Packing Food

Jesus Food was a success!  We packed 19,000 meals for malnourished people around the world with the kids from Good Shepherd and Gaylord.  My group had a little trouble sticking with their jobs; they all wanted to switch to something else.  And as soon as they'd switch, they'd switch again!  It was hard to get a rhythm down.  We also had a lot of kindergartners and 1st graders and not a lot of big kids, so we needed lots of stools for them to stand on to dump the ingredients into the bag. 


On the way there, I sat with one of the 3rd grade girls.  We made baby footprints on the window and then played tic-tac-toe in the frost.  It was really loud, but I felt surprisingly calm.  I suppose because I didn't have to plan anything or stress about what my students are doing to each other.  They all pretty much know how to behave on a bus. 


We got back to school with enough time to do our spelling tests and enough left over to start Mystery Class.  They seem to understand how to record the photoperiod data.  We even made guesses on the latitudes of our mystery class locations.  MC #4 has no sunrise or sunset time because the sun is already up and doesn't set!  24 hours of sunlight!


The pep fest ended up very loud, but the kids (and parents) had a good time.  Mrs. E's scooter game was hilarious.  Kids were screaming for their chosen team... the boys won.  Then I did group charades: boys vs. girls.  I had them act out a rodeo, a school classroom, and a nursing home.  The boys won that one too, 2 to 1. 


Their first game at the Lakefield tournament is at 4:00 which means I need to leave here in about five minutes to get there in time. I just have to fix Joe up for the weekend and I should be good to go!

Night Owls

Mrs. B (1st and 2nd) is also working late tonight.  It's kind of nice to have another teacher at school with me.  There's just something about knowing someone else is here too...


All my little to-do list things are completed (although I just added another two or three to the list, but those can wait until tomorrow) and this blog is the last thing to do before home!


We almost finished The Fourth Stall Part II today.  We are at the climax and no one wants to stop reading.  One of the 6th graders is going on vacation next week, so he really wanted to finish it today, but there's just too much left of the book.  That and I read the last sentence of the book and it's REALLY a cliffhanger.  I can see their faces now: a moment of silence as the sentence sinks in, wide eyes, jaws dropped, then a giant uproar, "NOOOO! They can't end the book there!  Miss H, you have to start the next one!!!"  But I don't have the next one yet, and the Bookmobile has to order it from another library, so it seems we should take our time with the last few chapters.  I ordered it with my last Christmas gift card for Barnes and Noble, but with the snowstorm out east, they said their orders are backed up.  So we'll still have to wait until mid-next week. 


One of the 5th graders got a huge goose egg on his head from a hockey stick.  I saw the stick whack him, and it was an accident (apparently the two boys were fighting over a hockey stick and it accidentally flipped up and hit him on the head), but it sure left a mark!  He got an icepack and put his hat on to hold it in place.


My friend Mary from college came to speak to the 8th grade geography about her time at the orphanage in India.  I haven't heard any of her stories, so I was just as interested as the 8th graders.  She also brought some candy for us to try.  They look like Nerds with a crunchy candy coating on the outside, but inside is a little tiny herb/leaf thing that looks a little like a chunk of grass.  The 8th graders put some in their mouths and chewed.  "Hey... this tastes like... tacos?"  No one believed it until they tried it for themselves, but it really did taste like tacos.  Only a bit less taco-y.  Mary thought it was either a caraway seed or something like anise.  Pretty cool.  But now I feel the travel bug raring its head to bite me again... India?  Maybe Mary will want to go again and will need a travel partner...


Tomorrow we have a field trip to Mankato to package food for overseas.  All the permission forms are in.  Work groups are made.  Pep fest is planned.  Spelling test plan is good to go.  I think we're going to end up with a half hour more teaching time than I was expecting, so I might introduce Mystery Class to the 5th and 6th graders.  Yay for Mystery Class!  But there will be more on that later... for now, I'm headed for home!

Wear and Tear

Uff, lots of emotional wear and tear today.  My triumvirate of trouble-makers were in full force today.  Mr. E spent good chunk of the afternoon in the office with students... and there was a line outside the door.  (Thankfully, not all were from my class.)  The problem with these kids, at least the ones in my room, is that you can lecture them and talk with them until you're blue in the face.  Then the minute you turn away, they're right back at it again, doing the same things you just chewed them out for.


I think, for one kid at least, it's overtiredness.  The past three days have ended with him lying on the floor in a limp puddle wailing and moaning (actual tears) and nothing can stop him.  His classmates talking to him only makes it worse... and some of them do it on purpose.  So he's been chilling in the coatroom before we pray, trying to get his emotions under control. 


