Frustrating

Today was a frustrating day.  My day started great! But unfortunately it went downhill from there...

As I walked into school, I paused to pick up some extra banana reading logs since my class had been running low. I took off my right glove so I could grab the papers and accidentally left it on top of the shelf by the preschool room.  When I remembered, I was already situated behind my desk and thought, 'Oh I'll get it later.'  After school when I remembered again, it was gone! And it wasn't in the lost and found either.  Grr... what happened to it??? Who would take just one glove?

Back to this morning. After running my errands on the other end of school, I headed back to my room (still in a fairly good mood at this point... I hadn't known about my missing glove yet). But once I got to the coatroom, I could hear bickering emanating from my classroom.  Lovely.  I made them start the day over by going out into the coatroom and walking back into the room, pretending it was the first time they came in today.  It worked for a little while.

Pastor did our religion today on stewardship.  He had some neat activities for them to do about budgeting; the kids really 'got' it.  A lot of them said they had fun! And after that our day went downhill... too much talking in Daily 5, retaliation, distracting others, not focusing, not caring about school...

One cool thing we did was start writing letters to an English class in Malaysia. I found this teacher's address on the InCoWriMo address exchange. She said she's an English teacher.  And while she didn't say she was looking for people for her class to write to, I'm guessing she's not going to be disappointed when an envelope full of letters shows up at her door.  Maybe she'll even write us back!  Things have not worked out pen-pal-wise for us this year.  I still haven't heard from the Slovakians.  I'm forcing my 5th and 6th graders to write a letter.  The 7th and 8th graders, I'm letting them do it for extra credit.  We'll see how many of them write something.

It became a teachable moment for the 5th and 6th graders.  I showed them a map of Malaysia and how far it is from the US. They wanted to know what language was spoken there (and if they'd have to write their letters in Malay. Really? How many of you actually know Malay?)  Then they wanted to know what it sounded like to speak that language. Cue the Youtube videos.  We found a dinosaur themed language video where they taught us how to say cat, dog, and bird.  Then I looked up "What is your name?" via Google Translate. Some of my kiddos even wrote that in their letters!  Man, I really hope they write us back!  I don't know what age they are, so who knows if they'd even match up.  I tried looking back on that post to find her address again and maybe ask her about exchanging classroom letters, but too many other people had commented since then and I didn't find it.

This afternoon we did a speed lab outside for 5/6th grade physics since it was about 40 degrees.  They were all over the place. It was nice out, it was sunny, the lab involved throwing tennis balls.  And we only had a half an hour before PE class.  Yeah, we didn't finish the lab.  But we got through the most critical outside part, so we'll be okay if the weather suddenly gets colder.  One group broke their paper clip before the lab even started. We were outside so we couldn't just grab another one.  Earlier in the morning one boy had taken a paperclip and threw it at his classmate across the lab table. That boy unwrapped it, making it unusable for the lab.  A paperclip isn't the end of the world, but it was still annoying.  And when I went into the closet to grab supplies, I found one of the metal slinkys mangled and bent.  Grr... another lab supply to replace.  I tried bending it back into place; it's jammed between a bunch of books right now. But I have a feeling that one has bit the dust.  Sigh.

At least this week is a short one.  No school Friday or next Monday!  And we have a play to go to Thursday afternoon.  Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I need to make valentines for my kiddos still.  I found gum on sale a while ago and bought enough for my class.  Then I found a picture of a person blowing a bubble and put the words, "You BLOW me away, Valentine!"  Of course they're going to want to chew a piece during school...