Ground Cherries

I guess today was all about plants, or the afternoon at least.  After school a parent asked if I would eat ground cherries... Never heard of them, said I.  A guy from church keeps giving her family bags and bags of them since he knows their family likes them.  She's already made jam and pies and still has some to go!  She'd brought a whole bag along (hoping to get rid of them at school), so she gave me one to try.  Not too bad.  Kind of like an extra sweet tomato?  Anyway, I ended up with a bag of them, so maybe I'll bake a pie or something this weekend.  Or search Pinterest for recipes! So far, Pinterest has never let me down!


We only had two more Native American powerpoints to go, and one boy was quite far from having his done, so to fill the time between their presentation and PE we talked about tropisms in plants.  Geotropism= roots grow down, leaves grow up. Phototropism= plants grow toward light. Hydrotropism= plants grow toward water.  Thigmatropism= some plants respond to touch. They all intrigued my students, but thigmatropism most of all.  In this category we have the venus flytraps and sensitive plants (mimosa pudica).  I showed a video of the latter and right away they wanted to know if we could get one.  So while they were at PE I called around to some local garden centers and discovered that yes, they do carry sensitive plant seeds and can get venus flytraps in for relatively cheap.  I guess that means we're getting some.  It's kind of the wrong time to grow the sensitive plants because they like weather over 70 degrees.  Our classroom is usually at 68 in the winter, 65 over night, and 60 on weekends.  But maybe it's warmer in/near Joe's tank.  Hmm. He might become nursemaid to some plants!


We ended up cancelling volleyball practice today.  Four girls are at volleyball camp at Nicollet and one of the bigger girls injured her foot yesterday at soccer.  Plus neither Lori nor I wanted to do practice.  So my afternoon opened up a bit!  In a while Mrs. E and I are going to Mankato for supper and then an arm knitting class.  I've always wanted to try arm knitting (I saw it on pinterest... and my sister Eileen made me an arm-knitted scarf for Christmas one year), so when Mrs. E asked if anyone wanted to do it with her, I volunteered!

Fort Ridgely

Oh my brain is so mushy.  It's been a crazy day. I'm ready to go home.


Our first field trip of the year to Fort Ridgely went swimmingly... beautiful weather, good kids, mostly interesting speakers... The kids were disappointed the gift shop wasn't open (in past years it's been open, but it was always crazy having kids buying souvenirs).  They had the Fort Ridgely school day moved to the fall this year since it was cancelled last spring due to bad weather.  With the schedule change, they had 500 kids show up (they anticipated 300).  So the set up was a little different.  19 speakers were stationed around the fort and school groups started at one and worked their way around the circle.  We only got to see about 10 speakers: wetlands, Governor Ramsey, how forts were built, horseshoeing, steam-powered vehicles, Abraham Lincoln, spinning wool (rabbit wool to be exact), watershed (how water erodes land), the diorama/museum in the fort, and a video on the Dakota Uprising. 


Horseshoeing is always a favorite.  They had big gray percherons to shoe while we were there, but he didn't actually get a shoe on the horse.  Something was back in the woods making the horse nervous and he wouldn't stand still for the farrier to do it.  The owner said he'd never seen them like that before. 


Abraham Lincoln was way better than previous years.  Instead of reciting a speech he'd made, the reenactor told us the story of Lincoln's assassination, complete with gun/blanks and a fake theater booth.  It was pretty neat.  The spinner was also cool.  She has 32 rabbits that she cards wool from to make yarn.  She had a spinning wheel and while we watched she pulled hair off the rabbit in her lap, twisted it, and spun it into yarn.  It was pretty sweet.  My kids were like, "She's a rabbit lady... like a cat lady without the cats!"


They did shoot off the cannon... three times! I wish we would've gotten to go to the cannon station where they'd tell us all the details of firing and the soldiers, etc.  It's too bad we can't pick which speakers to go to, but if we did, I suppose all the good ones would be full and the not-so-good-ones wouldn't have anyone. 


