Friday, March 3, 2017

Joe's Birthday

Facebook has a feature called "On This Day" that shows you things you posted in the past on the same day.  Most of mine are not things I reshare, but on March 1st, Facebook reminded me that I got Joe that day!  Happy Birthday Joe! It seems fitting since he's gotten more attention than usual this week.  The boys got fancy with his tank again today. They'd had the idea to build a tunnel that wouldn't collapse out of some kind of plastic container.  

They'd asked me yesterday, but I didn't have time to look for something that would work that they could cut up.  Well, at snack time today when I still didn't dig through the cupboards they got tired of waiting and went straight to the cook. She gave them an old ice cream pail and another plastic container without a lid that she didn't need back.  They cut it in half and cut out the bottom to make an arch.  And then the fun really began!

Two girls got involved at this point, deciding where to put the tunnel.  Then came the test... Joe went in one side aaaaand he stayed there, didn't even try to walk through it.  Well that's disappointing!  I suggested they fill up the food dish and put it on the opposite side.  Once food was added to the equation, Joe walked right through!  One time wasn't enough though.  They picked him up and deposited him on the other side again. This time he tried to walk over the top.  My kiddos thought he was stuck (his feet kept slipping on the plastic, brushing the dirt off) and wanted to rescue him.  I kept telling them, "No, give him a minute. See if he can work his way out of it."  They were very impatient.  Eventually he got a good enough grip to walk over the top!  To make life easier for him we will add strips of hot glue on the tunnel's top so he won't slip so much.  

The other big news of the day was Mr. E's gorilla suit. We read over 30,000 pages in February, 10,000 pages past our goal; Mr. E had to wear the suit for two hours and read us a book. He had fun scaring unsuspecting people with the costume! The book he read was If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss.  Another teacher found a video of the book on youtube, so we had that playing on the projector while Mr. E read the book; that way everyone got to see the pictures.  It turned out very well.  He said he reread the book at least five times last night so he'd pronounce all the Seuss-words right!

It was also "Dress Like Your Favorite Book Character Day" but not many kids got the memo.  Only one or two of them dressed up.  Besides me, only one teacher dressed up; no one else could think of costume ideas!  I had lots of ideas, but not many clothes that would work with the character.  I went with Erica Hale from the Spy School series by Stuart Gibbs.  Since not many people are familiar with the book, I made myself a name tag that said who I was and what book I was from... It was an easy costume: all black clothes, hair back in a low ponytail, fingerless gloves (she's never described as wearing them as far as I can remember, but I thought they added to the spy look).  The 7-8th graders recognized me!  But that's because I've read aloud the books to them.  They said I matched her pretty well, except I look older than her.

Well, I'm going to close up shop for the week.  My lessons are planned for next week.  With all the special events, I don't have too many lessons to prepare!  Most of my to-do list has been caught up with too.  Now time to go home and read a book!

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