Normal

Another pretty normal day. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

Miss M's lessons went well. Bells went well. The weather was nice so we went outside for afternoon recess. They convinced us (Miss M and me) to read an extra chapter of our read-aloud book. Everyone got spelling handed in on time. Only two more people (plus me) need to finish our NaNos.

Miss M wanted to know what we do with them after we're finished. The kids looked up their books on Amazon and showed her the book covers. It turns out you can read the first few pages of the book... then they all wanted to leave ratings on their books.

Well, I'm going to head home and finish up my NaNo and bake cookies for Miss M's last day tomorrow!

Rocks

The 7th and 8th graders had a guest speaker today. Patterson's Diamond Center in New Ulm connected me with him. I had contacted them a while ago to see if they'd come talk about gems and jewels in my class, but this is their busy season and no one is able to get away. BUT! This guy, Steve, is super knowledgeable about rocks and minerals. He has the 4th largest private collection of rocks and fossils in the US. 

He brought a bunch of fossils he's found, plus a meteorite, and a whole bunch of other types of rocks. Mr. Patterson had loaned him some uncut gems to show the class, so we got to see the natural form of many kinds of gems. It was very educational! And Mr. Patterson also sent along uncut emeralds to give to each of the students.

We had a few rocks lying around from when I had the 7-8th graders bring one to class. One is a really pretty translucent-ish purple rock. Steve identified it for us: chalcedony (pronounced kal-sydney). Cool!

Presents

I had a very productive after school. Well, it was productive after chitchatting with the other teachers and having my last parent/teacher conference. I crossed a bunch of things off my to-do list, printed the NaNo winner certificates (half of them have already met their goals), and researched strategies to help students remember what they're reading.

I have a few students who don't remember what they read. They'll read fluently out loud, but when I ask questions about the story, they draw a blank or just remember specific details. I need to teach them to use their brain when they read. One student I met with today seemed to think she was a lost cause when it comes to reading. She doesn't like reading because she can't remember anything from the story. Challenge accepted. Miss S and I talked about it after school today, and it seems like we'll be able to help each other out.

My kiddos added to the card for Miss M today. The 5th graders were respectful of the 6th graders and didn't draw on the front page. They wrote 'thank you' on the back page and drew a gorgeous flower and a unicorn. The 6th graders were impressed. In total, the class brought in $20 to spend on things for Miss M (two kids forgot and are going to bring their money tomorrow, so I just chipped in a few dollars). I bought her a balloon that says "You Rock!" from the Dollar Store, two bars of specialty chocolate (on sale at HyVee), and a cute little bouquet of flowers (green and white) also from HyVee. Everything is stashed safely in my apartment. Now all I need to do is get my NaNo written so I have time to bake cookies Thursday night!

I also had time while running errands to pick up more NaNo prizes from the Dollar Store, swing by the library (where I didn't check out too many books for once), and... I bought a couch! Yay! I've been thinking about upgrading from my free/used couch I got after college. Last week on a whim I tested out a few at the furniture store and fell in love with a cushy, plush, brown one. I could not get my mind off the couch all week! So today I went into the New Ulm branch and it turns out they have one. And they gave me a bit of a discount since I know Mrs. E (she used to work there). And it will fit through my narrow porch door no problem! It will be delivered to my apartment next week. Huzzah!

Now, time to settle in and write some words...

Words

Ohhh boy, am I behind on NaNo words... 7,000 words behind. According to the NaNo website, I have to write 3,000 words per day in order to finish in time. Yikes!

I did write over Thanksgiving break, but not as much as I'd been hoping. This morning I wrote while eating breakfast in between correcting papers and refreshing my memory about the science topic of the day.

My students are satisfied with their progress. A few are finished with their stories, a few have met their word goals but aren't finished with the story (they're still writing), and a few are worried about making their goal and are begging Miss M or me to type for them. I have confidence they'll all make it. Me on the other hand... this is the first year I'm worried I won't make my goal.

When I admitted my lack of words to my students, they told me I should write right now at my computer! This was during Daily 5, so it was actually a possibility. I wrote a few hundred words and bumped my word count up to 20,000. Only 10,000 words to go until I meet my goal! Hopefully tonight will be a big word night.