Back at school is when things got hectic.  All but three of my students stayed for the soccer/volleyball games.  Most chose to stay in my room and play Apples to Apples.  My Scholastic book order came in (I was the only one who ordered anything), and my little readers hustled over to see what new delights were added to our library.  Since I am a "Green Apple Teacher" (someone who ordered a lot of books last year), they sent me a free book! Woohoo! I looked it up on Goodreads.com and saw that Stuart Gibbs (our favorite author) gave it five stars.  Nice.  Except now I'll have to read it and I already have over 300 books on my to-read shelf...


With all the kids in my room and all the people who stopped in my room to talk, I didn't get a whole lot of work done.  Thankfully I don't have much to do for tomorrow.  Teaching at the same school for three years has its perks!  About five minutes before our game was scheduled to start, the soccer game wasn't over, someone was in my room chatting with no signs of stopping, three people texted me at the same time, and my assistant vb coach wanted help with her homework.  My brain went in about five different directions.  And then we had to get organized for our team picture.  We got all the players in, but missed my co-coach.  She wasn't around and our game was 15 minutes late!  Lost all four tonight... came really close in the two A squad games.  Yesterday's games we won 3 out of 5 played.  I'm still amazed at how well they're doing this year. But, as we all know, God is good. :)

The Lost Shall Be Found

We uh... misplaced Joe today.  Again, a student showed up to school at 7:30 this morning looking for something to do.  He fluffed up Joe's bedding and let him walk around on the floor so he wouldn't get in the way.  Since even tortoises need exercise, we didn't put him back.  And by the time the bell rang, I had forgotten all about the little reptile crawling around at our feet.  Snack time comes and someone asks, "Hey, where's Joe? Is he still wandering around?"  They found him in the coat room on the way to the gym.  Mouse traps have been set up out there (and have caught mice... but that's a whole other story) and some of the boys thought it'd be funny to tell me that Joe got caught in a mousetrap.  Huh.  I don't know if he was even close to a mousetrap or not, but I do know he left the classroom.  So we brought him back inside and let him keep walking.  Writing Workshop time, again someone notices... "Hey, Joe's still not in his tank.  Did anyone ever put him back?"  Nope.  We scanned the classroom.  Nothing.  Search a little harder... double checked the closet, peaked in the coatroom.  Nada.  Where could he be?  Under the desks? Computer chairs? None of the above.  We're just about to pause everything for a massive search of the gym when I ask if anyone's checked under the printer.  Sure enough, our little cold-blooded friend was wedged in the corner under the printer.  We had to pull the printer cart out to get at Joe.  And now he's safely back in his tank chowing down on some lettuce.


Other interesting things of the day: Mrs. B dropped off a loaf of banana bread for our snack today.  The kids were super excited! I have a student out with tummy troubles. Mr. D sent one home today for a stomachache, and I have another student complaining he doesn't feel good.  Ugh. It's starting.  I noticed my throat was a little sore this afternoon, but that could be because I've been talking more today than most.


We have a volleyball game in Mankato today at 4:00 and I'm bringing two players to the game, so I don't have a whole lot of time.  I got a note in my mailbox at school just now that says BLC is looking for teachers to mentor Bethany students for a reading/literacy clinical in November.  Hmm...  I've been teaching long enough that I qualify to mentor.  I've always thought it would be fun to do.  But I've just started a different English curriculum this year (writer's workshop) and am not sure I'm comfortable enough with it to mentor another person on how to run it.  Daily 5 would be good though. Food for thought.

The Terrible, Horrible, Mostly Good, (but still kinda bad) Day

This day is one for the record books.  I just can't believe it.  I'm sitting at my desk laughing to myself cause I still just can't believe... maybe I should back up and explain our day.


So I get to school a little before 7:30 and I'm in sort of a crabby mood. No particular reason why I'm crabby-ish, just not feeling especially peppy and cheerful.  Then I see a light on in my room already.  Turns out, one of my students came with his older sister to school early so she could get help on homework.  This means that instead of having a good half hour of solitude to get ready for the day, I have another person in my room that I have to keep an eye on and entertain/keep on track until the rest of the class gets here.  Wonderful.  My mood drops another few bars.