But, let's move on to some good news.  A bunch of students have already brought in their science fair topics!  And they're not due until tomorrow.  Plus a bunch said their memory work this morning.  My Read-to-Someone students read stories out of their reading books, and not just any stories, nonfiction stories about Machu Picchu and the Titanic.  And the books I ordered from the Book Order came today... The Three Ninja Pigs, Dragons Love Tacos, The Boy Who Cried Ninja, and Not Your Typical Dragon, all picture books.


The bell songs we got this week are coming together.  The bass playing boys really like to whale on those bells... they overpower my treble girls!  We're trying to figure out which of the songs we should repeat (both are short hymns).  Half want to repeat the one, and half want to repeat the other.  I'm still on the fence.


To finally end the saga of my vehicle, yes, I picked up my car last night.  It's working fine now.  Maybe running a little sluggish accelerating, but that could be because the parts aren't settled in yet... maybe? Is that a thing? 


So, what was wrong with it in the first place?  One of the speed sensors in the front wasn't working so they had to replace the wheel bearing... pretty much that meant when I drove my car I thought I was driving the speed limit, but I was going way over (Mr. D asked me about that the day after we dropped my car off... he said he could barely keep up with me on the road... I wondered why he was driving so slow!)  So it was definitely good I got it fixed.

Throwback Tuesday: Civil War

Arn Kind, the Civil War reenactor at MLHS, was AMAZING!  He was funny and told such good stories... even my squirreliest students were riveted.  Did you know the Civil War was the bloodiest war in American history?  More American lives were lost in this war than in all the other wars America has fought combined (620,000).  And a good portion of those deaths was from illness, not battle.


He taught us about the lives of soldiers, their love of music, why they'd want to sign up in the first place, and what kinds of uniforms they wore.  Arn has participated as a reenactor for the past three years.  He can play the harmonica, bugle, and drum.  I kept thinking of my brother Ethan as Arn presented... this stuff is right up his alley. 


Driving Mr. D's car was fine.  I was a little nervous about it, especially since he said, "Oh, you're going to MLHS, not MVL?" He thought our field trip was at a school 15 minutes away, not the actual 50 minutes away.  Then that made me nervous and I felt bad that I was forcing him into volunteering...  Anyway.  Over and done with.  We made it in once piece, no problems.  Okay, I take it back.  This morning we were short one seat.  The guy who said he could take 8 people could actually only fit 7.  If I'd been driving my normal car, it wouldn't have been a problem.  We ended up squishing and made it right on time for the program.


On the ride back, I heard the boys whispering behind me as I was driving.  "No you ask her... no, you ask her! Okay, best out of three... Hey Miss H, how old were you when you found out Santa wasn't real?"  Pretty soon it was "How old were you when your parents told you the Easter Bunny wasn't real?"  They were a little disappointed I never believed in them at all (or that my parents didn't teach us they were real).


Well, I have to close for today.  Mrs. B is giving me a ride to Mankato to pick up my car and she has to pick up her daughter from daycare beforehand.  So, off we go!

Dropping Eggs

We examined our science experiment today.  Our control was still, well, normal, as expected.  The 75% water container had the thickest barrier and a little crescent of shell on one end (the end that had been sticking up from the solution).  The other three were completely squishy and had no shell, just that membrane layer on the inside of eggs.  I dug them out of the beakers so the class could feel them.  And then it slipped through my fingers, bounced on the table, and bounced to the floor... splat.  All over.  Good thing there's tiling under the lab table!


Then they wanted to see if the other eggs would bounce.  We tried the middle egg sample.  That one bounced really well on the table.  "Can we try dropping it on the floor?"  Their eager faces beamed up at me... oh why not.  So I dropped it from about three feet up in the air.  It didn't survive.  One of the 5th graders cleaned it up without me asking him to. 


Our first day of editing NaNo stories went well.  I let them read part of the novel I wrote a while ago, The Adventures of Random Man and La Roca Loca.  They like it and had some constructive criticism for me.  We went over how to write good, constructive criticism and then they wrote their thoughts on a copy of the first page of my novel.  I'm interested to see what they wrote!  Now I need to assign them editing partners.  I want to match them up by skill-level/length of stories.  Some kids wrote a lot and others didn't write much. 


