Landfill Pie

The kids have settled a little bit more today, but not a whole lot.  All week I've been reminding them to fill out their Reading Notebooks so we can pass out BINGO prizes for the quarter... apparently no one paid attention to my directions because when I was ready to do the prizes, no one else was.  A whole lot of, "Just a minute, I'm almost done!" and "I don't know where my Reading Notebook/BINGO sheet is!" filled the room.  Sigh.  Only five of the 15 completed a BINGO.  Some read a bunch of books, just not five in a row to earn a prize.  I suppose it's just as well I didn't buy a bunch of new prizes.

Our other big thing of the day was making Landfill Pie.  The test on ecosystems is tomorrow, so we did a mini-lab demonstration to show the layers in a landfill.  Graham cracker crust to represent the clay, a layer of fruit roll ups for the plastic, then licorice for the leachate pipes and another layer of cookie crumbs for the gravel.  For trash we used vanilla pudding, sprinkles (vegetable/plant waste), oatmeal (paper/cardboard), white chocolate chips (plastics), chocolate chips (metals), butterscotch chips (glass), marshmallows (diapers), and cheerios (tires).  As a final touch, we drizzled chocolate syrup on top (leachate), a layer of vanilla pudding/fruit roll ups (more plastic sheeting), Oreo cookie crumbs (soil), and green coconut (grass).  Two straws got poked in the top as methane gas collectors.  I got the idea from my 5th and 6th grade teacher all those years ago...

It looked really cool, was tricky to cut, and looked disgusting on a plate.  Some of the kids tried it!  Most thought it was yucky.  Only one girl, bless her heart, said she liked it and it was good.  The other girls mostly picked through it and ate out the good stuff.  "The cheerios don't do anything for it," one of the girls told me as she tried a bite.  I'm not too tore up about it; hopefully the grossness will help them remember the layers of the landfill!

Back in Action

The kids were really wound up today.  They weren't bad, just full of energy.  Since we've been gone for about a week, it took a while to settle into our normal routine.  And it being a Wednesday made school a little strange.  At least there are only two more days left this week!

I was a bit discombobulated coming into school this morning.  Mr. E still hadn't gotten me my math grades, so I had hoped he'd have them waiting for me at school.  Even though I got to school early (i.e. before 7:30), I still found a student in my classroom!  He was working quietly on his math, but it still threw me off to have another person in the room with me.  I did get a bunch of things done, but Mr. E didn't have math grades ready.  He was trying to get the all-school activity for the quarter scheduled for a time when the Student Council leader (Miss H) can actually be here... which is only next Tuesday afternoon.  Unfortunately, that's right at the time the 6th grade girls have puberty ed.  So he wanted me to email the school nurse to see if we could change the schedule.

My kids were looking for random jobs to do, but my mind was being pulled in too many directions to come up with anything.  We had three boxes of books waiting for my attention, one for the Scholastic book fair (still unopened right now), a box of student book orders, and our Student Treasures books.  My kiddos were super excited about their books so I let them unpack the books and hand them out... but when we opened them up we found a bunch of typos!!!! And I am POSITIVE they weren't there when I approved the book.  Plus the printing was kind of grainy and had some strange lines that discolored the pictures.  After school I called the company and they're letting us fix the typos and will reprint the books for us.  Such great customer service.

Besides all the fuss about the boxes, everyone wanted to know details about the Northrup fire.  Right before I got to school, my mom texted me that one of my uncle's churches burned down last night, the one in Northrup that has a school/gym attached to it.  The principal of the school emailed all the other principals in the circuit of Lutheran schools in our area, letting them know about the damage, and it sounds like it's a lot worse than it looked like at first.  Mrs. E had the idea they should make a GoFundMe account so people can donate to the recovery effort if they want.  We decided to donate our chapel funds this quarter to Northrup to help with recovery.

So the day was crazy. But tomorrow is a new day, hopefully one that's a bit calmer...

Flying Chips

Taco in a bag today.  My incredibly picky class ALL had hot lunch.  No cold lunches. No chef salads.
And taco in a bag is actually something meant to walk/eat, so I could tote my lunch outside to watch them at recess.  The only problem was the wind.  Every time I'd take a forkful of chips/etc., the wind would carry the lighter bits away.  Soon the ground to the west was littered with tiny orange triangles.  But I figured out I had to be faster moving the fork to myself, and I got better with practice.