However, a few of the normally problematic memory workers came in and said their memory work without a hitch... but there was still one kid who wasn't even close to having Luther's Morning Prayer memorized by the time the bell rang.  Normally when I'm not at the top of my game I can get back in sync by starting the school day, and by the time we're done with religion I'm feeling normal.  But today was not a normal day... we were supposed to practice music at 8:35 in Mr. E's room.  I even wrote a note on the board so I'd remember! I still didn't.  Miss N came down to get us and it wasn't a big deal (but I was still in a less than good mood). 


When we got to Mr. E's room, one of the 7th graders pointed out that I'd messed up writing the name of their assignment due today on the board.  So they were all confused and worried because they'd never seen that worksheet before in their life and did I ever give it to them in the first place? But we got that sorted and sung our song and got back to our room without any further difficulties.


Read-aloud time.  Religion went long since we got started late.  We only had four chapters left in the book, always dangerous territory for getting other stuff done in the morning.  So many cliff-hangers!  As you might be predicting right now, we finished the book today.  We read until it was time for reading buddies with the provision that people not finished with handwriting work on it while I read.  That worked pretty good.  Then we did reading buddies and took our spelling tests.  By that time, I was back in a good mood (reading a good book does that to you).


It's just about time for lunch.  My kids start to complain about being forced to practice soccer at recess.  I make a deal with them that if they don't complain about what time we go out/have to come in, we can do soccer for the first half and whatever they want for the second half.  Perfect. It's a done deal.  In the lunch line, Mr. E tells me about this plan to have me eat lunch in his room while he eats lunch in my room.  Partly to give me a break and partly so he can have a "heart-to-heart" with them.  Hmm, suspicious.  So I go eat in the 7th grade room.  I guess Mr. E had a heart-to-heart with them too because they were being super nice and kept referencing how much quieter it was in their room than it probably was in my room usually.  And they kept staring at me too.  It was very strange.  Mr. E came in and told me I should stay inside and eat my lunch cause he was going to take recess duty today.  Woohoo! It was the first time all year I ate my entire lunch without getting up once.  It was delightful. 


After lunch we had our normal schedule... until the mix-up with hearing and vision screening.  The nurse wanted to start at the top grades and work down, so my 5th and 6th graders were supposed to go at 1:15ish.  However, they're with Mr. E at that time and I have his 7th graders.  The nurse flip-flopped our papers and I thought everything was worked out.  But no one came to get us at 1:00 when screening was supposed to start, and when we went to the gym, Mr. E had already sent the 6th graders down to get screened.  No big deal, the 7th graders and I were at a really good part in our read aloud book (Schooled, by Gordon Korman) so we keep reading.  In the end, Mr. E kept my kids for 15 extra minutes to get their full math time.  I have his kids, but we don't get anything done (except read) because one of the girls left early for an orthodontist appointment.


My class was supposed to listen to more Native American presentations, but by the time they got back we only had time for one.  The boys who get the antsiest for recess were supposed to leave at 2:00 for a birthday party, so they kept checking out the window to see if their ride showed up.  (It never did.  Well, until the end of the school day, that is.)  The boy who presented did an amazing job! He did extra research, had everything laid out super nicely, and presented like a pro.  And the class listened to him the whole time! Without complaining!  The other day this boy showed me his Minecraft mod in which he'd created a Hopi village, complete with underground ceremonial rooms just like a real village would've had.  Very impressive.


Recess was our normal four-square games.  For once I remembered to keep in the kids who hadn't turned in spelling fixes, unfinished math tests, and memory work.  Everyone got everything done!  I even had time to play a little four-square with the boys.  And then the bugs started biting.  I thought I got stung by a bee! But no, it was a whole bunch of little black bugs, kind of like those nasty gnats, but smaller and more piercing right away. 


