3D Earth

Today was... interesting.  Everyone has Thanksgiving fever.  Even me.  We all want the week to be over so we can have Thanksgiving vacation! Woohoo!  Lots of my students who are normally okay behavior-wise were hard to settle this morning. 


Some of my students were ready to take their weavings off their looms.  Most listened to instructions and got it figured out... a few just took the whole thing off the loom and then said, "Now what Miss H?"  Well, now you have to be extra super careful it doesn't come completely apart...  Even those kids got it figured out eventually.  Mrs. B ran errands and picked up some heavy-duty paper plates for me so we can take our weaving to the next level.  Tomorrow we're painting the plates to look like a landscape scene, then we're weaving a tree using the plate as a loom.  It's a super cool project and I can't wait to see what the kids do with them!  I still need to refresh my memory on how to teach the project...


The 7th graders had their 3D earth projects due today.  I had them make models and label them instead of giving them another boring test.  One girl made a rice-crispy bar Earth with frosting.  The boys pretty much made the typical foam ball Earths (they said it took FOREVER to paint them), and the other girl made a paper plate Earth with yarn and glitter glue to show the layers.  I promised them I'd correct their projects tonight so they'd have their grades tomorrow.  Still gotta do that yet.  I had written on their whiteboard in the morning that they'd present their projects, and I wish now I would've had them simply hand them in.  There isn't a whole lot to talk about; everyone's information should be the same.  A few of them did extra neat things; one boy drew in tectonic plate lines, another found actual places around the globe that have shear, compression, and tension stress and labeled them.  But listening them read their information from their description cards got old really fast.  We had some other miscellaneous things to finish up too: take down the bells at church (they played super well on Sunday!), give a spelling test to a 7th grader who'd been absent Friday, and correct two spelling books that had not been at school to be corrected Friday.  We got it all done! 


I had planned for my 5th and 6th graders to have a workday on their solar system powerpoints, but alas the computers did not work.  So on to plan B.  Wishbone episode!  We watched the one on the Moonstone.  Then it was time for Christmas program practice.  We read through half the program and will do the other half tomorrow.  My class was not happy we missed PE/afternoon recess.  Unfortunately, that's the way it's going to be for the rest of December... program practice at 2:00, right at PE time.