This afternoon I'm taking my car in to get checked out.  The ABS light went on this weekend and the 4x4 high light keeps flashing.  It could be as simple as the sensor or it could be as bad as the wheel bearing being loose.  And it takes longer than an hour to test all this stuff, so in order for me to take it to the mechanic I want to (in Mankato), I have to drop it off the night before.  But what car will I drive?  Well, if I were 25, I could get a loaner/rental car.  But that's still three months away.  So I'm kind of stuck.  Thankfully, Mr. D offered to give me a ride home from Mankato this afternoon and a ride to school tomorrow and is going to loan me his car for the field trip tomorrow.  So now I'll just need a ride back to the shop once my car is fixed.

Dress Revolution

I don't usually post on a Sunday, but enough interesting things happened at church that I felt I should share.


This morning I got to church and heard the news that one of my bell playing students was sick and wouldn't be in church.  Okay, find a way for us to cover his bells.  I asked a few of our former students, siblings of my students, (now in high school) if they'd be willing to take over.  One girl definitely didn't want to do it, but another one stepped in and said she would.  Whew! Crisis averted. 


Not so fast.  It turns out one of the 8th graders wasn't in church because he went to hang out with some hockey buddies.  Great.  Two minutes before the service and I have to find someone else to play his bells.  Thankfully there was another older sister who was willing to play. 


We sang our two songs at the beginning of the service with the bells to play right after.  One 8th grader forgot that he had to play bells, so he sat down by his parents after singing.  His mom was playing the piano for the service and she gave him a look like "Aren't you forgetting something?"  So he got up and walked all the way around the back of the church to get to his bells.  I suppose he didn't want to walk in front of everybody by himself.  I don't know what it was this morning... the replacement players played fine, but the girls who play the melody notes just couldn't get their act together.  Not our best performance. 


I don't know what to do to get all my players to church to play!  I hate trying to find replacements.  Should we just not play bells if someone isn't there?  Play without their bells?  Try to switch the music around?  I know it throws the rest of the players off.  Sigh.  And now I need to pick out two new songs to play for next month.  It wouldn't be so bad if someone else picked the music and I just had to direct bells.  Anyway. Enough on that subject.


Pastor had to leave for a meeting after church, so he asked me to turn on the tv/video we are watching as our Bible study.  For whatever reason, I could not get the remotes to work!  I did eventually get it started though (by pressing buttons on the actual tv/dvd player). 


After Bible study, one of the older ladies commented on another lady's skirt she had worn to church.  The skirt-wearing lady said, "I haven't worn dresses to church in so long... I used to, but then no one else did, so I stopped wearing them.  And now that Emily is here and wears skirts all the time, I thought I should start again!"  So now I have a dress-wearing buddy for church.  I could wear nice pants, but I wear those every day for school, so it just doesn't feel like dressing up to wear them to church.  That and Mom would always make my sisters and I wear skirts to church, no matter the weather.  Now I guess it's been ingrained in my brain to dress nicely for church.  So, thanks Mom for putting up with all our whining! :)

Dripping Faucet

No, everything in my apartment and my classroom are fine... it's my nose that won't stop dripping.  My sore throat from earlier in the week decided to vacation to my nose and now I've been sneezing and blowing my nose non-stop.  I've been pumping the Vitamin C and oranges and tea, so hopefully it won't stick around too much longer.


This afternoon's classroom games went well.  It was nice to just have fun and watch the kids playing with each other.  My 7-Up game was a hit!  The little kids couldn't stop giggling when their heads were on their desks.  One of the 8th grade girls would make the Jaws "dun, dunt, dun, dunt, dun, dunt..." while she snuck around choosing which thumb to press.  Other students tried to be really sneaky about it and use their pinkie or their whole hand to mimic a younger/older kid.  And the kindergartners didn't really know what was going on.  Some pushed as many thumbs as they could reach and others stood and watch when they were supposed to be "it."  It was really cool to see the 8th graders step in and help them out/cheer them on. 


Our vinegar eggs are starting to look disgusting.  Lots of foam and calcium deposits are on the tops of the eggs now.  A few of them rotated in the containers.  I hope they keep changing! 


The most recent MN history project was for my students to be land speculators and design a town.  Then they had to create a brochure/poster convincing people to come visit their town.  One boy wrote in his brochure, "Come to Barn Town! We have the best meat in the country. Land is $14 per ten acres.  Railroads will come through.  We have the best teacher in the Northern Hemisphere! She is Miss Heintz! The town also has a carrot farm."  How sweet!


