Attack of the Lady Bugs

Noon recess was a battle zone.  Apparently, all the girls in my class are terrified/grossed-out/completely disgusted by lady bugs.  And guess what was cruising around the playground today? Yep.  Lady bugs.  One of the 5th graders stood on the picnic table to get away from them.  "[friend], come over here! There are less lady bugs... I think!"  Mmm, not really, but it gave her slight peace of mind.  We spent recess pointing out the latest attackers and flicking them off each other.  Thankfully, not too many have found their way into our classroom.  Most of the other rooms have swarms in the corners near the ceiling, but we have escaped thus far.


I made another girl cry today.  It's the same one who usually cries, although this year the tears have not made as many appearances.  She was upset because I made the groups for our science review game and she got stuck in a group with all boys (boys she does not like/get along with) and no girls.  After the game she came up to me and said, "Miss H. I did not like that."  Yep. I totally get it.  But we all have to do things we don't like in this world.  Since they were pretty good during the game, next time I'll let them pick their own groups.  Our test on plants is tomorrow, and I noticed a bunch of study guides lying on the floor/on desks... this does not bode well.  Actually, those boys are pretty bright and will probably do well on the test without studying.  But I still worry anyway.


Today I introduced our big project for November... National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo.  As soon as I brought up NaNo, the 6th graders wanted to show off last year's chart!  They were able to color in their part of the graph each day to show how many words they had so far.  It was a huge hit.  I guess I'll have to do the same thing again! 


Some of my kids have started NaNo stories already, but once I made it clear their word count starts at zero on November 1st no matter how much they've written beforehand, they decided it would be too much work to figure out how many words they have.  So I think everyone will start a new story from scratch.  I'm also going to let each of them make their own word count goals (with a minimum goal of 2,000).  We'll set our goals next Friday, right before NaNo starts.  All the NaNo sites for teachers say it's important for teachers to write with their students to set a good example.  I guess that means I need to do NaNo too.  I just don't know how I'm going to write 50,000 words this year!  Although, I think that every year.  But this year has been crazier than normal.  We'll see I guess! With my kiddos egging me on, watching, it might be enough motivation to get the job done.