There's a storm moving in tomorrow that's throwing a kink in my plans.  Since I took Mr. E's class for him last Thursday, he was going to return the favor by taking my kids for the afternoon tomorrow so I could leave early.  But the storm is supposed to start around 10:00, so that wouldn't help me much... unless I took the whole day off.  He was totally cool with that, so that's what I'm going to do!

Now I need to get all my report card stuff together, pack up the papers to correct, and finish up lesson plans for next week... and quick do my to-do list at home.  It's Grandma H's 80th birthday today, and now I'll be able to get to Fulda to celebrate!  (Just so you know Grandma, my students all wish you a happy birthday... we would've called to sing to you, but the end of the day came too fast).

Cheater Pants

Ugh.  Found out today that one of the 7th graders has been faking doing his spelling book.  We correct the pages in class, and at the beginning of the year they all assured me they could be trusted to correct their own books (silly me, I believed them).  This gave the student in question the perfect scenario to "correct" his book and give me a false score.  So he only did a few on each page, marked a few blank spaces wrong, and gave himself a decent score every week.  Mr. E and I only found out because Mr. E wanted to know what week of spelling we were on to put on the daily assignment sheet.  When he flipped open the book, he found a whole page that wasn't finished.  And the more he flipped, the more he found.  Even on the weeks spelling has been corrected in Mr. E's class, they switched books and didn't mark things wrong that should've been.  Grr... it makes me feel stupid that this has been going on under my nose for the whole quarter... and even before that! And I had no clue.  They should've been switching books to correct, but I guess that wouldn't have stopped the most dedicated of cheaters.  He could've just gotten his friend involved in the scam and they could've given each other both good scores.

So.  Consequences.  Mr. E chewed him out and made him talk to me.  And this individual has to tell his parents what he's been doing.  Today I went through his spelling book and regraded everything from this quarter.  Yeah, his grade is NOT going to be good.  He has to complete all the questions he left blank and from now on, I have to check the pages before we correct to make sure he actually did them.  Then he tried to convince me to give him partial credit for the pages he's going to fix.  Ha! You should've put in the effort in the first place buddy, then you wouldn't be in this mess.

Just in case there were others, I checked a few of the other 7th graders books.  One of them was fine. The other (a student I hadn't intended to check, thinking, "naaaw, that one has got to be doing the right thing") had left spaces blank but didn't count them wrong.  Lovely.  So I went through that book too and had a chat with the individual that he/she should be more conscious about correcting.  Ugh.  I think I'm going to have to tally up their scores every week instead of having them do it themselves.  They had earned a class prize, but maybe I should take that away too... should the whole group be punished for something one or two of them did?

20

This afternoon, I had twenty kids in my class.

Mr. E left at 11:30 to drop Mrs. E at the airport and I absorbed his class into mine for the afternoon.  Things were pretty hairy to start with... it was right before lunch, so everyone was going crazy having five extra people in our room.  Plus there wasn't room at the lunch table for 21 people, so some of my kids got to eat at their desk.  Since I had to wait for 20 kids to go through the lunch line, some of them finished their food before I even got in line.  And then the cook ran out of potatoes that went with the hamburger gravy that was the main meal today.  She could make some more, it would just take five minutes.  So I got all my other food and scarfed it down quick so I could let the antsy fast-eaters get out for recess.  One of the 5th graders brought me a cup of potatoes and hamburger gravy, so I didn't even have to go back through the line!  It was too chilly for outside recess; we ended up in the gym.

After recess everyone settled down for the most part and my class learned about the Electoral College and political parties in the US.  We had some very good discussions.  And the 7th graders listened in on it too.  They just had a study hall while I taught my class.  Then we did a little bit of art... Design-A-Saurus.  At the writers conference field trip we went on I got a packet that teaches how to draw dinosaurs, so I made copies for my class and turned them loose!  They made some pretty good dinosaurs.  The 7th graders had the option of joining us or working on their homework.  Most did homework... their assignment for my class for today was watching a Wishbone episode on Joan of Arc, so they grabbed headphones from their room and watched the video on computers in my room.  That kept them occupied!  My original intent was to work on Mystery Class all together, but I didn't get the email update (normally they're scheduled for Fridays, but they've been coming on Thursday).  So we watched a Wishbone episode too, the one on Don Quixote. And then recess.

