The start of the day was quiet, but by the time my kiddos came back from math, their voices were in full swing... and it never got any quieter. Whew! I could hardly get a word in edgewise during science time! Thankfully we had outdoor afternoon recess, so they could be as loud as they wanted without getting in trouble.
A lovely lady from church has doozied up the playground over the summer. She brought extra toys and extra seats for teachers and made a minigolf course and has drawers for all the fun toys she brought and... the list goes on and on and on. Over the weekend she stopped out to add a few more things and she was kind of sad about how messy/dirty the new toys were. So this morning the whole school had a meeting to talk about keeping everything clean. I totally forgot about the meeting; Mr. E had to call my classroom to remind us!
Mrs. E's speech must've made a huge impression on my girls, because for afternoon recess they all cleaned the dishes and put them away in the drawers. They had a blast! They even scrubbed down the plastic picnic table and the playhouse. I got served 'ice cream', 'hotdish', 'pizza', and 'apple juice'. There is a fake old fashioned telephone (pink) that makes noises when you pick up the headpiece, so my kiddos were having a blast yelling into the phone, pretending they ran an ice cream parlor.
Somehow during the day my 6th graders were reminded of a video we had watched last year, a 'commercial' about identifying gun violence before it happens. So they wanted to watch it before we went home for the day. It was created by the Sandy Hook Promise group; you can watch it here. Intense! They wanted to rewatch it after the first time through, so we watched part of it (we had to get out to the buses). And then they had all sorts of questions! Why would someone do that? Will that happen in our high school? I answered them as best I could with the time allowed, but we could've had a much better discussion if we had more time...
After school a bevy of volleyball players hung out in my room. Yeah, I didn't get much done. They all went out to the soccer game at 4:00, so I got a little done then, but I still had work to do after the games. The other team didn't know we were planning an A and B game; they only had one team of 4-8th graders. So they were frustrated we wanted to play two matches. Then they were even more frustrated when they found out the A squad was supposed to start at 6pm. The B games only went until 5:35. But we couldn't start early because not all our players were there (some had dance). We ended up playing a third B game to fill the time. Then came the A games. And afterwards I found out a parent was upset because her daughter didn't get to play the whole game and the coach's daughter did. And the coach was upset because her daughter's first jersey was stained and the letters were peeling off... thankfully another jersey was unearthed from the loft, so that problem was taken care of. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the drama. The other two coaches have a hard time working together because one of them wants to run the whole show, but she hadn't been at practice so she hadn't worked with any of the girls. And now the one who's been at practice doesn't want to coach because of the drama, I don't want to coach because of the drama, and none of us know how to talk to the other coach to see if she'd just coach B squad so we can avoid the drama.
So, it was a frustrating end to the day.
I was able to go for a walk with a good friend and vented all my issues, so I feel better now. But looming in the distance is the selection of Camp Omega chaperones... and two moms already told me they'd like to do it... how to choose???
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