Presents

Program practice today went AMAZING. We are so ready for Saturday night.

Actually, the whole day was pretty amazing.  We finished our science lab from yesterday, much to the surprise of my 5th and 6th graders. They were sure it would take waaay more time to do it.  They all handed them in before present opening!  Memory work was all said before the bell rang, handwriting was in before program practice.  We finished the read aloud book and got both spelling tests in before heading over to church at 9:50.  Man, we sure stuck to the schedule today!

After program practice, we went back to school for our annual meal of sloppy joes, chips, and pickles, served to us by the school board.  Typically, we have it at church, but since the carpet has just been washed over there, the powers that be asked us to eat at school.  We all ate in the gym together; it was kind of cool.  Students could mix with other grades to eat.  Not too many of them went crazy after eating.  A few boys went overboard on their food... a 7th grader set the record for sandwiches this year- eight sloppy joes, closely followed by his 6th grade brother who ate seven.  The all time record is 20. Can you believe it???

We opened presents after lunch... the general theme was "LC" lots of candy. And that's what they got too!  My presents were a bit more varied: candles, a toasty warm blanket scarf, gift cards, summer sausage, and a kitchen timer.  My timer's battery wore out a long time ago and I don't have one on my microwave, so I've just been eyeballing it when cooking!  The girl who gave me the timer had asked me earlier this week what I wanted, and that's what I told her. The girl said her mom was super confused when her daughter said that I wanted a timer.  "But that's what she said she wanted!" the girl told her mom.

Another cool present I got was from the same girl... a Case IH calendar! What's super weird is that their family is 100% John Deere supporters.  But the girl said her dad sent it to school for me.  Now we'll have red tractors up the rest of the year!

Running

There was too much running today!  It seemed like all the boys forgot there is no running in the classroom.  Two boys got a timeout at recess because they were chasing each other out of the gym, into the classroom.  Yesterday the same two had done the same thing, but into the hallway.  Today after PE, two different boys were running in the room and one pushed past a 5th grade girl, tripping her, and the second boy plowed her over the rest of the way.  I scolded him, he tried to justify himself, I said I wasn't looking for excuses, he got even madder and took a break in the reading corner to calm down.  He had been upset about something the other boy had said (a 7th grader), and then for him to get in trouble when his friend had been the mean one? It was too much for him.

I wanted to get one more science lab in before Christmas break.  It's a Wednesday, which means we have PE at 2:00.  That always makes it tricky to get much accomplished after math before PE.  Usually it takes a while for them to get back from math.  Today was no different.  We actually got quite a bit done on the lab before we were crunched for time.

The lab was about chromatography.  We mixed pen ink in beakers of rubbing alcohol and stuck paper strips in them.  The paper strips were taped to the roof of a box so the ink could travel up the coffee filter.  Different colors of ink travel at different speeds.  So our experiment should show (after sitting overnight) that black ink is made of a bunch of different colors.  We also tried red ink, purple ink, and orange ink.  Unfortunately, one group tipped over their box right at the end, so they had to redo the experiment.  Bummer.  They had been in a rush to get to PE.  Oops.  Now all the jars/boxes are resting on the lab table.  Hopefully we'll have time tomorrow to examine them and finish up the experiment... Tomorrow is going to be a crunch day! Last day of school before break!

Pop

We had a mishap today... one of the exercise balls got popped. It happened during noon recess when everyone was supposed to be in Mr. E's room or the gym.  But some kids have been sneaking into my classroom to work on stuff since it's quieter in there.  Apparently, one kid made a comment to another kid (one with a quick-temper) about him liking a 5th grade girl.  The other kid got SUPER mad and started chasing him around the room, pencil gripped in his hand.  Another kid laughed at the whole situation, making the mad kid even more upset.  One of the teasers threw an exercise ball at the angry student's head and he stabbed it with his writing utensil.  Or so the angry kid says.  No teachers were present at this time.

They tried to tape it, which worked for about three minutes.  Not even duct tape would work.  So the kid who speared it is buying our classroom a new one.

That episode pretty much sums up the day.  Everyone was CRAZY!

Christmas program practice was particularly insane. People were talking and shoving and pestering on the risers.  We probably would've been fine without this practice; everyone knew their parts and where they were supposed to be.  But, I suppose it's good to keep it fresh in their heads.  It was warm enough that we could walk over to church for practice, so we did. You'd think they'd know by now they're not allowed to throw snow at each other. And what do the 7th and 8th graders do? Throw snow, shove each other in a snowbank, etc.  Yep. Not so good. The office had a revolving door today...

The morning actually went pretty good for us.  Christmas present candles got decorated; we just need to wrap them.  We decided to read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson since it's so short.  That way we'll finish it before Christmas and will start a book fresh in the new year.  I love that book.  The first time I read it, I was reluctant to read it since it didn't sound that interesting to me.  But once I got started... it's hilarious.  On a scale of 1-10, my students ranked it between a 7-10 (more votes on the higher end of the scale).  We only have four chapters to go.  Two more to read tomorrow, two more on Thursday.

I was surprised with a present from the Student Council today.  Remember that day they were suspiciously asking my favorite candy?  This morning I came back from running errands in Mr. E's room to find a gift bag casually perched on a chair in the coatroom.  I left it there, thinking maybe one of them was going to give it to me.  And they were all like, "Miss H! Didn't you see the present out there for you?"  I guess I was supposed to grab it!  Anyway, they made me open it right away.  I got a package of Twix, a package of Milky Way, and a bottle of root beer.  Yum!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Whew, today was pretty crazy. But kind of in a good way.

The kids were chatterboxes, and they knew it too. After school, one 6th grader said to me, "Miss H, tomorrow we'll be better."

We made our parent Christmas presents today.  I melted the candle wax I'd found in the cupboard. While it was melting, they used the beeswax sheets to roll candles.  Some of the bottoms weren't very flat, so they dipped the ends in the melted wax.  They turned out pretty neat!  Some used little pieces of wax to make decorations for the outside. ...I let them get out the glitter too... and as expected, glitter exploded.  But, my students are responsible for their actions; they cleaned it up. And vacuumed even!

Making the candles took most of the morning. All we need to do is decorate the outsides of the jars and wrap them.  Even with all the candle-making, we had time for two rounds. They were noisy until I said the next person who talked got 5 sentences, then 6, then 7, etc. They were quiet as a church mice after that!

We finished our read aloud book today.  I'm not sure if I should start reading another book since we only have three days left this week, or if I should wait until after Christmas.  They might forget the story between now and then.  Or I could read a shorter book.  Or short stories.  I suppose I can ask them what they think.

The 7th and 8th graders had a lab today too.  Mr. E watched the kids at noon recess so I'd have time to set up the lab.  I'm glad he did! It took a while to cleanup the candle mess and put out the supplies for DNA extraction.  Yes, you read that right. The 7th and 8th graders extracted DNA from wheat germ and strawberries today.  They were really into it!

I tested out the experiment over the weekend, but couldn't get it to work.  I did some more research and found that to get better results I could 1) use ethyl alcohol instead of rubbing alcohol, 2) freeze the alcohol for at least two hours (or overnight), 3) add meat tenderizer to keep the DNA strands together.  Every group got it to work today!  We weren't able to lift much of it out of the test tubes, but it was clearly precipitating out of the solution.  Even the groups that thought they messed up were able to see the DNA.  It was pretty cool.  Some girls wanted to know if oranges would have lots of DNA or other fruits.  If we have time some day, we might test it out!  We were supposed to look at the DNA under a microscope, but we ran out of time.  Save that for another day too!

Weekend update: I did make it down to Truman for Christmas celebrations.  I stayed longer than expected due to the cold weather, but my travels were safe!  The Christmas program went very well Sunday night... only a few mistakes, and they were ones most people didn't notice.  The kids enunciated their parts clearly and slowly too.  We took the day off from program practice, but we'll practice twice more this week, just to keep their parts fresh in their heads.  Round Two is Saturday night, Christmas Eve at 6:00pm.

Early Out

No snow so far... school let out at 1:10 today, so we boarded the buses at 12:45, just enough time to eat lunch and have recess.

We were worried about the weather, so we bumped up Christmas program practice time to 9:00am.  I feel bad; we forgot to let some of the Bible school teachers know about the time change until the last minute. Some were able to be there at 9, but a few showed up shortly before 10 and only got to see about ten minutes of practice.

The program is ready! Of course, we could still use some polishing on a few parts, but overall we'll be fine to perform on Sunday.

I'm going to keep this short since I'm headed down to Truman now.  My farmer's family Christmas is tonight. All my stuff is packed up, so I should be able to stay ahead of the storm!

Better

Christmas program practice went better today! With one more practice, we'll be ready!  We had more of our costumes at church (a volunteer had taken them home to wash/freshen them up).  Everyone remembered where they were supposed to go (except the 7th grader who has the last speaking part of the whole program... he missed his cue, but that's what he gets for not paying attention!).  The bell song sounds a lot better too.  Still, we need to practice the songs with our piano player.  If we don't get that practice tomorrow, things might be a little messy Sunday.  

Mrs. E thought if that happens we should just sing from the CD and not have piano accompanying.  That will work for some songs, but not the first two! The first song, the recording is not in tune with the hand bells, and their part sounds not so good. The second song has a tricky start; the bells wait one beat and then come in.  If we play from the CD, I never know when the music will actually start, so I can't cue the bell players when to come in.  Let's hope the snow holds off.

