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!