And now, the pièce de résistance... for whatever reason, my class took forever to get packed up to go home.  Half the people weren't in the room, the other half was off looking at a daddy long-legs spider we'd found earlier in the day or the almost ready to hatch monarch.  When everyone is finally rounded up to pray, I see Mr. E from the corner of my eye knocking on our class door.  And when he spots all of us with our heads bowed his eyes round in horror.  "I just waved off the buses."  Oops.  My whole class missed the bus today.  The funny thing is, Mr. E's class missed the bus two days ago because someone else waved off the bus without checking our thumbs-up chart.  He chewed out that person... or should I say, lectured that person on always checking.  And what happens next? Mr. E does the same exact thing.


Thankfully, there was no Nicollet busing scheduled for today, so half my class was getting picked up anyway.  So only five students actually missed the bus.  The bus makes a stop in Courtland before heading out to MVL and New Ulm, so there was a chance we could intercept them.  Only four could fit in Mr. E's car which meant that I'd have to take some kids too.  As I'm backing out of the parking lot, the school treasurer comes running at me, trying to give me a check I need to bring to the volleyball tournament tomorrow.  I quick called out the window the information she needed and booked it to Courtland.  We barely made it.  The bus was trying to turn left on a busy corner, so I turned the corner and rolled down the window waving my hand like a mad-woman at the bus driver.  He calmly listened to my frantic spiel. "We have some kids who missed the bus! Can they get on here? There's a couple more coming too!" He calmly nodded and opened the door to the bus.  My little passengers (calm up to this point) immediately grabbed their gear and cautiously poked their heads out of my car to see if the road was empty before running to the bus.  The traffic was so bad at that corner that Mr. E also got his charges dropped off before the bus had a chance to turn.  Whew. 


So.  All's well that ends well.  But really, isn't it funny that after the horrible start I had to my day and after all that Mr. E tried to do to make my day better, it still ends with my class missing the bus?  In reality, I'm actually in a pretty good mood right now, much better than I was feeling this morning.  And to top it off, it's Friday!

Kwakiutl

The IT guys came last night.  Hallelujah! They fixed my printer, they fixed the computer that didn't work, and they left the new iPads.  Oh it was a happy day in my class.  Except I'm so used to the printer not working that I keep sending stuff to the one in the office and I have to walk down to get it. 


Bells went surprisingly well today! Last practice, I had noticed a notation on the bottom of the page telling players to table-damp instead of playing the notes regular.  We tried that today and the song actually sounded like a song!!! Except the girl who has most of the melody didn't want to play her bells and that part didn't sound good.  So I'll have to work on that.  And another kid's binder won't stay closed so it's hard for him to turn his music without things getting messed up.  I'm pretty sure we're all out of unused folders too...


We had our first day of presenting Native American powerpoints.  Overall they did a great job!  We had attentive audiences for the first two... and then there was time for just one more before recess (always a dangerous decision).  Some of the boys in my class are confused on what time we're supposed to go out for recess.  On the class schedule, I have recess start at 2:10, but they keep thinking we need to be outside at 2:00.  And of course they keep asking and get fidgety and antsy... not things you want in an audience for student presenters. 


The girls could tell they were losing their audience.  They had found a video to put in their powerpoint about the Kwakiutl (kwa-key-oodle) potlatches, basically a big potluck where you give presents to everyone.  But it was at the very end, and the boys were being so rude the girls just said, "we can skip the video".  Enough of the other girls spoke up about wanting to see it (and I could tell the presenters still wanted to show it), so we took a vote to see if we should watch it or not.  The majority of the class didn't care either way.  Bingo! We're watching it.  And the most loud/obnoxious kids pitched a fit.  But we still got out to recess at our "normal" time, 2:10, and we had another fun day of four-square.

Learn Something New Every Day

Volleyball practice got off to a slow start this afternoon.  I took a little bit more time to get ready since the other coach was at school right away.  But instead of starting practice without me, she was fiddling with the nets.  The girls hadn't even run their laps/did their stretching by the time I got in the gym.  There's a volleyball camp going on at Nicollet this week (started today), so we were down a bunch of players.  Plus one girl forgot her volleyball stuff and just went home after school.  No big deal.  We ended up with only six girls at practice, mostly older girls.  So we worked on spiking... something I've never really learned how to do.  My girls were so shocked I'd never learned to spike before.  And they immediately set about teaching me.  It was so funny to hear them encouraging me and cheering me on when my spike was... not so good.  But eventually I got the hang of it!  Then they were after me to try overhand serving... yeah, I tried one and it landed short.  Didn't even make it to the net.  And that was enough overhand serving for one day.  Overall, it was a very good practice.