No two hour late start today.  Probably not one tomorrow either, but we may get an early out.  Thankfully, practice is in the morning.  We'll probably get out at noon.  I'm kind of bummed.  I had some Christmas plans for the weekend, but now it's looking like I'll be snowed in until Sunday.  And with the Christmas program that evening (6pm!), I should probably stick around.

Weather...

Oh boy, weather is throwing a wrench into things, as it often does this time of year.

First complication of the day, Mr. D was home sick, so Miss F (preschool) was the sub in his room and Mrs. E took the preschoolers with her kindergartners.  We moved program practice time up to 1:00 since we haven't been getting through the whole program.  Plus it was super windy and the snow kept making drifts outside the E's house, so we drove kids over to church.

Today's practice finally flowed better.  Not too many tweaks were made.  Our songs sound MUCH better.  The bell song could use more practice, but with practice Thursday and Friday, we'll be ready for Sunday.

However, we might not get two practices in this week... Tomorrow is supposed to be super cold with extra powerful wind chills.  Gross.  If school is two hours late because of the cold temperatures, no worries, we'll still have afternoon practice.  But if it gets cancelled Thursday (or even cancelled on Friday... there's a chance of 3-5 inches), we'll only have one practice before the big performance Sunday, aka not enough preparation time.  Mr. E says if that's the case we'll cancel Sunday's program.  I'm sure many people won't be happy about that.  But we really need the practice.

Another potential complication... Tomorrow a guest speaker is supposed to come in the afternoon to talk about life in Russia.  He hasn't been very good about responding to emails, but I emailed him anyway to let him know the situation.  I don't have internet at home, so if school is cancelled tomorrow, I won't have a way to contact him.  Nevertheless, I have a plan in place! Mr. E is going to log on to my email and send a message to him (if school is cancelled).  If it's two hours late, we can proceed as planned.  I guess we'll see what happens!

Sneaky Kids!

Ha, my kids were so cute today.

There was a student council meeting over lunch, and I'm pretty sure they are planning a surprise for the teachers that involves candy and pop.  How do I know? Well, let me tell you!

While I went through the lunch line getting my lunch, everyone else had made it back to the classroom and was eating.  The student council meeting had just gotten over, so our councilwoman was in the room getting her classmates up to speed.  The door was closed, nothing too odd about that.  But when I walked in, there were quite a few wide eyes and innocent faces, like I walked in while they were talking about me.

Then there was the whole, "Okay, [student's name], you know what you have to do? Right? Right? About that thing we were talking about before... *ahem*"  It's not a direct quote, but my memory is about 90% accurate on this.  One kid (not too skilled at being subtle) answered, "You mean what we were talking about before Miss H came in here?" Then came the, "Hey! Shhh! Don't say...!" and those meaningful looks you give people when they're saying too much.

A few minutes later, one of them casually asked me what my favorite kind of candy is.  Another one asked me again while I was watching recess duty.  Then the same kid, plus a few more, brought it up during 7th and 8th grade geography! They wanted to know my favorite pop too.  Those little sneakers!

It was so hard to keep a straight face!  The 7th and 8th graders were a bit more subtle than my kiddos; they made it into a conversation about favorite candy and talked about their favorites too.  For some reason, this talk made them think of our teacher gift exchange.  They've been bugging me to tell them the letters/initials I picked for the thing I want (we're doing gift exchange the same way I do it with my class).  At the same time, one of them asked me, "Miss H, do you have a boyfriend?" (He'd asked that question a while ago in the middle of class, so I didn't answer).  Since it was the beginning of class, I did answer him this time.  Then another kid said, "Oh, I bet it's AR, a ring."  Well, that got me flustered!  The letters I picked were MC.  That same boy who made the ring comment said, "Does it stand for 'many kids'?"  Oh boy.  I set him straight and then we got down to geography business.  But for all you, I may as well spill the beans.  MC stands for 'mint chocolate'.  I wonder if my person will figure it out!

Tweaking

Another day of tweaking the Christmas Program.  I almost forgot to send the bulletin insides to the church secretary today (like I told her I would).  I'm getting to the scatterbrained stage of Christmas program preparation!

We have almost all of our props accounted for and in position at church.  Miss S and I ironed out the bell/tone chime location situation.  Our solution is to play all the songs on hand bells and have the music in the books just so, so we don't have to have tables put up for tone chimes.  Miss S taught them how to mart and use mallets; practice went well today! We still have a lot of work to do, but there are four practices left.  We can do it!

Our speakers were more confident today and knew the places where they should be and when.  We shaved about 15 minutes off our total program time today! I know we'll be even faster tomorrow now that I've tweaked mostly everything.

I do have one more change to add tomorrow... The shepherds don't do much acting this year, and I feel kind of bad about that since we have a Bible school kid who is coming to two of our practices so he can be a shepherd.  The 3rd and 4th graders' speaking part is the area where shepherds would normally be doing their acting.  The other speaking part that talks about shepherds already has so many people center stage, it would be too crazy to squeeze a bunch of shepherds up there too.  So my brilliant plan is to have the shepherds do some acting during our song "Run Shepherds Run."  The words of the song are perfect for it!  They'll look around like, "oh, hey, we should go check that baby out!" and then they'll scurry up the side aisle and down the center aisle, gathering around baby Jesus in the manger.  It will be adorable. I'm so excited for practice tomorrow!

While our speaking parts are coming together, the songs almost seem to be getting worse... the two middle songs are solid, but the beginning and ending songs were kind of a mess today.  Our piano player teaches at another school, so she's only with us for one practice before the service.  To help with the transition, we recorded her playing those two songs on the piano so we could "practice" with her playing.  But the recording is waaaay slower than the kids are used to, and they kind of steamrolled all over those songs.  It was hard to hear because we were playing it off Mrs. E's phone held up to a microphone.  Tomorrow we're going to try plugging the phone into the speakers (we didn't have the necessary cord today).

To end on a positive note, we have just the right amount of microphones now!  Mr. D found a cord and another microphone, so we plugged it in and have it in a stand, leaving a cordless mic and a headset for our two main speakers!  Nice!

First Practice

Ohhh man, my brain is very mushy right now. We had our first Christmas program practice at church this afternoon.  Everyone was over there, in their places by 1:30pm.  There are lots of logistical issues to work out with this program... It's called "The Road to Christmas" and there are two people who are following the road to Christmas, seeing signs along the road, talking to people they meet on it.  We're also having instrumentalists accompany two of our first songs, so we need an extra place for those people to stand together (but not cover anyone up).  Last night, we underestimated how much room they'd need.  They were squished today and did not hesitate to let me know!  Their playing went well, but we need to figure out a different arrangement.  I think we'll split the choir and have the tone chimes on one side and the instruments on the other.

I did not assign instrument parts very well.  The 8th grader with the most parts is playing instruments for the two songs accompanying our choir.  So she has to do a lot of back and forth running around.  Today we did a lot of "who goes where when?" and "which side of the stage do I need to be on?"  I also pulled some of the 3rd and 4th grade angels to do some special acting with Mary and Joseph (when the angels come tell them the news).  But I made the mistake of just picking kids, not drawing a name out of a hat, and one of the third graders was not too pleased.  So I told them I would draw names out of a hat for the permanent roll on Monday, and the ones today would just be the ones doing it for today.  Sigh. Drama, drama, drama.

Mostly what our issues today come down to is that we need a few more microphones and just a little more space up front.  I should probably go through the program in my head, seeing where people should be and when.  Today was rough, but a surprising number of kids showed up where they were supposed to, when they were supposed to, without me having to say anything to them!  We were supposed to be off book today.  My kiddos had their parts memorized this morning as part of their memory work.  Some of them still had it memorized during practice.  A few forgot their lines and remembered when prompted.  A few totally blanked.  So Mrs. E and I stressed that everyone should look over their parts over the weekend, even if it's already memorized.  Only five more practices until our first performance! Yikes!

I found a new "English" game for my kids to play during Work on Writing.  It's called "Mad Libs: The Game" and it's basically Apples to Apples mixed with Mad Libs.  One card is in the middle with a sentence on it that has blanks where the nouns/adj/verbs are.  For example, "If you can't be (verb), be (verb)."  Players have seven cards in their hands to pick from, and they place their selections face down on the table.  They take turns reading the sentence with their card selections substituted for the spaces on the main card.  Afterward, people vote on which one is the best.  My kids had a blast! We played in pods, dividing the cards up amongst the three groups.  They came up with some pretty silly sentences!  The best one from the morning was, "If you can't be handcuffed, be explosive!"

Christmas Setup

I think we have a floor map planned out for the Christmas service... it took some figuring, but I'm pretty sure we'll have everything in place so we can still move around somewhat easily.  Complications this year include having bells/instruments accompany two choir songs.  Where to put them? A place where they're not covering anyone up, but they're not in the way the rest of the program.  We decided to have the two tables set up in front of the manger scene for the first part of the program. We're not using the manger, so they won't be covering anyone.  After those songs, the kids will move the tables and put their bells away.  Actually, they'll be playing tone chimes so the bells can be set up on other tables for our offering song.  Those tables will be set up, but shoved against the wall so they're not in the way.  We'll pull them out when it's time to play on them.

Miss S showed me some of the special bell techniques we'll be using in our offering song.  We've been practicing the song with normal ringing, but next week we'll add the fancy effects... things like "marting" or striking the bell on the table (I usually call it table damping) and malleting (or striking the bells with mallets).  We've never used mallets before so it should be interesting!

