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.