It's funny, on Fridays, when I don't have to stay at school planning for the next day, I still have trouble leaving.  I think part of it is that school is so peacefully quiet, I feel so comfortable I don't want to leave.  Not to mention I can get caught up on non-lesson-ish things I let slide during the week.  But, my to-do list has finally dwindled enough that I am ready to head for home.


Plans for the weekend: I was going to hang out with a college friend tomorrow, but she called today to see what the plan was and we found out that both of us had been planning to read books all night.  So she invited me over tonight to read books together.  :)  Sunday morning our school is singing in church and playing handbells.  Aside from that, my plan is to relax and see if I can get my cold to move on!

Eggs and Vinegar

We finally got our science experiment set up.  It didn't take long to finish writing the procedure for our experiment... Five containers filled with varying percentages of water/vinegar.  One beaker has 100% vinegar and our control has 100% water.  The middle three have 75/25, 50/50, and 25/75.  We'll leave the eggs in the liquids for 5 days (so we don't have to worry about them over the weekend).


I tried to find a job for each student to do for setup... it's hard to find something for 13 people to do!  Some got cool jobs like measuring the amount of water/vinegar or taking the "before" pictures of the eggs next to a ruler (just in case the size changes).  Others got sort of lame jobs like holding the eggs in place for the photographer or dumping out the liquids after the experiment is over.  Five students got to be the "egg droppers" and drop the egg into the beaker of liquid.


Right away they noticed that the ones with more vinegar had more bubbles gathering on the eggs... the one with water didn't have any bubbles on the egg.  Chemical reaction anyone?  I told them they need to keep daily observations in a journal to practice for when they do their own science project. 


The 1st and 2nd grade teacher has been having a rough couple of days.  She forgot about our NLSW meeting after school yesterday, her class has been acting up/not listening (mine too, for that matter), and this morning she slept through her alarm and woke up ten minutes before she was supposed to leave for work.  To top it off (not that she knows about this yet), the 8th graders and most of the boys in my class are mad at her for taking too long to go to lunch.  There's usually a huge gap between when the kindergartners are finished getting their lunch and when the 1st-2nd graders go.  The upper grades are all worked up about it because it's pushing our lunch times back as well which pushes back recess time too... basically, the 1st and 2nd graders are sucking away our noon recess time.  And they want me to talk to her about it.  There were a couple times this week I just about said something, but she's got so much else not-so-good things, I think adding one more complaint/not-so-good thing on her plate will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.  I tell you, for not having school on Monday, this week has been a really long week. 


But tomorrow is finally Friday!  The student council decided we should have an all-school activity tomorrow afternoon, so now I don't have to plan art.  Each teacher is going to lead a game in her classroom and the kids are going to rotate.  My game is "thumbs up, 7-up".  The 8th graders are going to take their spelling test, look at microscope slides, and set up for bells at church since we play on Sunday.  I found out after school today that one student will not be here.  Great.  I wish she would've told me sooner.  Now we only have one day to get someone else to pick up her part of the song.  Thankfully she only plays one bell and the boy next to her only plays one bell too.  Hopefully he can pick it up without too much trouble.  Ugh.  Stress.


More basketball games after school today, cheerleading as well.  The cheerleaders were just not that peppy tonight.  It was like pulling teeth!  Well, the one girl was super into cheering.  I had another cheerer who hurt her ankle at recess, but she still cheered pretty loud.  One girl refused to cheer and got sad and started crying (probably because I wouldn't let her stand so close to the gym doors) and went to go sit with her parents.  Another girl was tired and hungry and pouted because she didn't get to pick all the cheers we did.  But she still stuck with it.  And everyone (again) commented how cute they are.  So I suppose it went all right. 


The B squad girls lost by a lot, the B squad boys won by a lot.  The A girls lost in a close game, and the A boys are playing right now.  I think I'm going to go home before the game is over... it's my night for correcting, and I'm getting really hungry!  Normally, I keep a sleeve of crackers in my desk for snack, but I ran out earlier this week and haven't replenished (5th grade spelling word!) my supply.  All I have is chocolate... an awful predicament, I know, but seriously, sometimes chocolate just doesn't have the substance a cracker does.

Teacher Perks

This morning I braided my hair in a side braid (like my sister Ivy frequently wears).  One of my 6th graders walked in and said, "Miss H! I almost didn't recognize you! For a second I thought you were your sister Ivy and she was substituting today!"  Either way, I'd still be Miss Heintz.


Last night I read all but two of my students' NaNo stories.  Just in case you don't remember, they spent all of November each writing a story at least 2,000 words (a lot wrote more than that for our class's grand total of 54,693 words).  It takes quite a long time to read all those words! 