Birthday Surprise

Mr. D's 50th bday is tomorrow.  The 3rd and 4th grade parents planned a bunch of surprises for him today so he wouldn't suspect.  First, everyone in school wore all black today.  Only two kids forgot!  I thought for sure he would figure it out before school, but he didn't.  He didn't even figure it out in chapel when we were all together.  But once we gathered in Mr. E's room for Christmas program practice (after chapel), THEN he figured out something was up.  After the fact, he said he thought something was suspicious when all four volunteers that went up during Pastor's message were wearing black, but he chalked it up to a coincidence. But after seeing the sea of black accumulated in Mr. E's room... The funny thing is, he said he almost wore his black shirt to school today!  Wouldn't that have been funny?

We sang Happy Birthday, of course, and the 3rd and 4th grade parents got cupcakes for the whole school.  Tonight, some of the older girls are decorating his classroom with black decorations (and putting a few presents from the parents in there as well).  I bet he'll be surprised!

The Christmas program is coming together... Mrs. E and I got the seating chart figured out (I think) and the bulletin covers have been selected.  Well, there are seven choices.  The church secretary will have to narrow it down from there.  Each year, students get to draw a possible bulletin cover, and the best ones are used as the covers for the Christmas program bulletins.  I've helped the secretary print them in the past, and it's actually a lot more work than you'd think.  I don't imagine she'll want to print seven varieties... but we'll see what she says!

Crack-a-lackin'

Since I bought more yoga balls last night, today was the day for cracking down on usage behavior.  We had a class discussion about what was distracting and what was acceptable.  I made a Rules chart and posted it on the front of my podium.  It already came in handy twice today!  One boy dribbled his ball and all I had to do was say his name and he put it away in the closet.  The other time was when the 7th and 8th graders came in for class. They were jacked up about the extra balls and were bouncing and kicking and dribbling, so I pointed to the chart and said, "Not allowed!" And they calmed down right away.  One 7th grader got his taken away and he fussed a bit, but I held my ground.

Here are our rules:

• Moderate bouncing/wiggling
• Use your own ball (don't ask to use a classmate's)
• No dribbling
• No kicking
• No hitting the sides
• No rolling around
• No warnings! Ball goes in the closet

I also put up charts about what to do in Word Work, Work on Writing, and Writing Workshop.  Since our routine changed during November for NaNo, going back to the old way is taking a bit more time.  They keep asking if they can do specific things during Daily 5 rounds, so now I just have to direct them to the lists posted on the door.

We did a science lab on mixtures today.  It took a lot of setup, both before science started and after I passed out the lab sheets to my students.  Still, they had fun and we were able to find a good-ish stopping point.  Now I have a large pile of dishes to do.  Two test tubes were broken in the course of the lab.  One while a student dumped out the contents into the dump container (she tapped it against the side of the glass).  The other was while they were rinsing out their glassware; somehow another broke.  Thankfully, I have a "sharps" container in the closet.  And I also have plenty of test tubes.  Still, I don't like dealing with broken glass.

Tomorrow we'll have to finish the second portion of the lab and work on our conclusions/review.  I was hoping to get to another lesson so we could have a second lab this week since next week our science/social time is going to be used for Christmas program practice.  Oh well.  We'll see how tomorrow goes.

My church doesn't have an advent services, but my farmer's church has them Tuesday nights, so I'm headed down to Truman for church tonight.  The weather is good so far! I think there's a small chance of snow and it's supposed to get cold later, but that won't be terrible to drive in.

Flexible Seating

The adventures in flexible seating continue...

This weekend, I bought a few exercise balls for our classroom, one 55cm and one 65cm.  Monday morning my kiddos blew them up.  The 65cm ball was HUGE! They were so excited to try it out.  The only thing I didn't like was that it was too big to fit under the desks.  The kid who got to use it (we're rotating who gets the privilege each day) is a bigger guy, and he has trouble staying in his 40 acres as it is... He enjoyed sitting on it, but he did take up a lot more space.  I would tolerate the size more, except it doesn't fit under a desk, so it's a bit more free-floating.  Chairs where they're not supposed to be drive me crazy!!!

The 7th and 8th graders want me to convince Mr. E to let them have exercise balls as seating in their room.  Today, the boys took over the pod the girls usually sit in (so they could use the yoga balls).  The boys were much quieter, but the girls at the table were super loud today! Normally they're the quiet ones.  Maybe I need to outlaw sitting at the folding table.  I brought it up to Mr. E after school while we teachers were waiting to wave off the buses.  He's not too thrilled with the prospect, but he feels like he should have more of an open mind about it.

The 7th graders' idea was to have them use regular chairs during their lessons, and while Mr. E is teaching the other grade, then they could use the balls.  Mr. E was not a fan; it would waste so much time!  True enough!  I'm stopping at the store tonight to return the big 65cm ball and replace it with another 55cm ball.  I offered to get one that would be passed around to other classrooms to see how they like it (before we commit to a ton of them).  This weekend I sent a note to go in the bulletin that if people have extra exercise balls they don't want, they can send them the 5th and 6th graders' way.  We'll see what happens!

Our first home basketball game was tonight, only B squad (we played their A squad team there last week).  I watched the last half of the girls' game and the first half of the boys' game.  Girls won! Boys have a closer game, but we were behind when I left.

Listening Art

This afternoon for art, we did a project I stole from Miss S.  She plays a classical music piece for her students, and they draw the picture they get in their heads from the music. They also write about what they pictured. My kids LOVED it!  I didn't have any classical songs picked out, so I played a song by Waterflame (a video game composer).  They were dancing and having a grand old time!  And they wanted to do it again!  This time, I played "Green Onions" by Booker T and the MGs.  They loved that song too, but most had the same visual because it's played in the movie The Sandlot.  Then I played more Waterflame.  Next time, I think we'll do some Lindsey Stirling or maybe try some classical composers.

As I scrolled through the songs I have on my desktop computer, I noticed sound effects from the summer reading program's "soundtrack scrimmage" or "sound effect scrimmage".  I have a feeling my kids would like to play that too.  Maybe next week!  Except we are starting Christmas program practice at church soon, which will take up most of our afternoons.  I've been considering cutting down on Daily 5 time in the morning to squeeze in some science/social studies time.  I have another week before I have to decide that though.

Seed Dinner

Gotta keep this short tonight. We had a faculty meeting after school, and there is a seed appreciation dinner in Truman I'm a plus one for...

NaNo update: all 10 of my kiddos won their NaNo! Our class word count total was 92,268, which was 4,768 over our cumulative class goal (87,500).  Lots of words!

Christmas Presents

Only two kids are not to their goals yet! And both of them are above 95% finished.  Hopefully they write tonight!  The kid who was sick yesterday did write a little at home.  I typed for him this morning until he had 20 words to go, then I made him type so he could get that sense of accomplishment in typing the final words.  He was excited.

I myself have finished my book... I ended my story at 30,911 words, 911 over my goal.  My students were impressed I wrote 3,000 words last night.  I really wanted to finish the story!  Now I have time to catch up on things... like doing dishes, and reading, and making Christmas presents.

Speaking of Christmas presents... over Thanksgiving break I learned how to make those yarn-covered metal hangers.  Perhaps a good parent Christmas present? I also have a big block of white candle wax in one of the cupboards at school.  Decorative candles as a present?  I had my students vote and 9/10 picked the candle.  The one boy who voted for the hanger said that his grandma has a ton of them so he thought she would like one.  I told him he could bring in metal hangers and I'd teach him how to do it.  So far he hasn't taken me up on the offer.

So we're going to make candles for Christmas.  Mrs. B has baby food jars we can have.  I just need to buy some fragrances and wicks.  Otherwise I have fabric paint (to decorate the outsides), food coloring, and wax.  Mrs. B was wondering if the wax was the right kind to make candles, so I checked today and the wax I have is labeled candle wax. We should be good to go!

99%

Only four more students need to win NaNo! (Plus me).  We are at 99% of our word goal! Some students who've already won are continuing to write since they aren't finished with their stories.  The good news is that the NaNo site will stay up and running all year so they can keep typing on there.

A few who finished wanted to start editing right away (and adding pictures).  The YWP site has a place where you can download a copy of your novel, but it's in a .pdf format so it's not editable.  We started by copying and pasting everything from the .pdf, but the formatting transferred weird, resulting in a lot of work deleting extra spaces, etc. So now I'm having them copy and paste each chapter individually into a Word document. Way easier than it sounds.

I was going to have them wait until January to edit their stories, but they're still excited about them, so maybe I won't wait.  Maybe we'll take a week off and then I'll show them some tools in Microsoft Word to edit.  They're already collecting pictures to use for their book covers.  The site I mentioned in an earlier post has cover-making capabilities, but I checked it out today and it seems more complicated than CreateSpace (the site NaNo used to use).  I read some of the forums for educators on the YWP site and other teachers said they're still using CreateSpace because it wasn't that expensive.  So I took a look at it again, and it turns out if the books are in black and white (aside from the cover), the prices are comparable to The Book Patch.  My new plan is to use CreateSpace and have my kiddos create covers for their books through the site.  That way they can have a say in what their covers look like (plus it's less work for me!).

NaNo Update

Only two days left in November... my class is 94% to our goal of 87,500 words written (we're at 82,719 as of now).  I have only 3,000 words to go on my own NaNo story; I hope to finish the story by tomorrow night.  So far, five of my ten students have reached their goals and won!  Some of the winners are still writing too! I was pleasantly surprised at how many wrote over Thanksgiving break.  The boy who accidentally/on purpose deleted his story was one of the people who wrote, and he made his goal!!! Here's what he posted in our online message board; it's too sweet not to share. "made it to my word goal i'm happy i thought i would never get it but the main thing is never give up" Teacher win!