And my day went kaput from there.  It all centered around two people who are always at each other.  And they always get mad because they ALWAYS get in trouble and the other guy never does.  And I never do anything about anything.  So all the people in my class kept tattling, and I kept nodding and saying "okay, Mr. E and I will handle it on Monday." And everyone got fed up with each other.  I turned my back on that group for five seconds to answer another kid's question and when I turned back around, the two boys in question were being held back by their classmates. Lovely.  So.  Now it's a matter of do I email parents and get sucked into a whole email/phone call debate over what happened? Mr. E called after school on his way back and we talked about it. He basically said I should email parents that something happened and we'll deal with it on Monday.  I've already gotten a call from one parent, which I let go to voicemail (as per Mr. E's suggestion).  Ugh. This is the side of teaching that I hate. So hopefully we can get to the bottom of things on Monday.

Camp Omega Chapel

Today was our annual Camp Omega chapel day.  Bob, the camp director, came around 9:30 and led us in singing.  Something about camp songs just makes me happy!  And the best part is that the kids (even my grouchy older ones) were singing and getting into the songs too!  His main message was that the Bible tells us how to follow God.  He had two kids searching for "a hundred grand" (it was the candy bar).  But his only instructions were to go look for it.  Mr. D was the referee who blew his whistle if they got too far away or were going in a place they shouldn't have.  So based on his whistle tweets, they were able to find the hidden candy bar.

Since chapel was later than normal, our morning routine was messed up a little.  We did Writing Workshop right away in the morning.  I only had two biome presenters left, but one wasn't ready.  I was hoping it would only take her a few minutes to finish up, but she ended up taking the whole half an hour to finish, not enough time for one person to present; I didn't want anyone to get cut short.  At 9:00 we had music practice in Mr. E's room, but that finished early enough that I had to find a five minute activity to fill our time before having to walk over to chapel.  We played 7-up.

After chapel, we did read-aloud/snack and our presentations.  One of the kids had been working on his presentation at home, and his mom emailed it to me so he'd have it at school.  She was a little sneaky though and added a line to one of the slides.  It was on the Tourist Information page in a list of things NOT to bring to the desert, "Don't take a date to the desert." She wanted to make him blush.  And teach him he shouldn't expect his mom to get his assignments to school on time.  But she was thwarted in embarrassing him.  He brought a flashdrive to school and told me the one on it was more current because he had looked it over one last time.  Good for him!

By the time presentations were over, it was 11:10 and we only had time for one Daily 5 round!  Thankfully, most kids were done with spelling (due today since there's no school Friday).  So we had a random round where they could mix/match what tasks they worked on in the 20 minutes.

Tomorrow is going to be another wonky day; Mr. E is bringing Mrs. E to the airport around lunchtime.  One of their daughters (who lives in Ohio) is having a baby any day now, and Mrs. E is going to stay with her for a few weeks.  Mr. E couldn't get a sub for the afternoon, so his 7th graders are going to hang out in my room for the afternoon...

Black Death and the Bill of Rights

Today was a good learning day.

The 7th graders learned about the Dark Ages and the Black Death, always an enthralling topic.  And the 5th and 6th graders started learning about the Bill of Rights.  I made a chart for them to take notes on and we listened to the Bill of Rights rap on Youtube.  That song was a hit! They wanted to listen to it again, but we didn't have time.  But we only made it through Amendment 5, so we'll spend another day on the topic.

I had a meeting with a parent after school today about her son's midterm grades.  That part went okay.  Then she pulled out the science fair project written report her son had done... she wanted to know why he got a red instead of a blue.  I don't know! I didn't judge them!  She went on and on about how much work went into it and how extreme the expectations are for the project, at least for the 5th grade level and that maybe it should be a project for 7th and 8th graders only or maybe the 5th and 6th graders should only do the board and have it be turned in just at school and not take it to Fine Arts... the funny thing is, she's one of the people a few years ago who thought it would be a great idea to have the 5th and 6th graders do science fair projects.  And then she was saying it was a lot of work to have them do at home and maybe more could be done at school.  Ugh. I can't win.