One not-so-publicized teacher "perk", shall we say, is that students frequently put teachers in their writing.  I made appearances in at least three of their stories.  My favorite of these cameos is where my friend Melvin from high school moves to Courtland and is my next door neighbor and we get together all the time to go up to Swanies for pizza or we grill out... and pretty soon he gets the job as a para for my class so we carpool to work and church... and then he comes with me to the library and joins my pottery class... and he doesn't have anywhere to go for Thanksgiving, so he asks if he can come home with me and spend time with my family and my sisters (they're listed by name)... and the last month of school he makes treats for the whole class every day.  And then in the summer it turns out he gets his old job back at the Ford dealership in New Ulm so he's not coming back to school to be the para next year, but he gets a discount on car fixes, so he buys parts for my car really cheap... As you can tell, it's quite the story.


I have one and a half stories to read, but they're the longest ones, so it will take a while to get through them.  Their assignment today was to read through their stories and read my comments... not make any marks on them! Just read it.  Tomorrow we're going to outline our stories on the plot rollercoaster worksheet to see where our stories could use some plot work. 


I'm leaving school at 5:30 tonight!  Pretty close to my New Year's resolution. 

Tuesday Kind of Day

Another average January at school in Minnesota... except it rained last night and a little throughout the day.  Apparently it's now snowing outside, so I'll have to be careful of the roads as I'm driving home.


Today was the first day of the third quarter.  Wow, has time flown!  New seating charts, new science partners, new BINGO sheets.  The seating charts went over okay.  Only two students complained.  I'm hoping they can work their differences out because there's no where else to put them that's less "controversial" (meaning, no other people they can sit by without making a fuss).  I passed out BINGO prizes to my kids for last quarter's Bingo sheet.  Instead of making them do book reports each quarter, they have to read different genre of books to get bingos.  Everyone has to get at least one bingo (books I read aloud to the class count too) per quarter.  Any extras equal prizes.  I had three students get Blackouts this round!  Lots of prizes were passed out, mostly candy.  A few of them picked from my selection of books.  Puzzles were another popular prize along with Slinkys. 


The 1st and 2nd graders took forever to go to lunch today.  Mr. D's class went down at their normal time (thinking the 1/2nd graders just forgot to knock on their door), so my class went down at our normal time and there were still 1st and 2nd graders in the line getting their food!  My class was so loud we went back to our classroom and hung out until the line went down more.  Of course, that meant we didn't get out to recess until 12:05 when we're supposed to be out by 11:55 or 12:00, which in turn made my boys really crabby.  But Mr. E and I decided to give them a little extra recess... apparently not enough since they were still grumbly about coming in when I ended recess.  When my class found out about the extra recess, one 5th grade boy said to me, "That's my girl!" 


IEP meeting and two basketball games after school.  We played Mt. Olive, a tough team to beat, and we didn't pull off any wins.  But man, the boys' game was amazing!  They were darting in and out, bouncing off the players and floor.  Yikes!  I wish I had moves like that.  Not many of our baskets went in though, and their players are way taller than ours.  Oh well, such is life.


I had thought about doing my library/grocery run tonight, but what with this not-so-good weather, I think I'll postpone until tomorrow or Thursday.

Optimist In Trouble

Today was one of those days that made me want to pull my hair out. 


I didn't have *quite* enough time to add pictures to all the slides in my powerpoint for the 8th graders before my students arrived for the day.  One of the 6th graders came early and kept talking to me so I was even less productive.  Then the whole class chitchatted loudly while I was trying to listen to kids say their memory work.  And even though I reminded them to study, they're not listening to my advice and I know tomorrow morning is not going to be fun. 


One of the 6th grade girls has a boyfriend (I'm not allowing her to talk about it in school).  But everyone knows who it is anyway... she wants to do everything with him.  She'll pick the same Daily 5 round just so she can sit next to him.  Unfortunately, her brother is her "boyfriend's" best friend and the brother thinks he gets to work with the boyfriend... but the girl steals him away.  This makes brother mad... and make farting noises/talk thereby distracting the rest of the class.  Instead of letting it go, one of them shouts "QUIET!" at the top of his lungs (not really helping the whole quiet issue) and when brother doesn't stop, rage builds up until eventually it will explode.  So.  Instead of putting pictures in the powerpoint like I wanted to, I worked with brother so the rest of the class could stay sane.  Mrs. B was here this morning, but she corrected spelling for me and wasn't available to work with students.