One sad thing is that NaNo is not offering a free hard copy of each winner's story.  In the past they've given out codes and I've published my kiddos' books for them.  Now they're not, but I promised my kids that I'd publish their books for them.  I did a quick online search after school for cheap, self-publishing sites and I did find one that seems relatively inexpensive... The Book Patch, $2.88 per 60pg book.  That makes me feel much better about the project.  I think that will be my Christmas present to my students this year, a coupon for a printed version of their books.

A former student stopped in today after school to get help on a writing assignment.  She has to write a gothic/creepy/horror story for her American Literature class and she wanted help outlining it.  The teacher had given her what I like to call a "plot roller coaster" worksheet with spaces for the exposition, rising action, climax, etc.  Her idea was that a nurse in a hospital is murdering people.  It took about an hour, but now she has an outline plus some detailed character notes.  The janitor is going to discover her "crime room" and then disappears, never to be found again... dun, dun, dun.  I'm glad I don't have to write that story!

We started writing letters to our Slovakian pen pals today.  I'm a little worried I'm overwhelming my students with letter writing. But they got pretty excited about these letters, so I hope that excitement keeps up.  I was spurred into action by an email I saw this morning from one of the Slovakian teachers.  She wanted to know if I'd seen her previous email.  Oops, I thought I'd responded to that one... she sent it almost two weeks ago... Since we were on Thanksgiving break, I didn't see the email asking if I'd gotten the first email for a few days.  Sigh.  But now I've responded so we should be all right.

I always feel like I'm cheating a little at the pen pal thing.  My kids are fluent in English, so they can just whip out a letter in a few days, or even a day.  Our pen pals have been working on their letters all month! And putting a ton of time and effort into them.

A bunch of my book orders came in today. Yay new books! I have to be careful not to hog them all.  Lots of them are good read-aloud picture books, so I want to keep them and do them one by one.  But then I get books from the library, so we read those first and the bought books stay tucked away on the shelf.  I should let my students enjoy the books instead of hogging them on the shelves!  Oh well, I guess it's a good incentive for me to keep my act together on using read-alouds to teach skills.

Time for me to wrap up and get out of here.  My plan for tonight: run errands, pick up some more NaNo prizes, and get home and write!

Rainy Day Blues

Another antsy day for both my class and me.  To top it off, it rained all day and the temp is hovering at the 34 degree mark.

We had a mixed up morning because of the CropLife speaker who came.  He wanted to do his presentation for both the 7th/8th graders and 5th/6th graders, so Mr. E and I had to do some schedule finagling so the speaker didn't have to hang out at school doing nothing for too long.

Our guy works for Bayer CropScience and is from Tennessee, but he travels all over for his job.  He has been to all 50 states and quite a few countries too.  He was pretty interesting! He showed us pictures of different (nontraditional) crops and had us guess what they were.  We also got to see some videos of drones, how a planter works, and a new driverless tractor Case is coming out with.  You can run it with a program on your iPad, and it will send you alerts if something is wrong... I don't know if I'd trust a tractor to work all by itself.  But the video makes it look pretty cool!  Check it out here.

The 7th and 8th graders didn't have as many questions as the 5th and 6th graders, but they were still a respectful audience.  After his presentation was over, we took our spelling tests and then had recess until lunch time.  My 5th and 6th graders had math in the morning and then we did Daily 5 in the afternoon.  For some reason, the internet was super slow, which made NaNo writing more complicated.  Not many words were written today.  Everyone else was hard to settle and kept distracting each other.  I had a headache, so I kind of felt like punting the afternoon.  However, we did make it through our Daily 5 choices, I got the book orders ordered, and we finished the day with Christmas Program Practice.  That went well; we even had time to start learning one of the songs.

Now I'm all packed up, ready to go... all I have to do is feed Joe.  Then on to Thanksgiving break!

Two Days

We only have two days of school this week and I am antsy for them to be over.  I love school, don't get me wrong, but knowing that there are family celebrations ahead gets me excited and I want to skip ahead!

My kiddos were pretty antsy today too.  Not quite as bad as last week's full moon/potential blizzard weather though.  No spelling or memory work or handwriting this week since it's short, so their whole focus can be on their NaNos.  Most are right on track! Quite a few wrote a bit over the weekend.  My NaNo is on track too, although I don't think much writing will get done tonight.  It's my farmer's birthday today and I'm heading down to Truman after school to celebrate.

We started Christmas Program Practice today.  We made it halfway through the program, which was expected.  Tomorrow we'll do the other half.  It's coming along!

No School?

That was the question of the day from my kids.  Oh those weather people! Filling my students' heads with dreams of a cancelled day of school.  "Sleepy Eye called off school early! What if New Ulm does? Do we get to go home early?" Guys, they're not calling school off early.  We're only getting rain. "LOOK! IT'S SNOWING!" Okay, but look, it's not sticking. "THEY'RE GOING TO CALL SCHOOL OFF!" No, really, it's not that bad out there.  We're having school until the end of the day. "THEY'RE GOING TO CALL SCHOOL OFF!"

So that was my morning.

Our religion lesson was about Aaron and Hur holding up Moses' hands while Joshua battled the Amalekites (Exodus 17, I believe, if you want to check it out for yourselves).  My kiddos wanted to see what it was like to hold their arms up in the air for as long as they could (okay, I did challenge them).  They kept them up the rest of religion and into read-aloud time.  One by one they dropped their arms; they couldn't keep them up anymore.  But three of the 6th graders were in it to win it.  They kept their arms up to get a drink in the hallway (Mr. E noticed), and tried to eat snack with no hands (theirs were still up in the air!). Then they wanted to work on their handwriting (due today) that they hadn't finished yet.  But that's kind of hard to accomplish with hands in the air.

They were pretty creative coming up with solutions... one girl tried having a classmate hold her handwriting book above her head so she could still write with her hands in the air.  That didn't work too well.  Someone else suggested lying on her tummy so she could still keep her hands up, but the book could lie on the floor.  The boys came up with the best solution; they laid on their backs under a table and held their handwriting pages up on the bottom of the table so their hands would still be in the air, but they could still see what they were doing.  They lasted that way for about a half an hour.  They would've kept going, but they were distracting their classmates too much, so I made them quit.  They were all supposed to drop their hands at the same time so there wouldn't be one winner, but the boys kept their hands up even after I said to drop, so the 6th grade girl 'lost'.  But everyone said the boys were cheating and it didn't count.  After that the boys went to get a drink again and I saw them stick their hands back in the air, still trying to outdo each other... oh boy.

Well, I suppose I should get out of here.  It's still snowing a little and the wind is pretty gusty.  30-50mph winds this afternoon.  So far it's becoming slush and not ice.  But 4:00 is when the temperature is supposed to dip, and I probably should get home sooner rather than later.  I have a pretty lazy weekend planned: write lots of words on my NaNo (I'm still behind by 600 words), read books, watch movies (the Bookmobile had a bunch of new-ish ones!).  Sunday we play bells and sing in church.  That's about it!

Survivor

The things my kiddos talk about at lunchtime always amazes me.  Today I was only partly paying attention when I tuned in to two 5th graders in a heated dialogue about Adam and John.  Something about one of the guys hiding food and eating it later and him being so much stronger.  But they thought he was being dumb and they really though the other guy was right... It took me a minute to realize they were talking about the TV show Survivor.  Man, they get into that show!

Have I ever mentioned my student who lost his entire NaNo? He had been typing it in Microsoft Word and I wanted him to upload it to the NaNo website so his stats/word count would go towards our whole goal. He copied and pasted his story onto the site and then decided to delete from the Microsoft Word document.  Uh, okay, if you really want to... After he put it on the website, I checked our class page to see how much his words affected our class total.  The site showed he still had zero words.  So I told him to save it.  And he did, but my computer still showed he'd written zero.  He was adamant that it saved, so I said okay, and left it at that.

It turns out, it hadn't saved.  So all his 800 words were gone.  And since he'd deleted the words from his Word document, they truly were gone; we couldn't undo the deleting.  I called the IT guys a few times to see if they could recover it, but they couldn't find a backup.  This poor kid had lost all will to write now that his words were gone.  I talked to his mom after basketball practice last night to see if he could write at home so he could meet his 3,000 word goal by the end of the month.  Sounds like a plan!

Today I offered to type while he dictated and he now has 743 words! His will to write is back!  I talked to a bunch of parents tonight at conferences about letting their kids have writing time over Thanksgiving break especially, just so we meet our goals.  I love NaNoWriMo, but I will definitely be glad when November is over.  I must admit, I'm behind on my goal.  I didn't write any words last night, so tonight I need to write about 1900.

I only have two more conferences left.  They've gone well so far!  I've stayed pretty close to my schedule; there were only two or three I went over by a little bit.  But I had empty slots sprinkled around the schedule and was able to get back on track.  The PTL fed us tonight too: ham sandwiches, chips/salsa, vegetables/dip, and cracker bars for dessert.  Mmm, mmm, mmm!  And I actually had time to eat tonight too!

Outside

Word on the street says there might be a blizzard here Friday.  We're supposed to get less than a half an inch, but it's going to be windy... and I still don't have any plastic over my porch screens! Oh well, I suppose I'll survive.  It's not supposed to get below freezing Friday until about 4:00, so it might come as rain.  The kids were all like, "Wait! Blizzard? No school Friday???"