Nothing too out of the ordinary happened today.  The 7th graders had heard about an experiment you can do to make bananas less brown.  You put the banana in a bag of rice for an hour, then heat it with a hair-dryer.  Supposedly the brown spots fade and the banana is as good as new... Our banana had been sitting out for a few days and was super brown.  And we didn't have a ton of rice in the bag.  We kept it in the bag for an hour; it looked even more brown than before.  But blow-drying it did make it a little less brown.  Not very yellow though.  I think we need to leave it in the rice longer and maybe do it with a less ripe banana.  We'll see if one of the 7th graders brings in a new banana.


Tonight I have ladies' bible study.  I went last week and it was really interesting... Bad Girls of the Bible is what it's called.  It took me a while to find the house.  Mrs. B gave me instructions on how to get to this person's house (and I'd walked past it before), but there are an awful lot of white houses with white garages in the back.  I ended up standing outside a different house for a while until I saw some other ladies from church.  As I'm typing this story I get the feeling that I may have typed it before.  So I apologize if it's a repeat from last week.  And with that, I'm off to my apartment to quick eat supper and get to bible study!

Fair-Square

Afternoon recess... instead of playing four-square, we played fair-square.  Well, we started out with normal 4-square, but the kid in the first square kept making dirty plays... hitting it in the corner, spiking it at players, etc.  So I kept making him redo it.  And then he got out and was all up in someone's face about it, just being a bad sport in general. 


So I told him to stop, and when he didn't, I gave him the choice of sitting in the office.  Well, he acted like that was the best idea in the world! And he sat in the office for the rest of recess.  When it was time to go home, he pretended the office was so fun he didn't want to leave (or, I'm assuming he's pretending; I don't know why he'd like to be stuck in there).  As for the rest of the class, we had a great time! The kids kept remarking on how much fun it was to play "fair-square".  People got out, didn't complain, and we rotated everyone in super fast!


I remembered to show my students the wild cucumbers today.  They were suitably impressed.  Even more of the pods had popped open.  Eileen gave me enough for one for each of my students, so I passed them out and let them explore/experiment.  Some of the kids asked if we could plant them, but judging by the amount of wild cucumbers growing on my parents' tree back home, I don't think we need to introduce it to school (or any of my student's homes).  The last thing we did was to squish the pods open and compare the seeds to ones that popped open naturally.  Water squished all over the classroom... we went through a good number of paper towels and wet-wipes today!


Our volleyball games went okay.  We won the set (lost, won, won), but we didn't play very good.  Lots of hitting the ball out of bounds, in the net, backwards... and even letting the ball drop.  Good thing there's practice tomorrow!


One thing that's been on my mind a lot today was a comment from a coworker this morning... he prefaced this comment with something along the lines of, "I'm sorry you're having such a tough year this year." And then he said that he's noticed that my personality this year has changed.  And I got the impression he didn't think it was in a positive way.  So now I'm curious.  Have I changed? Is it really my personality? Or is it just my mood?  This year it seems like I've had more issues with more students than in past years (and parents too), which always makes me stressed.  I'm debating whether I should ask this coworker what he meant, or if I should just let it drop.  Hmm...


Right now there's a Pork Chop Dinner meeting going on in my classroom.  Every once in a while they ask for my two cents, so here I am, sitting at my computer working in the background.  The main topic is Silent Auction items, which technically I'm "in charge" of.  Actually, my classroom is in charge of the whole dinner (or the parents are).  Hopefully this meeting ends pretty quick, cause I'm getting hungry!