Having harsh judges is something that typically comes up about the science fair at Fine Arts.  A high school principal and high school science teacher both do the judging, so I have a feeling their expectations are high.  I suppose all I can do is bring it up to Mr. E and see what he thinks about all of it...

Pi Day

On a day like Pi Day, it goes without saying that there should be pie.  So I baked some this weekend.  Mrs. B gave me some homemade apple pie filling from the year their apple tree produced a bazillion apples.  Then Saturday afternoon I made some crusts and dumped the filling in, easy as pie!  The filling had spices in it already and was fairly solid; I had to use a spatula to break it apart in the jar.  I made a separate pie for my family to eat as a test run... my kids are usually pickier than them.  Most pre-taste-testers thought it was good, but could be sweeter.  Brady said it was an 11 and my kids better not eat all the pie 'cause he wanted more later.

I had three pies for my class of 15 and the 7th grade class of 5.  This morning the cook warmed up the pies in the oven and at snack we sliced them up and served them with ice cream.  You'd think I'd learn by now that my students are not to be trusted to give equal serving sizes... they started scooping ice cream while I served up the pie pieces.  And we were halfway through the ice cream cube before half the class was served.  Shucks.  Everyone who wanted it got some, though there wasn't a ton left for the 7th graders.  Only 8 of the 15 took pie, the rest just had ice cream.  Oh well.  The 7th graders made up for it.

Mr. D's class goes out for recess when I have the 7th graders.  When we do study hall, sometimes the 7th graders do their work by the window and he chats with them.  He saw them eating pie and asked if there were extras.  So he got one of their leftover pieces. I dropped off the last cut piece to Miss N after school (turns out she loves apple pie).  And that leaves one whole pie left... I guess Brady does get his extras after all!

Fine Arts Fair summary: Art projects did well- a bunch of blues and reds, a few whites.  Science fair projects were about the same. It took them a while to judge all ours; there was a crowd of people waiting outside the room so they could see the results.  And when the door finally opened, there was a mad rush to see who got what.  Our bell ringing was an interesting endeavor... the guy in charge didn't organize the bells very well.  He only had enough tables/foam/covers for two set-ups: Truman and Fairmont.  And I think they both brought all their own stuff.  We did bring our bell stuff down, but then the guy in charge asked if we could just share bells with Truman.  Sure, why not? Less stuff we'd have to set up and move around.  I figured Truman would have nice bells since they always play very well and have a great director.  Nooo, turns out our bells are actually better.  I didn't discover this until right before the concert.  My kids were taking their positions and were not impressed with the bells they had to play.  They looked over at Fairmont's shiny bell setup and wanted to know why they couldn't just play those bells.  Mr. E talked to the guy in charge and he said the Fairmont director was not here at the moment, he was rushing back to pick up some forgotten music.  So no using those bells.  And there was no time for us to pull ours out. So we made due.  And it sounded fine.  They actually played really well.  I messed up in my introduction of the choir; I said, "we will be singing 'For the Beauty of the Earth'" instead of "playing" or "ringing".  And as soon as I said it I realized I'd said the wrong thing.  Oops! Oh well! Not the end of the world.  Our school song, "The Tree Song" sounded amazing, and the whole-mixed-school choir sounded really cool too.  No one knew how all the kids were supposed to stand up there, so we had them filter in wherever there was space.  The lady directing messed up in her directing and had the choir repeat the verse she messed up on so she'd feel better about it.  But it did sound nice.  I am very thankful the Fine Arts Fair is over... much less for me to think about!  Although we did start musical practice today... that's the next big thing...

Science!

Annnd, the week is over! Almost.  We still have the Fine Arts Fair tomorrow.  I think everyone knows where they need to go and when they need to be there... My hand bell choir is second in the program tomorrow, so we'll play shortly after 11:00am.  I need to be there much earlier to drop off the science fair projects.  They're judged at 9:00, so my plan is to set them up around 8:30.