We have our road back! Actually, last Friday they took down the detour and now we are back to minimal traffic outside school.  Since the weather was good today, we had chapel at church and walked there and back.

Once chapel was over, we had music practice (we're singing on Sunday) and then we packed Operation Christmas Child boxes.  We had enough stuff to pack 63 boxes!  Each kid got to pack at least one.  Oh we put some good presents in there!  I wish I could be there to see the recipients' faces when they open the boxes.  All 63 boxes ended up in the back of Miss S's van; she'll drop them off in New Ulm at the pickup site before Friday.

Since this was probably the last nice day of the year, we went outside for recess.  They've been playing GaGa Ball and the competition is fierce.  I usually have to referee or there's lots of shouting about "I'm not out! It didn't touch me!"  One 8th grade girl was talking or something, she had her mouth wide open, and the ball bounced in her face.  She got a huge mouthful of rubber kickball!  If you've ever been around kickballs, you know the rubber smells gross.  If you touch it with your hands, your hands smell gross afterwards.  And if you are unfortunate enough to forget that fact and accidentally lick your hand, you forever regret that awful taste in your mouth.  This poor girl.  Her entire tongue licked that ball.  It bounced away as if nothing had happened.  But moments later (if you looked closely), you could see a little brown oval on the ball where her 'licking' picked up dirt from the floor of the GaGa pit.  Eww. Disgusting.

Family Write Night

Today had some unplanned moments.  Last night, after I was done at school my low tire pressure light went on as I left.  Lovely.  It was late, I was tired, and I still had a bunch of errands to run.  New Ulm is the closest place to fill up with air, so I went to town and pumped up the tire.  Then I ran errands and tested the tire before I went home.  It was slightly lower and I worried I'd have a flat tire in the morning.

My plan was to, in the morning right after I got up, check the psi in my finicky tire.  If it were flat, I would call Pastor to see if he could help me put the spare on.  This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had only gone down about 5psi. Which gave me enough to air to get to school, but I'd need to get it fixed sooner rather than later.  Normally I could go after school, but tonight was the Family Writing Night, hosted by me in my classroom until 7:00.  By then all the tire places would be closed.

Here's how my problem got solved: Once I got to school, I called the tire place and made an appointment for 2:15.  Miss F (preschool and Title teacher) would watch my class at afternoon recess and dismiss them at the end of the day while I got my tire fixed.  Hopefully it would only take a half an hour to fix, and I'd be back to school by 3:00 when the event started.

It happened pretty much like that, except it took an hour to fix.  So I was a half an hour late to the write-in.  Thankfully, other teachers were helping, so they got things set up (my kids arranged the room with Miss F before they left for the day).  By the time I got there, there were about 20 people writing and playing story games.  It was super fun! Lots of families came and wrote and told stories together.  Kids were sharing their writing with each other and writing letters to each other (or to other friends who hadn't come).  One NaNoer came and one family from Nicollet came; the rest were families from ILS.  Mr. D got some good pictures for the paper/yearbook/projectors at church.

We only had one pizza left over (and a few carrots and pretzels).  So good guessing on my part! One of the moms cleaned the leftovers up for me; we'll eat them at snack tomorrow.  There are still 10 minutes to go for Writing Night, but the last people just left (and my laptop is dying), so I think I'm going to head home even though my classroom is kind of a mess... my kiddos can clean it up tomorrow morning.

All in all, I'd say our first writing night was a smashing success!

Electoral College

We were supposed to do MN history today.  And we sort of did in a round about way.  Instead of talking about Minnesota's boom in population and how it became a state (something that got pushed off until tomorrow), we talked about the election.

It was a pretty deep discussion.  We talked about popular vote, the electoral college (and watched this cool video explaining it), the presidential election results by county in MN, protesters, our Constitutional right to protest, what is legal and illegal about that, concession/victory speeches, and a whole bunch of other stuff I've forgotten.

The 7th and 8th graders went to Drug Court today.  Every year they visit the court system and sit in on parole hearings for people who've had trouble with drugs (at least I think that's what they go see... I've never gone).  They were all abuzz when they came back because a girl who checked in actually confessed to using drugs and admitted that her boyfriend was back in her apartment also using.  So they arrested her and were going to plan a sting to arrest her boyfriend too.  Wow!  One of the 8th graders said she confessed because they always do a drug test on them and last week her's came back positive, so she knew they were going to catch her if she said no again.  So she just confessed.  And got arrested.  Usually they get to talk to some of the people and ask questions. I'm not sure if that happened this year or not.

Since they were gone all afternoon, I had extra time with my 5th and 6th graders.  They skipped math and bells today and we just did art for an hour.  We're doing this project where they cut out silhouettes and put the background on a page and the silhouette on another page, both pages having been painted to look like sunsets or something else colorful.  They are turning out pretty good! Mostly we have to wait for paint to dry now.  They were fussing because it was too much work or too hard to cut out all the intricate little details on the silhouettes they picked.  Most wanted to use box-cutters to cut them out because they though a scissors would be too difficult.  I thought it would be tougher with a box-cutter, but hey, it's their art project.

Whew, my brain is mush.  They were off the wall today! Getting in each other's faces and making mean/rude comments.  We didn't even get to vote on our class prize today because they were so rude and distracted this morning.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.  I think I'm missing the supermoon.  I wanted to watch it rise, but I was still stuck inside at school and I just thought of it now (or I would've poked my head outside to see it).  I'm sure it won't be as big as at moonrise, but it will hopefully still look bigger than normal!

I need to run errands in New Ulm tonight. We have our family writing night tomorrow and I need to pick up pizza and other supplies (markers, paper, stickers, etc.).  I hope we're ready! I feel like I haven't done enough planning, but it doesn't really need all that much.  We expect about 25-30 people to show up tomorrow.  Let's hope I ordered enough pizza!

Veteran's Day

The Veteran's Day program at Nicollet was really good. The high school band was phenomenal; it made me miss band and wish our students at ILS could participate in band.  The main speaker was a bit long-winded and a lot of what he talked about was over my students' heads, but he was still good.  He went on for a bit about many of the threats and dangers America faces from nations overseas (and cyber threats too).  It was very sobering.  He also said the US is preparing for offensive cyber attacks to retaliate against countries who have already attacked us through cyber means.  Yikes!  That came towards the end of his speech; it's too bad it didn't end on a happier note.  He did leave students and community members with some life tips, mostly things like eat healthy, get exercise, do stuff besides video games, etc.  One thing that impressed me (and surprised me a little, but not a lot) is that Minnesota military men have a great reputation around the world for being great people, hard workers, good to be around, and good overall soldiers.  Our speaker said that's because of the communities we have in the Midwest and the work ethic we grow up learning (especially from our farming families).

On a completely different note, earlier this morning I had read an article about flexible seating options in classrooms.  What that means is that students can sit on things besides chairs, things like: exercise balls, wobble chairs, stools, beanbags, cushions, etc. This is to keep them from having their chair legs off the floor (something my class struggles with A LOT) and to give them a way to fidget and use up energy without distracting the class.  My students LOVED this idea.  They thought we should buy exercise balls right now and have them at school on Monday.  When I said we would need to get funding for the project, a whole bunch of them remembered they had exercise balls at home, could they just bring those? Nearly 90% of the class had some at home they thought they could bring!  Still, I thought it would be better to check with Mr. E about it.  I gave them a weekend assignment to sit on their exercise balls and work for 15 minutes on something... reading, writing NaNo, whatever.  Just try to get a feel for it if they like it and can work like that or not.  I'm curious to see how many remember to do it (and how many can actually work like that).

After school I brought it up with the other teachers and it turns out they've been curious about it too! One teacher was thinking about doing a Thrivent Grant for it.  She'd have a parental education night about how important motion is throughout the day and then use the Thrivent money to buy stools/balls/chairs for her preschoolers.  I think it's a great idea!  Mr. E said he'd check with the school board at their next meeting and see what they think about it.  So we need to hold off on bringing the exercise balls to school for now.

My LuLaRoe party went well last night. It was fun having my sisters around, and it was fun having the teachers from school over for a non-school event (even though we did talk about school stuff a little).  Not too many other people showed up, just a friend from my college days, and she had to run off for a meeting in Mankato.  But such is life! It was still a fun time with the people who were there... something different to do besides correct papers and lesson plan!

Erlenmeyer Flasks

We had fun in 5th and 6th chemistry today.  We were learning about concentrations and titrations and acid-base neutralization, and I explained it pretty well if I do say so myself.

I had a picture on the "concentrations" page of a bunch of glasses with red liquid going from dark to light.  They wondered how you could do something like that.  Huh. I started to explain about food coloring and concentration, and then I thought, maybe I should just show them! I had food coloring in the closet and a bunch of water in an ice cream pail (not used in another lab).  So we did an impromptu demonstration at the lab table.  They wanted to swirl the food coloring in the beakers, but the water kind of sloshed out.  So I grabbed an Erlenmeyer flask from the closet and then the ALL wanted to try swirling.  And dumping liquids in it.  I must say, it is a pretty neat piece of glassware.

Then we got to talking about neutralizations and why our stomachs need to be neutralized sometimes. Which led to a discussion about why we throw up when we get sick.  Which led to a discussion about why throats feel gross when throwing up.  Which led to a discussion about anorexia. Which led to a discussion about motion sickness.  Which led to a discussion on balancing.  Which resulted in us standing on one leg with our eyes open, and then closed.

