Balloons

The balloon countdown to the end of the year has been hung up.  And inside each of the 20 balloons is a special activity for the day.  We don't get to pop the first one until Friday though (so we know what special thing we get to do on Monday).

My students are chomping at the bit to see what's inside them, especially the 5th graders, who haven't seen the balloon thing before.  The 6th graders are mostly excited.  One of the boys was running his mouth, saying that they'll all be the same as last year and a bunch are probably going to be "go to Track and Field Day" or "Last Day of School" and be kind of boring.  I told him I changed them from last year; they're not all the same.  But he didn't seem to believe me.  Granted, some of the special events are ones they already know about, like Caswell Softball Day and the field trip to my parents' farm.  But still.  It's more exciting than a day in school, right?

Mr. E's class was helping out at the New Ulm Food Shelf this afternoon, so we had math in the morning.  This messed up the afternoon a bit.  I wrote the edited schedule on the board, but it didn't stay that way for long.  Originally, we were going to do Daily 5 rounds when they got back from math at 11:00.  But when their math was over, I was still in Mystery Class mode from working with the 7th graders, so we changed our changed schedule so we could do Mystery Class in the morning.  After lunch, they were super hyped up, in no shape to focus on a science lesson, so I had them do Read-to-Self for a half an hour to calm down.  THEN we did science (bending and refracting light).  After that was pinata time followed by recess.  That's one of the good things about Lutheran schools... we can be flexible when we need to be!