I did finally get the pictures added... but not as many as I wanted to.  But just that feeling of not quite being prepared made me super crabby and not very happy and cheerful. 


Lunchtime, the girlfriend would only eat the same things as her boyfriend.  The class wanted to see how much she was changing for him, so they interviewed her about what foods she likes to eat.  All of a sudden (after finding out her bf doesn't like pb and j sandwiches) she doesn't like them either.  All through lunch.  And her brother occupied himself with making snide comments about her and how she was just doing it to impress her boyfriend and it really made me want to pull my hair out! 


After school, the cheerleaders came to my room to hang out before the basketball game.  To say they were wound up would be an understatement.  They occupied themselves building Joe a fort and playing with him.  I did get a little accomplished before the game.  But there's one student who owes me a project from before Christmas.  He kept forgetting to bring it in and when he finally did, he hadn't changed anything on it!  I had mentioned the assignment to his mom before Christmas, but she got sick over break and forgot about it.  So I sent it back home for him to work on.  And he did nothing.  "Oh, I forgot! It's sitting on my counter!" were his most-used excuses.  I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt and tried to let him handle it on his own and face the consequences on his own.  And now the quarter ends tomorrow, and he needs to turn something in. 


Mr. E said all work needs to be turned in to play basketball... so this kid had to sit in the office and work on his project.  He really needed someone to sit next to him and walk him through it, but I had the cheerleaders to take care of! So I couldn't do it!  And no one else was available!  When I told his mom, she was pretty ticked off... more about him not playing basketball than anything else.  But he did get to dress and sit on the bench with the rest of the team, so there's that.  I didn't have the heart to tell his mom that he hasn't said any memory work this week.  I'm hoping studying memory work and spelling is already on the agenda for tonight... if not, Mrs. B is coming in early tomorrow to help kids study memory, so I think we'll be okay with that.


Positives: The B squad boys won the game! It was neck and neck!  Down to the last second.  The cheerleaders were super peppy and loud and everyone exclaimed over how cute they all are.  Tomorrow is Friday.  It's a long weekend.  We have some cool field trips coming up.  Not that many spelling packets to correct tonight.  A lot of my holds came in at the library.  Okay, I'm feeling a little better about life.  Now, time to go home and do my weekly trip to New Ulm.

More Time

Well, my brief respite of not-so-much to do after Christmas is officially over.  I have all sorts of things on my to do list now.  Lining up entertainment for Chapel during NLSW, putting together service projects for NLSW, lining up chaperones for the Civil War reenactment, lining up chaperones/getting everyone registered for the Young Writers and Artist's Conference at Bethany in March.  Just found out about that last one today and decided to run with it.  Students get to pick three sessions they want to go to with topics focusing on art, writing, and acting.  I read through the brochure and kept thinking, "oh that one looks good and that one looks good and that one looks good..." so there will be plenty for my students to pick from.  Normal cost per student to go is $25 but the lady in charge said she'd give me a group rate of $15 per person.  And then PTL said they'd pay $10 of those dollars.  So we're in business! 


NLSW did get moved to March, so we have plenty of time to plan things.  One of the service project ideas I had was for them to make tie blankets, but where to get the money?  I brought it up at PTL and they voted to give us $250 for Project Linus blankets.  Yay!  And we might be able to get Thrivent to match funds or do the Action Team funding thing.  Lots of blankets are in our future...

pH

Mrs. B brought in a big box of books to donate to our class.  I haven't gotten a chance to look through them yet... but it looks like there are some good ones in there!


She has been so helpful in our class, words can't describe how useful she is.  Our science lab today was testing different liquids students brought from home to see if they are acids or bases.  She brought a bunch of liquids from home for students who forgot theirs.  And she helped groups follow along with the lab, answering questions if they had them.  When the lab was over, she helped students clean up their areas, and even volunteered to bring the ice cream pail "dump buckets" and other cups home to wash!  How lovely not to worry about getting everything clean at school.


Today was a little better behavior-wise.  Some rough patches here and there, but we overcame them... maybe not by leaps and bounds, sometimes more along the lines of tripping and stumbling, but we did it.  And everyone made it home safely. 


Faculty meeting was pretty long.  We pounded out a lot of details about upcoming events.  It was brought up to maybe move the NLSW celebrations to March.  We'd have more time to plan, basketball would be over, and it would be nicer weather.  PTL meeting is tomorrow night, so we'll see what the parents think.  We'll still do activities during the real NLSW at the end of January... the 5-8th grades will go to a Civil War re-enactor at MLHS that week.  Then on Friday, Good Shepherd Lutheran School invited our school to do "Jesus Food" which is pretty much the same thing as the Kids Against Hunger and Food for the Poor packing events.  Pizza will follow.  Back at our school, we'll do a pep fest for the Lakefield basketball tournament and most families will probably leave school early so they can get checked into Cutties before the game.