Like I said.  It was a cool science class.

And we still had time for recess!

South America Speaker

Our guest speaker for South America was a little late today.  I had just pulled up a blank map on the board so we could practice the countries of South America for our map test tomorrow, when she came into our room.  So no practice time.

She was really good! Very personable, she's originally from Colorado, and is a junior at MLC going for a Spanish education major.  She taught for a year in Peru and also has spent time in Chile.  She showed us lots of pictures of her time in Peru; she traveled extensively and had many pictures of those tourist destinations.  Some of them were even places I'd already taught my kids about! The best part is, they recognized some of the locations!

The kids were so impressed they were gushing about the speaker when they went back to Mr. E's room.  He was so impressed by their being impressed, that he came to our room to tell the speaker how much his kids enjoyed her talk.

Unfortunately, she couldn't stay to talk to my class.  But she did leave her presentation up so I could go through it with the 5th and 6th graders.  She might come back another day to teach us about Chile.

We had PTL tonight.  It's finally over and I'm headed home! Tonight's late night makes up for tomorrow's early departure.  I'm having a LuLaRoe party at 4:30 tomorrow, so I need to leave school earlier than normal so I can get home and get things ready!

Mock Election

Our mock election was a success! It seemed like the other grades/teachers had fun voting... we even had a walk in visitor who voted (one of the class helpers stopped in to say hello and we recruited her to vote).  One kid went home sick today and didn't vote before he left.  Mr. E is the only other one who didn't vote; he was at a principal's meeting all afternoon.  I think I can catch him in his room now...

We need him to vote because it's a tie for favorite ice cream flavor: 23 chocolate, 23 vanilla.  There were 8 write-in votes: 5 cookie dough, 2 cookies and cream, 1 mint chip.  The presidential election for our school was a landslide: 42 Trump, 5 Clinton.  Again, we had 8 write-in votes: 4 Deez nuts, 1 Jill Stein, 1 Mom, 1 Gary Johnson, 1 Darrell Castle. Our results will be announced to the students tomorrow after chapel.

I'm going to keep this short since I want to get out of school early and vote!  I also have a check to drop off at the bank for my class, but the bank closes at 3:30... better get moving!

Fall Carnival

Today's carnival was a success! Everyone had fun and much candy was dispersed.

Lots of the younger grades wore costumes today, plus a bunch of teachers. Miss S tried to be Ms. Frizzle, but her dress was solid green and she had a scarf with it, so her kiddos thought she was Disgust from the movie Inside Out.  I went as Fern from Charlotte's Web; I wore a blue plaid button-up shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, my hair in braids, and carried a stuffed animal pig.  The 6th grade girls had brought fake clip-on spiders for their musical chair station, and they said I should borrow one to be Charlotte.  So I did! I clipped it right to my shirt.  That really helped sell the outfit.  I had the face painters paint me some freckles so I'd look even more like her.  Mr. D went as a "Ceiling Fan".  He wore sunglasses and carried around a camera (or maybe that was just to take pictures for the yearbook...) and a sign that said "Ceilings are the best! Go Ceilings! You rock!"  Get it? A fan of ceilings?  Mrs. E was gone today and her sub got the memo too late, so no costume there.

Her substitute was actually Miss N from last year! Her parents' church has their annual lutefisk dinner this weekend (another reason she was up in our area). All the lower grades were super excited to see her again.  It was good catching up with her during the fall carnival.

It is such a beautiful day outside.  I have everything packed up from school and my car is loaded with things I need this weekend... heading to Fulda! We get an extra day off because it's the end of the quarter.  I plan to get my grades done and do a lot of reading, writing, and baking!  My NaNo story is at 4700 words, so I'm a bit ahead.  I'm hoping to get even further ahead because next week will be a busy one.

Sunrise

This morning's sunrise was gorgeous.  I wouldn't have noticed (since it was still mostly dark when I got to school), but the school nurse bustled in all excited about 7:35 and asked if I had a minute. Sure!  She waved me over to the door and led me outside, gesturing to the fluffy pink clouds hovering to the east.  "Look what a beautiful day it is! Let's start the morning right!" And then she gave me a hug and practically waltzed back into the building.  I stood outside a few more moments, admiring the view, and then work called me back into my classroom.

I passed out BINGO prizes today.  The lab table was covered in prizes, and yet, only three kids earned bingos this quarter.  One got three, the rest got only one.  Some of the 5th graders didn't understand the concept that they had to have the books written down.  Many hadn't even looked at their bingo sheets since the first few weeks of school; they didn't remember which books they read way back then.  Proof they should write books in their Reading Notebooks as soon as they finish! Hopefully next quarter they'll be better about keeping up with that.

We tried the talking game again today... it wasn't a great success the second time around.  It started off fine; we did boys vs. girls.  They were neck and neck for a while, but then the boys kept forgetting and they were ahead by 50 words and they gave up and kept talking.  And everyone pointed fingers at each other and it was just kind of a mess.  So in between Daily 5 rounds, we had a discussion about what they liked from the quiet game and what they didn't like.  Everyone kind of said the same thing: they liked that the room was quiet, they didn't like the pointing fingers/blaming everyone. Where to go from here? They/we decided that (now that they know they can be quiet) they will be quiet during Daily 5 so everyone can concentrate.  If their voices get above a level three, a marble gets taken out of the jar.  If it gets above a level four, we play the talking game again.  Sounds fair to me!

The Chair Battle

Every day I'm always shoving in chairs.  It seems that every time I turn around, another chair has been pulled out and I have to push it in so no one trips over it!

It's probably because our desks are new this year, this time with separate desks/chairs unlike the previous model.  The students don't think to push their chairs in, but our walkways are so narrow, it's easy to trip if the chair is left in the wrong place.

We also have two folding tables surrounded by chairs.  My class will do small group stuff there, sometimes independent work throughout the rounds.  But that means different people are sitting in different places and they're still forgetting to push them in!  Sometimes, just to irritate each other, they'll tip their neighbor's chair on its end so the seat/back is touching the floor.

And the 7th and 8th graders, sigh, are no better when it comes to pushing in chairs.  But such is life.  I could have much worse problems in my room!

I set out my treasure trove of prizes today.  The end of the quarter is Friday and also the end of the first week of NaNo.  It's time to do BINGO prizes! Plus every 500 words in NaNo result in either a piece of candy or a medium to large prize.  We do these at the end of the week.  Some kiddos have been writing a ton! I still have two boys who haven't started yet. :(  One of them says he'll write a lot over the weekend.  Hopefully he's right!  He was having trouble focusing today.

One of the 6th graders thought we should do the "no talking game" today.  We played it last year, so you might remember the rules... you can only say three words, and can only speak when the teacher calls on you.  Normally we do boys vs. girls, but today they voted to do 5th vs. 6th.  End results: 5th=35, 6th= 19.  The morning was the biggest challenge.  After math, they'd gotten the hang of it and we didn't count the random blurting in the tally.  I must admit, I got sick of calling on them, thinking they had a question about the lesson, only to find they were actually tattling on their classmates.  They were honest today!  Many times I didn't hear them talk, but they admitted that they did say some words.  So that's good!

One 5th grade boy was having trouble remembering he wasn't supposed to talk.  He got maybe half the class's points.  The rest of his grade, one girl in particular, kept making snide comments to him about him being the worst at the game.  It was terrible!  I had a chat with her at lunch time.  Mr. E happened to be sitting right there too so we both confronted her on the issue.  She's supposed to be writing an apology note to him... hmm... I wonder if she ever got that done?  Another thing to add to the to do list!  Every time I think it's getting shorter, another five things gets added to the list.  Oh well.  Tomorrow's Thursday! And Thursdays are always good days.

Acids and Bases

Another lab today! Most of the kiddos remembered to bring a liquid from home.  The few that forgot scrounged around school until they found something that would work.  We ended up with: whiteboard cleaner, Lysol wipe liquid, disinfectant spray (from the janitor's closet), kitchen soap... pickle juice (x2), tea (my contribution), nail polish, Dr. Pepper, and lemon juice.  They had a lot of fun dipping litmus paper in their liquids! And they still had time for recess today too!

NaNo kick off was both exciting and frustrating.  The IT guys still haven't given me emails for my students, so I couldn't create accounts for them on the NaNo site.  Most of them had emails or knew their parents' emails so thankfully they could still sign-up.  Unfortunately, creating accounts took up a majority of our writing time and our word counts are not too spectacular today.  I myself have written 17 words so far.  But that was in the two minutes between read-aloud and DOL just to show them how the website works.  My real writing time will come once I get home tonight.  I was thinking about running errands tonight after school, but it's getting so late now maybe I'll push it off another night...

Every year we spend a significant chunk of October doing prep exercises to give my students ideas about what to write in their stories.  And every year there are some kids who want to write a totally new story and have no idea they're supposed to use the ideas they thought up just a few days ago! as the basis for their stories.  Ugh!!!  I think I got through to most of them today that they already have ideas for their stories, they just have to type the words on paper now.

One girl has a great story idea about a girl who does barrel racing but breaks her arm right before the big race! But she couldn't figure out how to start it.  She tried and erased at least three times!  I know if she'd just get some words down, she'd be good to go.  But she still has that "it has to be good!" writing syndrome going on.  I sent her part of a pep talk through the YWP (young writers' program) website that will hopefully get her chugging away.  She was excited she could work on it at home through the site.  Hopefully more of them work on it at home now that they're able to!  It makes me (just a little bit) wish I had internet at home so I could write on the site too... oh well! Such is life!

