Sleet

The big news of the day came at 2:40, right before we were about to pray.  "IT'S SNOWING!!!!!" someone shouted, and the class flocked to the windows.  Some didn't stop their.  About five of them opened our outside door and went onto the porch to appreciate the first snow of the year.  It was actually more like sleet, and it melted by the time we finished praying.  Oh man, I was not sure if I'd be able to get those kids back in the room.  Eventually they did come back and we prayed and dismissed.  One kid had a meltdown because he insisted it was sleeting outside and a classmate repeatedly said "it's snowing, it's snowing!" most likely to make the first kid mad.  Sigh. 


Our day actually went pretty smoothly overall.  We've been having noise issues in class for a long time now, but this morning Mrs. B reminded me about the noise level chart I have stuck on the board.  I don't think I ever explained it to the class, so in the middle of our NaNo prep, I did.  We went over the five noise levels (0= Silence is Golden, 1= Spy Talk, 2= Low Flow, 3=Formal Normal, 4= Loud Crowd, 5=Out of Control... only to be used outside).  Then came practice time.  It was amazing.  We started with a level 3 and they did it perfectly! Way quieter conversation than they'd been doing moments before.  We practiced each level... even #5.  I prefaced it as "this is the ONLY time you will ever do this indoors."  I can't believe how well it worked to change our noise levels. 


NaNo prep for the day involved planning our villains.  I shared my homework with the class, the drawn pictures of our rainbow lady.  The boys were bummed she was pretty looking; they want ugly and action-y.  Our villain... well... since our rainbow is a Korean rainbow, they wanted the villain to be someone in Korea. I'll bet you can guess who they picked to be the villain.  I'm going to have to do some tweaking; there might be more than one villain in this story.  My idea is to have the old rainbow woman (my class's choice of protagonist) tell a story to the audience about something that happened to her when she was younger.  Maybe, how she got to be a rainbow in the first place, kind of like a constellation story or a myth.  Isn't it neat how all the other stuff we talk about in class gets tied in somehow?  So with that in mind, I wanted the villain to be the reason she was turned into a rainbow.  Korean dictator? I don't think he'd be able to do that.  One girl had the idea that the main character is bad and being a rainbow was a punishment; she had to do a certain number of good things before the spell would be broken.  Aha! Then the other villain (dictator) would try to stop her or undo the good things, or he could be the last good thing she has to do before the spell is broken but he's too bad.  Or something.  I'm still working out the kinks.  But I think I can get 50,000 words from that story.  Ugh.  That's so many.  My kids are getting excited to work on theirs.  I have some chomping at the bit... "Can we start on Saturday?" Nooo, that's still October.  "How about Sunday?" Yes, Sunday is in November, you can start.  Some have even picked their editing partners for after NaNo!  I've been checking off their character sheets as they finish them, and let me tell you, there will be some pretty interesting stories this year.  I'm excited!


Normally this would be a good place to stop my post for the day, but yesterday after school I had a wee bit of car trouble... so I wanted to give an update.  I found a slow leak in my back left tire.  Turns out a shingle nail had poked in right at the place where a patch might not stick.  So the tire guys stayed a little late and patched it for me.  They cautioned it might not stay in place and I should watch it over the next few days.  So far, so good! No tire pressure light has come on.  Hopefully that will be the case when I go out to my car tonight!