And now it's time to head for home again... 5:30.  Not too far off the mark.

Monday Monday

Lots of bickering today.


I wanted to start a new chapter in MN history today.  Last week, we finished the lesson, but I didn't give them an assignment/test/project thing to wrap it up.  Today my plan was to give them the assignment (maybe 5 minutes) and then move on to the new lesson... We ended up taking the whole time to go over the assignment and start it.  It's a pretty cool assignment... much better than just doing a test.  My students are each creating a town complete with natural resources, buildings, and jobs for people to do.  They also need to create a brochure convincing people to come to their town (and give lots of reasons).  So it's like a test/art project combination.  They seem pretty excited about it.  Well, a few of the lazier ones think it's going to be a lot of work.  Probably.  But more interesting than a test, in my mind.


The A squads have home games tonight.  I wanted to watch both, but I got sucked in by my lessons.  And then I went out to watch as soon as the girls were finished (they won), so I went back in to do more planning.  I thought I'd have just enough time to clear up my Barnes and Noble order... I should've just found a phone number.  Instead, I tried the video chat which took forever.  And then it turns out I have to call a completely different department.  A few of last year's cheerleaders (who are now in basketball and didn't want to be in cheerleading too) asked if they could cheer at the game and do the school song during halftime.  They borrowed my cheer cheat sheet and cheered!  The crowd loved the school song at halftime, so they did another cheer... and another... and another.  By then the teams were done with their powwows.  It was close.  Literally down to the last second.  But our Braves pulled out a win!

Wrapping up the week

Snow day yesterday (or should I say, Blizzard Day?) and two hour late start this morning. 


It sure seems that these two hour delay days last forever!  My kids were at each other's throats all day.  Plus they hadn't practiced their memory work at home very much and almost all of them still needed to say it.  Ugh, it had me wanting to pull my hair out.  To top it off, this week's memory was the 1st article and meaning... super long.  One kid still didn't say his.  Once he found out he wasn't going to get recess until his memory work was said, he shut down and decided he couldn't do it.  And then when I told him he needed to keep studying, he grabbed a basketball and started shooting around saying he was "putting the ball away".  This was after I had called everyone in from recess to go to math.  The rest of the afternoon, he sat there making faces at the rest of the class, not even pretending to study. 


A 6th grader "forgot" to bring her handwriting home on Wednesday.  She said it "fell out of her book bag" or it "fell out of her arms" and she didn't pick it up.  So she had all four days of handwriting to do and not a whole lot of time to do it.  Then she got mad when I made her work in the classroom while everyone else got to go to recess.  And she still didn't get it finished... of course, she spent most of art time watching what everyone else was doing instead of working on her handwriting. 


We started a project using single point perspective... making floating 3D shapes.  Some of them got it right away, but the vast majority was confused and then didn't understand what I was trying to explain to them.  I ended up going around to each person to individually help them figure it out.  I think most are straightened out now.  Next week we're going to do a similar project where they create 3D names using the same method.  So we'll see how that goes.


On a positive note, a lot of my kids brought in liquids to test in our pH lab.  We're pushing it off until Tuesday just in case they forget on Monday.  And my car started this morning and after school today (we took down decorations from our Christmas program after school at church).  I was fairly productive on my day off yesterday and I have a big pile of books to read from the library.

Two Hours

My two hour late start went way too fast...


I had been planning to come in early and get lesson planning done (ha, I know, I was being optimistic), but then I decided to drive into New Ulm to pick up my car.  And by the time I got to school, I had just enough time to get my normal morning routine tasks accomplished.


Mrs. B graciously took down our advent tree... lots of little pieces needing to be individually wrapped... yes, I was very thankful she volunteered for the job.


My students were abuzz today about the rumor we're getting a blizzard tomorrow.  They wanted to know if school would be called off early today... I was pretty skeptical about the blizzard thing tomorrow, but I guess we're supposed to get a little more snow and the wind is supposed to pick up.  And Joe buried himself after school, so chances are that forecast is correct. 


With that lovely outlook on the weather I had to stay late at school to make sure all my Friday plans are mapped out (just in case I can't get to school Thursday).  We're supposed to do a 5th and 6th grade science lab, but I'm not sure if we'll be in school long enough for them to do it!  I'll get it ready in the morning anyway. 


