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!