Everyone turned theirs in today!  Well, most people followed the deadline and had theirs in yesterday like they were supposed to.  A few students forgot their written report and brought them in today.  One kid had his board dropped off last night and when I looked at it this morning, there were no words! Only pictures and his graphs.  He didn't have his written report either and said it was on his mom's laptop at home.  His mom came at the end of the day with a fistful of his notes.  Turns out, he'd been telling his mom he was working on the report at school!  So she made him sit at school and type his notes until the report was finished.

Honestly, I'm a little scared to see how we do at the science fair.  There are so many kids who are missing pieces of the project!  Did they even read the packet I gave them???  I'm not sure what else I can do to help them.  But, it is what it is.  Some of the projects are super cool.  One girl tested which liquid lets roses last the longest... sweetened lemonade!  Copper water makes them droop right away.  Sugar water is not much better.  I think baking soda was the other water she used and that one did okay too.  Another kid tested which surface a basketball bounces on best (hardwood floor beats concrete and carpeting).  A 6th grader did which color absorbs heat the fastest.  In her experiment, orange was the surprising winner!  Black was also close to the top.  She had a ton of data in her report.

So not all of them are incomplete.  Maybe we'll do better than I'm predicting.  Only time will tell!

Project Linus

Today's NLSW extra event was making tie blankets for Project Linus. We made 47 blankets today!!!  No one thought we'd get them all finished today, but we did! Those kindergarten girls can really tie.  And they only learned how today!

A bunch of church ladies came to help us.  We set up a few tables so they could sit or stand next to them so they didn't have to be on the floor.  For the most part everyone worked on the floor.  Many of my boys got stir-crazy.  Mr. E was kind of the bouncer of the day, trying to keep everyone working.  It was worse toward the end when most of the blankets were finished.

After school we found out the Immanuel-ites were making us "supper" at church.  They fed us pizza, fruit, and bars.  It was nice to sit the quiet sunshine and talk with people about stuff besides school.  Now I'm wrapping things up here so I can make it to a wake.  One of our congregation members passed away last week; he's always been a great supporter of us teachers and the school, so it would be good to show support to his family.

Busy, Busy

Oh this day has been so crazy!!!

This morning we still had to set the place settings on all the tables for the noon meal.  My class set out cups, plates, and forks. We couldn't find napkins, but once the cooks arrived we took care of setting those out.  Then we moved the piano out and tried to plug it in.  Unfortunately, the cord/piano are broken and it wouldn't turn on.  So on to plan B... we had to move Mr. E's heavy piano from his room to the gym.  Then there was no screen set up for the science museum presenter, and they needed one, so Mr. D and I were trying to figure out if the IT guys just hadn't come, or if they were coming later.  It turns out the science museum just brought their own screen.  Whew! This stuff doesn't seem like a lot when I type it, but in the moment it felt like there was a million things happening!

To top it off, I had two grandparents show up at school thinking it was VIP day and they were supposed to hang out in our classrooms until chapel.  Oops. Not today. Chapel was at 10:45. I offered to let them stay, but they declined.  And they never came back at 10:45.  Bummer.

More stress got added to the day when I found out a 5th grader and a 7th grader were sick today and wouldn't be playing bells with us at the Lenten service.  The song we're doing this time includes the 5th graders playing tone chimes, so we have no substitutes.  At least we knew about them ahead of time so we could adjust the bell parts.  No one else can get sick between now and then!!! We're spread as thin as we can go!  Practice at church went okay.  I think we'll sound all right.

Uncle Robert was our guest pastor for chapel.  He had to do some rearranging of his schedule so he could make it to us on time (his church has a morning Lenten service).  But the timing was good and everyone enjoyed his message.  He stayed for lunch too, so I actually had someone to sit by for once!  Then came the science museum speaker.  He talked about solids, liquids, and gases and showed us stuff with liquid nitrogen and dry ice.  I'm sure my students will be begging to get dry ice now...  We actually saw that same presentation a few years ago at another school, but the demonstrations were cool enough that if anyone remembered them, they probably didn't mind seeing them again.

After the speaker, my class took down the tables/chairs and put them in their rightful places.  We went to church to set up for bells, came back for five minutes of recess, did the all-school Fine Arts Fair dress rehearsal, and had ten more minutes of recess before packing up to go home.  Now it's the waiting game until the Lenten supper starts.

