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!