9 and 8

Track and Field was on Friday... out of all my 13 students, only three received participation ribbons.  Everyone else placed in at least one event (if not more).  They did great!  Then I went to Fulda for Mother's Day.  I got to see the new Avengers movie, watch my cow have her baby (it's a boy!), sort cows and tag 4H calves, and hang out with some high school friends I haven't seen in a long time.


My big project (school project that is) for the weekend was to upload my students' NaNo stories on Createspace, an online publishing company that allows you to self-publish your own books.  Since each of them met their word goals, they got a code from the NaNoWriMo people for a free published copy of their book from this site.  I haven't told the 5th graders about this... Shh! It's a surprise!  The 6th graders know from last year, but I told them to keep it hush-hush.  The thing that took the longest time was creating a cover for each book... finding just the right picture in just the right size... whew!  One of them had a problem I had to fix, so I couldn't order the last ones until this morning.  The site says it should be delivered on May 21st, our last day of school.  It will be cutting it close!  Hopefully they make it before all the kids go home! 


Our first of three field trips is tomorrow: Caswell Softball Day.  Word is that it's going to be 58 degrees and cloudy.  Yuck.  Hopefully it's warmer than they say it will be.  I told my class a little about the animals they get to see on Wednesday when they visit the farm.  They were most excited about the baby kitties and the bales for playing bale tag (they're envisioning lots of bales lined up... hopefully they won't be disappointed... I told them we'd have to explore to find the best places to play).  A few of them are hoping one of the cows has a baby while we're there.  That would be cool!  They were a little disappointed we're missing seeing the pigs by a day (they're getting hauled to market the day before we visit).  I told them we could still peek in the building and smell them.  For some reason they weren't too excited about that.


Other exciting news: a new family with a 4th grader and a 5th grader is going to tour our school this week and next week to see if they want to send their kids here next year!  Yay! Potentially two new girls to be in my class!  The family is coming to talk to us teachers on Wednesday and they're bringing their kids to see my classroom in action next Monday at 12:30.


Balloon activity for tomorrow: Recess all day!
And balloon activity for Wednesday: Pet a baby calf!