Tomorrow is Duct Tape/Fake Injury Day.  I'm not sure what I should wear.  I want to wear my orange Under Armour sweatshirt, so maybe I'll slap some duct tape on it somewhere.  Or I could put band-aids all over... hmm... I'll have to think on that.

Feed the Teacher

I didn't forget my sack lunch today!  I survived on a pb/j sandwich, string cheese, and carrots/celery.  The field trip was fun!  And educational.

The first session I went to was about writing scary stories... not something I'm too fond of, but a lot of my kiddos were going there, so I went too.  The speaker was not that great at public speaking.  He did tell some good stories (creepy and suspenseful, but not too scary for me).  The second session was better.  I went to an observational drawing class.  The speaker had us practice drawing lines of varying shades.  Then we had to draw our hand without looking at the paper... kind of use our eye as the pencil.  The best way was to keep our pencil moving the same speed so the proportions would be even.  After that, he had us put a hand behind our back and he put an object in it.  We had to draw it without looking, just based on touch.  That one was super fun!  I got a lot of art ideas from that session.  Then it was lunch in the gym.  They gave us time to look at the book sale/get author autographs.  I hadn't planned on buying any books but... I found one on my to-buy list (a collection of fairy tales from the antagonist's point of view) and one by the main speaker (to add a "Minnesota author" book to our library... it's about Paul Bunyan).  Then two of the 5th graders came with me to get it autographed.  Hopefully someone in my class reads it!

The last session was "Design-a-Saurus" taught by Scott Rolfs.  He's illustrated cereal boxes, coloring books, etc. and he's very good at drawing.  He gave us a tutorial and then let us draw pretty much the rest of the session.  I drew some pretty neat looking dinosaurs!  One of the mom chaperones had the brilliant idea to have a dinosaur drawing contest at school and have everyone vote on their favorites at the spring carnival. We have a PTL meeting tonight, so she's going to bring it up there.

We got back to school in time to make Easter greeting cards for church.  Then my kids were so wound up we went out for recess.  After school we set up tables/chairs for the NLSW dinner tomorrow.  Miss N brought real tablecloths from home, courtesy of her mom.  They were huge! So we had to fold them in half so they didn't drag on the floor.

Now it's waiting for the PTL meeting to start.  I got a text from a parent in charge of cleaning the gym.  They were supposed to do it over the weekend to make the gym spiffy for our dinner tomorrow, but the parent said they're coming tonight to do it and is there a list of things to clean?  Well... it's going to be hard to clean with all the tables set up.

As I was sitting at my desk, working on stuff, one of the 6th graders came in.  He'd stayed after to help set up and his deal with Mr. E is that Mr. E cooks him supper when he helps after school... bacon cheeseburgers.  Well, this kid asked if I liked bacon cheeseburgers and if I'd ever had one before.  And then he handed me one! Mr. E made him three and he only ate two.  And he said he always gets them, so he'd share with me since I don't get them ever.  A few minutes later he handed me some bacon leftover from his thank-you supper.  The extra funny thing is that this same kid was also sharing his Girl Scout cookies with me on the ride to and from the field trip!

Windows Open

It is SO nice outside.  I've had my classroom windows open pretty much all day, so it smells like spring in here.  It's a happy smell.  And we went outside for recess.  It was lovely.  Lots of four square players and mini-basketball.  We had to stay on the blacktop because there is still some melting snow on the playground... and it was pajama day at school.

I wore slippers, sweatpants, and my Case IH muscle machine shirt.  Lots of compliments from the Case lovers and lots of "ugh, that's a terrible shirt!" from the John Deere lovers.  Being in "pjs" all day was actually kind of tough! It definitely took more energy to motivate myself; it was kind of a lazy day.

For NLSW, we spent part of the afternoon signing up for the Winter Olympics and making country banners/flags.  Friday, we'll actually compete in the Olympics.  Tomorrow is a field trip day to Bethany for the Young Writers and Artists Conference.  I'm taking a car-full of kids with me as soon as the first bus gets here in the morning so I can take care of registration.  Everyone else will follow after the second bus arrives.  So part of my after-school routine was putting kids in cars with chaperones.  Hopefully I don't forget my sack lunch!!!

Bulletins and Fine Art

Last night's book talk was very nice.  Lots of great picture books to add to my to-read shelf!  There were a few I'd read already, but many I have never heard of before.