Jello

Science= Jello plant cells.  Mrs. B made my jello earlier in the morning so it would have a little time to set before we did the lab in the afternoon.  By the time our lab rolled around, it was the perfect consistency (just jiggly enough to keep the fruit where it needs to be... no floaters, no sinkers).  It was a little crowded around the lab table, so some of the kids stood on chairs... don't worry, they were careful!  It took shorter than expected.  With the extra time we went out for a little bit of four-square.


The rest of the day was, eh, mostly non-eventful.  There was the typical "why do we have to play soccer at recess? it's boring." Spelling pretests, read-aloud, writing workshop. 


I remembered to show the 7th graders the wild cucumbers Eileen brought back for me from the farm.  Some of the pods had burst open in the bag.  We cracked one of the un-burst pods and compared the colors of seeds (burst= dark brown, un-burst= pale tan).  Our topic of the day was the three types of rocks (sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic) which means we talked about magma.  Of course this led to a discussion of how hot magma actually is (1300-2400 degrees F) and can a person actually touch it and live?  And this led to a pretty sweet youtube video of explorers putting on a thermal suit and getting close to the lip of a magma crater. 


The same kid who was off his meds last week was again off the wall today.  He said he took them, but his actions didn't really match.  I called his mom at noon and we both had the same thought... last week (on that particular day), a classmate this student holds in high esteem said, "Wow! I really like [the student] like this! He's fun! He should be like this all the time!"  So we're thinking maybe our guy took that to heart and is pretending to take his meds.  Ugh.  The plan is for the parents to actually watch in the morning to be sure.  Hopefully that fixes this craziness.  He got mad at the girls for talking during lunch and pulled one girl's hair and threatened to pull another's if she spoke another word.  And then lied about it to me and Mr. E.  Lovely.  So more prayers would be appreciated!


Volleyball after school went okay.  We had to put up the nets again... so many straps to figure out!  Then we had to figure out the plan for our upcoming games.  One calendar said tomorrow's game is at four and another said 4:30.  Our game next week is against a school that has both A and B teams... How many games do we play? Who goes first?  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  And can we do this after practice? No. We have to do it right now while everyone is around.  Sigh, I felt like I was abandoning the girls, but they all were working on skills while I was bouncing around the school, so it could've been worse.  Anyway, we made it through practice and got everything figured out.  It seems like most girls have rides to the tournament this weekend; one less thing for me to worry about.


And now it seems like it is past time for me to go home.  It's been way faster to plan my lessons so far this year... it only takes a morning or afternoon on the weekend to get pretty much everything ready for the WHOLE week.  Just a few odds and ends that involve internet for me to do during the week.  So when I go home, I can devote the whole evening to books! Woohoo!

Finally Friday

Well, we survived the first full week of school this year.  It seems like we've been in school longer than three weeks, but I guess we haven't!


Another drippy day at school... recess in the gym takes some creative thinking for some students.  The boys have been playing basketball and throwing footballs around the gym.  Every once in a while a ball would come my way and I'd try to throw it to the other end... yeah, I throw like a girl.  I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, and then one of the 6th grade boys showed me how to hold/throw it the right way!  Perfect spiral on the first try.  I was so excited I may or may not have jumped up and down a little bit in a victory dance...


It's amazing how missing one student completely changes the classroom dynamics.  A 6th grader was gone today to help get stuff ready for his brother's wedding this weekend.  We were a much quieter group, that's for sure!  Maybe the weather had something to do with it too... somehow the class convinced me to let them watch a Wishbone video instead of doing the Adjective Game for English.  We watched the Robin Hood episode where Joe and the lunch lady get in trouble for giving leftover school food to the homeless shelter.  The 5th graders are now huge Wishbone fans.


The 7th graders did a lab testing the hardness of rocks.  They picked out rocks from outside and we scraped things of differing hardness on them to see if they left a mark (paper, fingernail, penny, steel scalpel, steel file).  We knew the hardness of each of those "reference materials" so if it left a mark, then our rock had to be less hard than the r.m.  I think the lab turned out okay.  We didn't have a lot of time to do it because one of the 7th graders had speech, so we waited to correct spelling until he got back (and did read aloud instead).  This pushed our studying for the test time off, which pushed the spelling test time off, which pushed our lab time off, which didn't leave us much time to do it.