Halloween/Reformation Day

Ufda! You can tell the kids are excited about something!  All day they were hard to settle... from 3rd and 4th all the way up to the 7th and 8th graders.  Everyone is excited about trick or treating tonight, although the weather is kind of gross and misty.  I have some candy to pass out if any trick or treaters stop by, but since I'm still not home from school yet, I'm not sure how many will be out by the time I get there!

This morning one of my students surprised me with an orange and black bouquet of flowers.  I only had tall, narrow vases, so the flowers are kind of stuffed into one.  They look nice on my desk though!  She also brought candy for the whole class.  Last week she said she was bringing cupcakes (she likes to bake), but I guess candy was faster.

At recess today, the boys bottle flipped.  It's a craze that's sweeping the nation, started by a youtuber who videoed himself flipping a bottle 1/4th full of water, trying to get it to land straight up.  Since then, more and more flipping challenges have been issued: get the bottle to land on its cap, on a fence, on a wall, on a table, out a window... the list goes on and on.  There were some pretty amazing flips happening at recess! One boy got the bottle to land on a tiny ledge all the way up on the back of the basketball backboard!!! Another got it to land on the ledge where the metal gym wall and the carpeted gym wall meet (waaay above his head).  It was pretty sweet.

The 7th and 8th graders registered the school to vote today.  They split up to the different classrooms and had each student show them "ID" aka a homework assignment with their name on it to "prove" they were "residents" of our school/their classroom.  Then the registers initialed the line.  Even the teachers registered!  Our school cook can't be there the day of the election, so we're working on an absentee ballot for her.  Mrs. E has a student teacher who leaves before we'll have our election, so she'll need one too.

Tomorrow is the first day of NaNo; everyone is excited.  A bunch of my kiddos want to bring laptops from home to work on their stories.  Sure! Why not?  I made the word count charts after school today and hung them on the back of the door.  It's in a very prominent place so they'll be sure to write lots and lots!

Back Again

We made it!  Everyone is home safe and sound.

A few highlights from the trip...

One of the holes for Frisbee golf was near a mud pit... my group of girls (myself included) does not have great aim. We were terrified our frisbees would end up in the mud... At first it looked like we'd be okay; all the discs went away from the mud (mine came super close though!).  But the last girl threw hers and it landed with a splash far enough away we couldn't reach it.  I told her to just grab one of the extras but her friend said, "Eh, my feet are already wet anyway. I'll just walk in there and grab it!"  So she did! And her feet only got a little more wet.

Although the weather was warm today, it was super windy.  We had to portage the canoes from one side of the peninsula to the other so we wouldn't have to paddle through the waves.  Hey, we just learned about portaging in MN history! They pretended they were voyageurs as they portaged across the nice, sandy path to the other side of the lake.  The first canoe I was in started leaking once we were out on the lake.  Just little streams of water seeping up from the middle seam.  The third girl (sitting in the middle of the boat) joined a different canoe.  We probably would've been fine with it the short amount of time we were canoeing, but my co-paddler didn't know how to swim and got nervous at the idea that we might sink. So we traded our canoe for another.  As soon as the bow of that canoe went in the water, more water bubbled up into the bottom! That one had a hole too! So we went with a third option, one made of fiberglass so it didn't have any seems to leak.

My kiddos played GaGa ball any time they had a minute.  They were out there by 6:30am this morning! This class actually slept the best out of all the classes I've brought so far.  The two male chaperones went out to watch.  One had even picked up coffee for the three of us!  Too bad I don't drink coffee.  But the thought was appreciated!

Our bottle rockets were pretty cool. They shot way farther than I thought they would! One even hit a tree on the other side of the soccer field!  Most left their rockets at Camp Omega to be targets for the men's hunting retreat also going on while we were there.  All of them want to make rockets when we go next year.

All in all, our trip was a success. No one got injured (besides little cuts and scrapes from gaga ball and fort building). They all had fun.  And everyone wants to come back next year!

Camp

The lost papers have been found! I had a huge pile to correct last night, and as I pulled the other papers from my teacher bag, the edge of my planner fell open and I noticed my missing papers! I had tucked them inside so they wouldn't get lost...

Once again, I have a huge pile to correct tonight; I had everything be due before we leave for Camp Omega.  Most everything is handed in (I think), although there are still a few outstanding papers.  Must be done before we leave!  While we're gone, the 7th and 8th graders get a work day on their South America projects. They were all surprised the projects are due next Tuesday... I told them they'd be due either the first or second week of November!

Camp is all my kiddos have been able to talk about all week.  What to bring, what they'll do, who they'll ride with.  And we can't forget the weather either!  The weather for Camp Omega is going to be super nice.  No rain is in the forecast.  No terribly cold weather either.  But still cold enough to need layers.  Hmm, what to pack?

And now for a non-camp related story... Today I wore a long, metal chain necklace with a pendant on the end. The interactive board has "pens" with magnets in them so they stick to the board.  As I gestured with the pen, it stuck to my necklace.  I was so surprised, I said something about it to my students.  Not everyone had seen it, and those who hadn't wanted a demonstration.  So I stuck the pen back on my necklace and let go, letting the pen dangle there.  "Wow! That's cool!" were the general responses.  I thought about keeping it there all day, but decided that would be weird... who knows what the 7th and 8th graders would say!

Lost Papers

Grr... I'm kind of frustrated at the moment. I lost some papers I needed to grade! Last week, before MEA, papers to be corrected were strewn all over my desk.  I thought I had gathered them all up and clipped them together to bring home with me, but I'm missing the little half sheet of paper with my students' reading grades!

I remember setting the pile on top of my calendar so I wouldn't lose them. I debated whether I should bring them with me or not; since they're pretty easy to grade maybe they could wait.  But I think my final decision was to bring them with me.  And now I can't find them anywhere! Maybe I should check my apartment more thoroughly.  Unless somehow they're still in Fulda somewhere!  Grr... I know I never corrected them because they're not in the grade book. And I never handed them back to the kids... so where are they???  I suppose I can go back through my meeting binder and re-grade them for that week. But that's a lot of extra work that could be avoided if I could only remember what happened to them...

We learned more about pH today.  I pulled out the litmus paper and we tested some liquids. Water in Joe's spray bottle tested at a pH of 6.  The fermentation bag (another experiment of crushed cereal, warm water, and yeast) tested at a 5.  Interesting.  Now they have all sorts of other liquids they want to test.  Good thing that's our next lab!  Their assignment is to bring in at least one liquid by next Tuesday so we can test if it's an acid or a base.

We almost have the silent auction wrapped up.  Three people still need to pick their stuff up and pay for their items.  I emailed them all, so hopefully they get back to me soon!

It's looking pretty dreary outside right now, and not just because the sun's going down.  It was supposed to rain on and off all day, but it only rained for a little bit this morning before lunch.  But a thunderstorm is supposed to come tonight!  By Thursday, the weather will be nice and sunny.  Perfect for our trip to Camp Omega!  The forecast for Courtland on Friday says we might get up to 70 degrees!

Good Stuff

The conference was so good! Lots of great information about how to keep your life balanced... socially, emotionally, and spiritually.  The speaker for my first session had medical issues, so he wasn't there and I had to pick a new sectional.  Since the main speaker was so good, I picked a session he was leading (going more in depth on his speech topic- keeping a balance in your life). And that one was good too! I look lots of notes.

Saturday was the dollar bag sale at the MLHS rummage sale. I found good stuff for my classroom and some new clothes.  Last night I did up all my laundry, so now I can wear my new duds!  The stuff for my classroom is still in the bag on the lab table.  There was frost on my car this morning, so I didn't get to school as early as I'd hoped.  And then people kept coming in to talk to me.

Then after school, Mrs. E and I (and Miss S too) went over Christmas program ideas.  We decided to use an old program from seven years ago and pick new songs.  My job it to type everything up so we can plug in names/songs before the Sunday School teachers need the program.

Tonight is the 7th and 8th grade class trip fundraiser at Buffalo Wild Wings in Mankato.  15% of your bill goes to ILS if you mention it.  I'm meeting up with a friend from college to eat there, and run some errands too since I'll be in Mankato.  I better get going!

Guatemala

Pastor's chapel today was about his trip to Guatemala.  He and some other gentlemen in this area (one more guy from our church and a bunch from other churches in the district) went down there for about a week to scope out whether we'd like to sponsor a church down there.  It made me miss El Salvador!  Since the countries are next door neighbors, it's no surprise that the cultures are similar.  Happy people in very poor conditions.  Although I think El Salvador is slightly better off than Guatemala (just based on Pastor's stories).  He's going to show pictures and tell more in church this Sunday.  We also have our quarterly meeting, so I should probably be around for that.

Today's the last day of school this week! We have the Lutheran Educator's Conference tomorrow in Mankato.  After that, I'm Fulda bound!  My siblings and I never made it to the corn maze... hopefully we'll be able to check it out this weekend.  There's also the $2 bag sale at the Martin Luther Rummage Sale.  Gotta stock up on art supplies and cool stuff for my classroom! Hopefully there's a good selection of books.  And my prize box can always use donations.

Tonight instead of ladies' bible study, there's a bonfire at the parsonage.  It's pretty crisp outside right now; I'll need to bring a heavier jacket! I think I have just enough time to go home, change, and eat supper.  After the bonfire, I'll most likely curl up with a good book and pack for this weekend.  Tomorrow's conference starts at nine, so I'll have a little more time than usual in the morning.  Hopefully I can get all (oh who am I kidding? MOST) of my school work done so I don't have to think about it for the rest of the weekend.  The past two weeks have been crazy so a little rest and relaxation is just what's needed!

