the supplies, and then two ice cream pails- one for dumping the mixtures after testing them and the other filled with soapy water so they could wash the test tubes throughout the experiment.  It worked pretty slick.  They had a great time mixing the liquids and checking for bubbles or precipitates.  Their favorite part was at the end of the lab when they could dump all their extra liquid together.  The vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, milk, and egg whites made a big foamy mixture in the dump buckets.  Surprisingly, it didn't smell too bad!  I think the smells cancelled each other out.  And the a good amount of soapy water from test tube cleanings that ended up in those containers certainly helped too.


I pulled out all the stops and had the class wear lab aprons and goggles (though some abandoned the goggles partway through... I maybe should've talked to them about that particular piece of lab etiquette before passing them out).  The aprons were definitely a good idea.  But they somehow didn't know how to fold them back up.  We'll need to go over that next time.


So.  That was the lab.


I introduced the "Tattle Box" today.  Only three tattles were in the box at the end of the day: one good, two bad.  And only two people tried tattling to me during the day.  Overall, our day was okay.  One kid just keeps calling everyone names and being mean in general and when I ask him to stop, he'll either say "I wasn't doing anything!" or he'll say "okay" and turn right back around and do it again.  A classmate said he was going to write it in the Tattle Box, and the kid just shrugged and said "I don't care."  What do you do with someone like that???  None of the teachers have suggestions for me.  Mr. E said if he's being disruptive to send him down to the 8th grade room.  That's what we're going to try tomorrow.  This particular student hates writing.  I know you're not supposed to force kids to write as a punishment, but I have no other ideas. Maybe making him write a bible verse over and over every time he calls someone a mean name will get him to finally quit.  I suppose we'll see!


Staff meeting after school ended relatively quickly.  Our toughest item was picking a G rated movie to watch for our Christmas party.  So far we have one contender: Balto.  All the other ones we could think of were PG. 


Time is ticking!  Only two more weeks until Christmas break!  I'm debating how much I want to cram in before Christmas... maybe I'll take things slow and give my students time to catch-up.  Their desks could certainly use a good cleaning...