At the end of the day I tried to teach my kids how to draw people for art.  Yeah, our people looked more like long legged aliens.  I need to do more research and figure out a better way to teach them.  Just when we were going to start drawing faces (I know how to draw those proportionally!), Mr. E came down to tell us the Lion's Club ladies were here and were ready to tell us about the Peace Poster contest.  So we paused art and went down to Mr. E's room.  By the time they were finished it was recess.  Something to save for next Friday!


Mr. D's sister is getting married this weekend and he was fretting about finding the place, so I offered to let him use my GPS (fondly named Garmita).  After school today I showed him how to use it and he tested it on his way home from school.  He said it was somewhat helpful.  At the very least I imagine it will give him peace of mind while he's traveling!


This weekend is Fall Festival at Bethany.  My sisters and I are going to Theater Physics tonight and Eileen and I are playing in the alumni jazz concert tomorrow afternoon.  Then, Sunday morning I am the official greeter at church.  And that's pretty much my whole weekend! Hopefully there's time to read some books in there!

Off the Walls

Whew, this Thursday was a doozy!


I got a text from a parent saying her child ran out of meds yesterday and would probably be a little off today... yeah, that was an understatement.  This kid could not keep his mouth shut and his hands to himself.  And that of course fired up the rest of the boys in the class.  There was nothing he could do about it; his self-control was pretty much gone.  It was like there was a pre-schooler with a sugar high in my room all day. 


That aside, today was actually a fairly good day.  We learned how to make good powerpoints during Writing Workshop, so the class was fired up to test it out.  Everyone handed their spelling in on time (though a few had to stay in from part of recess to finish).  The 7th graders asked a lot of questions during ancient history.  And the Bookmobile came today!!! I wasn't going to go on it since I have a pile waiting at home, but I thought it might be nice to have some movies this weekend... yeah, bad choice.  I didn't find any movies, but I did pick up three books!  Mr. E graciously took over recess duty so I could have a bit of a break.


It's been raining on and off all day.  We've been on the edge of our seats to see if the soccer game is still on (and the volleyball too).  The last two minutes of school brought torrential rain... and the games are still on!  The principal in Janesville said it wasn't raining at all over there.  Although by the time we make it over there the rain will probably arrive in full force.  And on that note, I'm off to Janesville!

Raining on a Wednesday

My kids are all at PE right now... they started outside and then it began to rain, so now they're playing in the gym.  Of course this morning I cracked my car windows a bit! It's not raining that heavily, so hopefully not too much rain slips into my vehicle.


Another good writing day today.  I'm really hoping we can keep up this enthusiasm.  We seem to have fallen into a rhythm in our Daily 5 rounds... though there has still been some upheaval over me trying to change things from last year (aka- keep to the rules stricter).


Lunch was interesting today... we had freezies for dessert and by the time the boys had all been through the line (they rush to wash their hands so they're always first) the color choice was down to yellow or orange.  The cook had her 7th grade helper dig out more choices from the freezer.  Not only were these new freezies a variety of colors, they were also king-sized! Oh the girls were overjoyed!  The boys... not so much.  "It's not fair! How come they get the giant ones?! We should get to have seconds!"  My reply, "Well, you got to be first in the lunch line today.  If you'd been towards the back, you'd have gotten a bigger one."  And then they launched into a whole argument over what was fair and what wasn't, trying to pull God into it (he wants everything in life to be fair...etc.). 


Just when I seemed to get it all straightened out, one of the boys comes in with a freezie and hands it over to a classmate who'd already had one.  In our classroom, the rule is only one dessert, otherwise it gets too complicated and people complain and feel bad that they didn't get an extra one.  So.  No getting a dessert just to give it to someone else.  But now the drama switched to what should this kid do with the unwanted freezie.  His classmates clamored to be the one to eat it.  I said no.  He couldn't put it back because it was already cut open on one end.  He didn't want to throw it away... To make a long story just a little longer, he ended up trading it to a 7th grader who put his uncut freezie back and ate the cut open one.  Whew! And then Mr. E gave that same 7th grader his freezie because he didn't want to eat it.  As you might guess, my boys went ballistic.  "How come he gets two????"  It was very entertaining watching that 7th grader try to play soccer while holding a freezie in each hand.  I caught him trying to give it to one of the 5th graders.  It's nice to know my teacher look can stop a clandestine trade-off across a soccer field.

