Douglas Wood

Monday is VIP day, our school's version of Grandparent's Day.  We always have a guest speaker and this year's is an author/illustrator from Minnesota, Douglas Wood.  Mrs. E checked out a bunch of his books from the library so we would be familiar with his work before he comes.

One of the books, "Old Turtle" confused my students.  It's a story about the animals arguing who God is and then the turtle speaks up.  They didn't know if the book was talking about our God or some other god or if the turtle was supposed to be god... I think we got it figured out? Either way, that one wasn't our favorite.  There was one I thought was super cute called When a Dad Says "I Love You". Mrs. E had some others in her room, but we only took a few.

Last night after I got home from the bank it was only 4:00pm.  What was I going to do with all that time??? Well, I made dried apples in the oven.  The idea came from one of the speakers at Ft. Ridgely; she'd shown us dried apples she said she'd made in the oven.  I still had a bag of apples in my fridge I hadn't used.  I'd thought about making them into Brown Betty or more applesauce, but dried apples are something different!  Only two baking trays fit in my oven at a time, so I still have a container of cut up apples in my fridge that I didn't have space on the trays for (they're in pineapple juice, so hopefully they don't turn brown too fast). Maybe I'll have enough time to dry them tonight...

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, man my kiddos can talk!  I found out on the ride to Ft. Ridgely that metal detectors are all the rage in my class.  Some boys made a youtube channel with videos of them searching for coins. They've found a bunch I guess! They're on a mission to find the most valuable coins possible.  One kid is saving up his money to buy a really good detector so he'll find even more stuff.  Who knew?!