Mr. D had car trouble after school.  His check-engine light and low engine coolant light both went on, and his car wouldn't go over 10mph.  So I went home to get my anti-freeze to top off his coolant levels, and it seemed to work better after that.  He took it in to the shop and the guys there said it might have something to do with the throttle.  They want him to bring it back tomorrow after school. 


My car was a little sluggish to start when I went to get my anti-freeze.  Even though they replaced the starter, I had to turn the key twice to get my car to turn on.  Maybe it's just the cold weather??? I sure hope it starts tomorrow morning!  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Crusin' in Style

... if it were the early 90s.  I ended up getting a loaner vehicle last night from the Ford dealership, a 96 explorer, greenish with a bright purple stripe down the side.  The windshield wipers only work if you have them on the highest setting and will freeze wherever they are if you turn them any lower.  You have to time it just right to get them to shut off in the normal spot. 


Pastor and his wife helped me jumpstart my car.  We put it in neutral and pushed it out of my garage... it's scary how easy it was to move!  I didn't realize my garage has a slight slope, so we actually had to pull back on it to get it to stop.  Connected the cords... tried to turn it on... nothing.  Tried again... nothing.  After about fifteen minutes of trying, we finally packed it up and I resigned myself to calling a tow truck to haul it in.  And low and behold, when I turned the key to shift it into neutral (to back it up more), my vehicle turned on!  God is good.


I got to the dealership just in time for them to test the charge on the battery.  And it was weak but still good.  So they kept my vehicle for observation last night.  This morning they called to say the car started just fine this morning (of course), so it's probably the starter that's going bad.  They could order a part if I let them know by 10:30... so I called Dad to see what his thoughts were... and he called them to talk over what else it could be... and then Dad called me to tell me what they said... and I called them back to tell them to go ahead and put the starter in.  My fear is that it's not the starter and I'll have put the new one in for nothing.  But Ford said they'd work with me if that happens, so I guess we'll cross that bridge if we get to it.  They said it might be done yet this afternoon, but I haven't gotten a call yet, so I'm not too optimistic. 


Our class reward (watching a movie) took place this morning.  I didn't want to watch Meet the Robinsons, so I came up with a plan... "We can either watch Meet the Robinsons, or we can watch a super secret movie that I picked out... and I'm not going to tell you the title or what it's about.  The only thing I can tell you is that I've never met someone who doesn't like this movie."  So we voted.  I said if anyone peeked, we wouldn't watch the movie today.  And wouldn't you know it! One of the little boogers opened his eyes to see what his classmates were voting!  I was so shocked I said his name and then everyone was dead silent waiting to see if I had been serious or not.  Great.  Do I prove that I am true to my word? Or am I lenient and say we can watch the movie anyway.  The poor kid started crying (mostly because his classmates were glaring daggers at him).  I felt bad.  So I made a deal if they raised their hands and paid super close attention to religion this morning, then we could still watch the movie.  And they did, and we did.  They ended up voting for the super secret movie (Fivel Goes West).  And they liked it.  We didn't pop any popcorn, but they still had a good time.


At noon recess, one of the 5th graders came running up to me, "Miss H! Guess what we found under the bleachers!"  He held out an orange whiteboard marker with a flourish, "A whiteboard marker!"  We're running low on markers, so it's understandable how excited he was... "It can replace that brown one you threw away this morning!"  And he ran right into our classroom to test it out.  He was very glad to tell me it works great!  And he was even more excited when I used it during MN history today.  Sigh.  Once again, God is good.


After school, Mr. E got a text message from the Nicollet principal... school's two hours late tomorrow.  New Ulm hasn't said anything, so as of right now, I report for duty at the normal time.  Not sure why they called it so soon... it's not too breezy right now; I can see all the way to the highway.  Maybe for the cold?  I don't know. 

Don't Rock the Boat

It seems like every time I have everything "figured out" or all the stressful things in my life have finally calmed down, God throws something else at me.  Sigh.  It's a good reminder that I can't do everything... and that God's always got my back. 


This morning my car wouldn't start.  I didn't have time to jump it (plus it's parked in my garage... with no outlets, so I can't even charge it.)  Mr. D graciously gave me a ride to school.  I called the auto shop in New Ulm and they think the battery is bad.  So my pastor is going to give me a ride home and help jumpstart the car.  If I get it to New Ulm before 5, they can put a new battery in today.  So that's my goal. 


I think I just heard them pull up outside, so I'll keep this short for today.