Today's big project was getting the bulletins colored.  Since I had to pick up the bulletins from church this morning before school, I frantically folded the towels/washcloths my class had used at the Lenten supper Wednesday (I took them home to wash) so I could drop them off as well.  I ended up leaving my apartment later than I like to, but I got all my church errands run before too long.

My class was not gung-ho about coloring.  I must admit, many of our covers look like they were colored by preschoolers or kindergartners... Some did take their time, but the majority were rather reluctant.  Mr. D brought them over to church after school and the church secretary will put them in the church mailboxes for Sunday.  And National Lutheran Schools Week here we come!

Mrs. B helped me get my art ready for the Fine Arts Fair.  All the art has to be matted and have a judging sheet/name card attached.  Some of the art my students picked is a little bulky and doesn't mat well.  We have some paper plate weaving projects and some quilling projects that are 3D and heavy... hopefully they stay stuck to the paper backing!  Now our art "Unearthed Treasures" corner is looking pretty bare! I guess we'll have to do an art project soon!

Speedy

This is going to be short because I have to be in Mankato for a book talk at 5:00... we had a faculty meeting right after school so I've been in a rush to get all my putzy things done before I have to leave.

Last night's Lenten supper went well.  We made $391 for next year's trip to Camp Omega.  All my helpers showed up too!  We barely had enough chicken for the fajitas... I didn't get any and neither did most of the parents, but all the "paying customers" did.

I love watching my kids serve the food. They're all worried about getting it right and the people eating are happy to see them helping out.  One of the 6th graders was serving the tortilla shells we had heating in a crockpot.  First they were sticking together because they were too warm. Then we used all of them and the new ones we put in weren't warm enough for his taste.  I caught him holding a tortilla against the warm side of the crockpot, trying to heat it up!  "They're ice cold Miss H! We can't serve these!"

Lenten Supper

My kids are back to being crazy again. 


Some of it is caused by all the presidential candidate hullaballoo.  One of the 6th graders was sick yesterday and missed our discussion of the candidates, so today the other 6th grade boys were interviewing him to see what he thought.  And when his thoughts didn't match up with theirs, they chanted, "Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump!" Yesterday one of those same boys made a sign out of a ruler and a piece of paper that said "Trump" and stuck it between the desks so it'd stick up all day.


We did have some really good discussion about each of the candidates (with the 5th and 6th graders and the 7th graders too).  We're learning about the three branches of government and checks/balances, so it fits in the curriculum very well.  Last night I went to a caucus for the first time.  It was neat!  There weren't very many people at the caucus.  A few stood up and spoke for a candidate, but not that many.  I wish there would've been more.  Cruz won our caucus with Rubio taking second and Trump taking third.


On a completely different note, tonight my class is serving the Lenten supper at church.  We're serving chicken fajitas, rice, fresh fruit, chicken soup, and bars.  About half the class is sticking around afterward to help set up.  I don't think it will take very long, so I'll have to find things for them to do between set up and serving time... homework perhaps?


Today was read across America day.  To celebrate, the whole school went into the gym and read for 15 minutes after chapel.  I brought a book from home.  It was lovely.  I wish we could've spent more time reading... but then again, I always do!

Newsela

I am in love with the website Newsela.  For how long? Who knows.  But today was fabulous.

I had gotten an email from the company a while ago and what caught my eye was the mock-primary/caucus students could vote in.  My kids have been politically minded these days, so I brought it up to them and they wanted to sign up!  Today I printed instructions and about half the class signed up.  The site features current event articles about a variety of topics... science, sports, politics, war and peace, money, laws, health, kids, etc.  And teachers can assign articles for her class to read.  I can also see how many students have read an assigned article and have them take quizzes on the articles too!  I'm not going to use the site as homework, my intention is to use it as more of a "broaden your horizons" type thing.  We found some neat articles about a potential other planet found, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (read the article here), and a Nazi death camp survivor's death.  My kiddos were riveted!

The other cool thing that engaged my students pretty much all morning was our biome project.  Each group/individual has to be a travel agent convincing his/her classmates to buy a vacation package to their own biome.  They've been researching and finding pictures and sharing facts... it's so lovely.  Everyone is excited about it!