Amped up about writing...

Today was a pretty good day.  A little bit of yelling going on at recess, but overall, a day packed with learning and excited students (for the most part).


Three boys are writing a story together during writing workshop and they stumbled on a fantastic idea about having their main characters live in an underwater volcano... I suggested they do some research on where-in-the-world it could take place and what it looks like and they took off with it!  They even wanted to write during computer time!  And they've made plans to write before the bell rings tomorrow.  We did start typing stories on the computer, so that might be adding some excitement to our writing.


Our volleyball team did amazing today! We won all three games! I seriously don't know how we're doing this well.  Our serves kept going over and over and over... Woohoo!  There's one more game this week on Thursday in Janesville. 


Tomorrow the K-4th graders are singing at the Nursing Home.  As part of an all-school service project, my class spent read-aloud time making birthday cards and special door-hanging frame things for residents.  They turned out pretty neat!  The frames are black with silver stars on them, and inside the frame is a piece of black paper with chalk words (Bible verses, encouraging messages, etc.) and stickers.  We stuck magnets to the back so residents can stick them to their doors.


Monarch caterpillar update: the little bugger made his chrysalis last night when no one was watching... that was the first thing a few of my students ran to check as soon as they walked in the door.  Our apple observations are still going... not super strong enthusiasm right now... mostly they're mush and don't look too different from day to day.  And the whole apples are still looking the same. 

Wrecking the Pavement

I'm beginning to think I should not be allowed on the asphalt parking lot at school.  Last year we needed to spray paint our Mother's Day presents... and you can still see the outlines of our projects on the pavement.  Then today the 7th graders were learning how to classify minerals... this particular instance involves Moh's scale of hardness.  Yes, I did tell the ab joke... "On Moh's scale of hardness, talc is the softest (a one) and a diamond is the hardest (a ten).  My abs are an 11."  They looked at me like they were thinking, "Miss H, why are you implying that you have abs? Clearly you do not."  Then one of the 7th graders said, "no, an 11 is the strength of MY abs." And everyone laughed and it was all good.  But back to the pavement predicament... I had a rock out to use as an example to find the hardness, but we didn't have anything to scrape against it that we knew the hardness of... and someone came up with the brilliant idea to scrape the rocks on the parking lot.  So we trekked outside where each of the 7th graders fished a rock from the landscaping.  Pretty soon they're scraping away at the pavement.  Let's just say most of the rocks we picked up were harder than the pavement.  Now there are all sorts of shapes and letters scratched into the area outside my classroom.  Oops. 


Today was also an insect kind of day.  I got a call before school from a student's mom asking if she could have a monarch caterpillar dropped off at school since it was getting ready to form a chrysalis.  Sure, why not?  So all day that particular student has been popping off to the lab table to see if it has begun formation.  He even brought it outside during recess.  Nothing's going on yet!  It'll probably do its thing overnight. 


Also at noon recess, a gigantic bumblebee landed on my leg and crawled higher and higher, its tongue flicking out searching for something to eat.  It was the biggest bee I've ever seen!  I had an empty applesauce container in my hand and I positioned it in such a way the bee would get at the applesauce.  Pretty soon it was hanging out inside licking up a storm.  My little caterpillar watcher ran inside to grab his tablet so he could take a picture.  We didn't have cords to get the picture off the device, but I took a picture of the picture and here it is...




And that's pretty much all the excitement from the day.  Miss N's sister came down to visit her (my friend Jonni from Bethany), so we chatted for a bit after the kids left.  I'm getting ready to head to our volleyball game in Mankato.  We play around 5ish, so I'll probably skip the soccer game and just go straight to volleyball.  My kids will tell me all about the game tomorrow anyway.