Chemical Reactions

Our first "intense" science lab was today.  Both the goggles and safety aprons were pulled out of the closet.  I haven't used them in two years, so some of them still had masking tape name tags on them... the tape had gone gooey and was super gross... They're clean now! A little bit of wet-wipes and paper towel action did wonders on the goo.

My class had so much fun with the lab.  They used pipettes to squirt two different liquids together and then watched to see if a chemical reaction occurred.  There are four different signs this has happened: bubbles, a precipitate forms, the temperature changes, and/or there's a color change.  Of course at the end of the lab they wanted to dump everything together and see what happened.  Not a whole lot! Just a little fizzing.  Then came clean up time... blech. All the substances we used were dumped in one pail (and then dumped in the woods).  This includes: lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda, salt water, milk, and egg whites.

After school was dishes time.  Our last volleyball and soccer games were today, so lots of kids stayed after school.  One of those girls LOVES doing dishes, so she washed pretty much everything for me! The test tubes, beakers, spoons, buckets... now it's all drying on the lab table.

Our games went well.  We played Immanuel Mankato; they only have one team, but they had enough players to put mostly littler girls in first and then the big girls for A squad.  Their girls are super tall! So B squad got creamed.  A squad, on the other hand, played amazing! And we won both games!  Woohoo!  One of the coaches got cookies and frosted them to look like volleyballs (and put the girls' numbers on them).  She also got them a box of candy for having such a good season.  The mom of the only 8th grade girl brought her flowers and a balloon for her teammates to give her.  It was quite the festive night!

So now, volleyball is officially over.  And the volleyball drama with it! (hopefully).  Now on to the next thing!  My next big hurdle is Camp Omega.  We finally picked our classes; the guy had typed my email in wrong, so I never received the email.  But that's straightened out now.  The toughest thing is going to be finding chaperones... I've had one potential nibble as of now and a tentative bite (if no one else volunteers).  So we can go for sure, I just don't know who our other chaperones will be.  It would be nice to have some firm yeses though!

Lots of Little Crabs

Sigh, unfortunately, I'm not talking about the little critters with pincers... I'm talking about all the students (and quite a few teachers... ahem... me) at school today...

This weekend was the big Pork Chop Dinner and Silent Auction for our school.  There was a pretty constant stream of parents texting me/calling me on Saturday asking questions about the Pork Chop Dinner.  When do I work? Is school unlocked? Where are the extra tickets? Can someone come pick up my silent auction donation?

But everything went fine on Sunday.  I had some more early morning phone calls/texts, and some last-minute silent auction donations.  All my bell players showed up! Hallelujah! And we sounded mostly decent... I caught a few mess-ups; hopefully they were minor enough the congregation didn't notice.  After church I supervised the silent auction room.  No one came to relieve me, so I had to wait to eat lunch until after the auction.  All but one of the items sold, bringing in somewhere around $1500 for the auction side of things.  A bunch of people wanted to pick up/pay for things at school this week, so all those items had to be loaded in my car and transferred to my classroom.  A few people picked their items up at school.  Still a few more to go.  I think everyone is still recuperating from the big weekend.

After school today we had our last volleyball practice.  One of the coaches came up with a cool volleyball game for the girls to play (since we have one last game tomorrow and that's it). But the girls were all crabbing at each other; one girl even started crying.  Then another girl tripped going up the bleachers during a water break and spilled another girl's water bottle all over her... causing the wet girl to cry too.  Sigh. It was a long practice.

And then after practice we had our end of the year volleyball party at Swany's.  We had told the girls to bring $5 for pizza.  When we pooled the money, we had just enough to cover the bill! Whew!  I didn't actually eat any pizza. By the time I got there (after quickly packing up my stuff at school), most of the pizza was gone and I figured I should leave it for the girls.  They finished eating before 5:00, so we sat around for a half an hour (well, the girls were giggling and talking and playing obo-shen-a-ten-ta-ten and getting suckers from the counter and... you get the picture) waiting for parents to come pick their girls up.  But I think the girls had fun, which is the important thing.  Only one more volleyball thing to go! Woohoo!

We started our testing today. Instead of IOWA tests, we're doing Fast Bridge testing, which we'll do three times a year so we can actually monitor our students' progress and do something about it if they need help in areas.  I had been planning to wait a bit before doing the testing, but when I explained how it worked, they wanted to do it today. So we took the reading test.  They did all right.  Two were in the at-risk category.  The rest were in the middle to high somewhat at risk level.  The other nice thing about this test is that it tells you the specific skills the students are struggling with.  My class, across the board, struggles with homophones, end punctuation, context clues, analogies, and comparing characters.  Some of that is no surprise; we haven't learned it yet or it's something that they've been struggling with so far this year.  Some of it is a little surprising. I'll be interested to see how they do on the math portion we take tomorrow.  But at least now I have an idea of some of the things we need to work on!

Reminiscing

The 5th graders were reminiscing on the playground at afternoon recess today.  "Remember back in kindergarten?" they kept saying.  It was kind of hilarious.

We also put up our Church Year Chain for art.  It's crazy how excited the 6th graders were to do it! Everyone got started on stapling the strips together; we had two girls tag-teaming the cutting.  We put it up in record time.  Now our room looks festive again.

The other out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened today was the toilet in the boys' bathroom overflowed and started flooding the bathroom.  This happened while the 7th and 8th graders were in my class. One boy went to use the bathroom and came back saying it was flooding.  Half the boys wanted to be the ones to fix it.  Another bunch ran to watch.  The remaining students and I decided on an impromptu field trip to the hallway to see what was going on.  It didn't take much to unplug it.  Someone found a mop and mopped up the overflow water.  They took care of it and came back to class.

Late Night

Another late night.  This time, because of volleyball.

It was our last away game, vs. Janesville.  The B team played hard, but only won one game of three (we came super close in the last game!). The last two were real nail-biters.  The A squad played well too and won all three games. They were super pumped! And they even did a little bit of bump-set-spike.  I had a few kids riding in my car on the way back, so that's how I ended up at school so late again.

Since our games were after soccer, I had a little more time at school to get things done, but when I left I still had a few things to finish up.  Hopefully I won't be here too much later!

Today was frustrating.  The church janitor stopped by around noon to tell me that because of the funeral on Saturday, we should put most of the bell stuff away after we practice today so it's not in the way and people don't mess with it.  Meh.  That ended up not being a big deal; we just put the bells and folders in the side room and the kids can get them Sunday morning before they play. Most will be here early with their parents setting up for the dinner.  Then the janitor tacked on that the guest pastor (since Pastor B is in Guatemala on a mission scouting trip) wants to use the conference room Saturday morning.  Wait... that means we can't set up Silent Auction stuff in there Friday night.  Grrr... I had been planning to set all that up Friday so I could take Saturday completely off from school stuff.

After school I talked to the other Silent Auction helper/in-charge person and she said she'd heard from a lot of other people that we should just go ahead and use the conference room, it would be fine.  Even so, she called the guest pastor after school just to be sure it was okay. I haven't heard otherwise, so I think it's okay for us to set up on Friday. Whew!

As frustrating as all that was, today was still a good day. We got a lot of learning accomplished... the MN fur trade, how to invent villains for our stories, Central South America...

Two of my former students from Janesville (where I did some student teaching) recognized me and said hi after the volleyball game.  They were two of my favorites, so it made me happy that they remembered me. (I have a lot of favorite students from that class)...

At the soccer game, a mom told me a funny story about her daughter in my class.  For reading, I have little meetings with each student each week to talk about the book they read.  I bring along a binder to take notes in and on one page I have a post-it note to write down book recommendations for the student as I think of them. I thought this particular student would really enjoy the book "Awkward", a graphic novel about a girl in art club trying to get through middle school, so I'd written the title on the post-it, but nothing else.  She had seen my note and had no clue what it meant.  Did I think she was awkward? Why would I write that? Now she's finally reading the book (and loves it, by the way), and she came clean to her mom about her worry that I thought she was awkward.  Her mom asked how long she had been worried about it.  "17 days" was her response.  Holy cow! This poor girl had been worrying about this for SEVENTEEN days?!?! And never felt she could mention it to her mom or me? It's funny and sad at the same time.  Her mom said that her daughter said after she found out Awkward was a book, she felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders.  Whew! That's a relief! I guess I should be more careful about what I write!

And on that note, I am going to go home and get some supper (finally), put my feet up, pop in a movie, and correct papers.

Rush

Another rush day after school!

Midterm grades went home today. It was a last minute rush to get all the incomplete math grades turned in so Mr. E could give me a math grade.  Then parents are asking why their kids' grades are the way they are.  And I have to explain everything.

Some kids stayed after school to get caught up on late work.

The A squad volleyball coach was late to practice, so I had to start the girls on drills.

I had a kid stay after school to practice his bell part.  We had an impromptu bell session when two other kids joined in as well. Then we took the bells over to church so we don't have to do that tomorrow.

We had training on the new FastBridge testing system.

And now I need to get home and cook supper for Mrs. B.  Pastor is in Guatemala right now and we decided to have dinner together. But I'm being a terrible hostess... we're meeting at 6:00 and I'm still not home yet!  Thankfully I made some reheatable things yesterday that will still taste good.

Still, I better book it home and get ready!