My kids are all sad that this is Miss M's last week in our classroom. They wanted to do something special for her, so I asked if they'd bring in $2-3 to buy her some flowers or chocolates or a balloon for her last day. I think I'll make treats too as an end of NaNo party. One 6th grader handed me a stack of quarters he'd pilfered from his desk. "Here's my $3 Miss H!" he announced. At the end of the day I asked if they wanted me to send a Remind out to their parents so they wouldn't forget, but they didn't want me to do that. We'll see how many remember!

The 6th graders made a card in computer class today. The 5th graders will add to it tomorrow. The 6th graders got a little possessive of it and had strict requirements where the 5th graders could and could not write/decorate. I told them it's everybody's card and they weren't allowed to put so many restrictions on it. We'll see if they listen.

They want her to come back for our Christmas program and for the spring musical and for just visiting our classroom. When they found out we sometimes get a student teacher in the spring for science/social, they wanted me to email her teacher to ask that Miss M get put in our classroom again. I'm on the fence about that. It would be super fun to have Miss M back again, but it would also be fun to meet a new student teacher too... We'll see what happens I guess!

Family Write Night

Yesterday got so busy I forgot to post!

Right after school, my kiddos and I rearranged the classroom to make stations for Write Night. We set out games and prompts and candy. We had 45 people show up and all 10 pizzas were eaten. No leftovers! Everyone had plenty. There were only 10 pieces of candy left by the end of the night too. Good timing!

The new student's first day (yesterday) went well too. She was pretty shy and didn't say a whole lot, go figure. She seemed overwhelmed by the new schedule, but perked up quite a bit today. She raised her hand a lot more and was a bit more chatty.

I shared Guatemala pictures with the 7/8th graders and the 5/6th graders. It was so hard to keep it down to a half an hour. I could've talked at least an hour. But we had bells and Christmas program practice to get to, so I had to keep it short.

Well, I think I have everything wrapped up at school. We have the rest of the week off for Thanksgiving. I don't have a ton of papers to correct or too many lessons to plan. My NaNo words have been sadly lacking, so that's my big project for the weekend. I'm 8,000 words behind... yikes! Hopefully I can buckle down and write like my pencil's on fire!

WhatchamaDRAWit

I meant to write this earlier, except things got busy before I left school...

The new student and her mom stopped by later than I'd expected, but we had a chance to introduce ourselves and get her acquainted with the classroom, etc. I threw so much information at them, I will be surprised if any of it sinks in. Most of it is written on the papers I gave them, so if they look at that, they'll be fine. They don't have a working computer at home, so doing NaNo at home will be a problem... I'm not sure what to set her word goal at. We're halfway through the month, so it should be 1000 or less, but with Thanksgiving break in there, it maybe should be even less... Her homework over the weekend is to start her story by hand, and she can always type it at school. Which reminds me... she needs an account. You think the IT guys will make one for her before the end of the year?

We had time for art today for once, and we used the time to FINALLY do our leaf projects. We started saving leaves in September and pressed them in our Bibles to keep them safe. Not all of them had enough leaves, so they could go outside and get more. Lots of leaf piles on the desks. Some made their whole picture from leaves, some added pencil/pen lines to make their picture more detailed. After they finished that, we tried our new art game. It's super fun! WhatchamaDRAWit is kind of like Apples to Apples. A prompt card is drawn, and everyone has to draw what's on the card. After everyone is done, you get to vote for your favorite. Each pod got a stack of cards and competed amongst themselves. Examples of the cards include: an ice cream cone riding a bike playing the trumpet, or a friendly monster with 13 eyes, 8 arms, and three heads. During art, we listened to the Christmas program music. Man is it catchy! We start practice next week already.

The other fun thing we did today was for English. I had Miss M make construction paper folders and glue landscape calendar pages inside. Each student got one folder (numbered on the inside). They had to keep it a total secret while writing a story that takes place in the scene, or a descriptive paragraph of it. Then each got to read their paragraph while their classmates tried to guess which number the story matched with. They LOVED it. We have plenty of folders to do it again. And the end of the year is coming up, so people will be getting rid of their calendars. I can make some more! I wanted to make it challenging, so I tried to have some pictures that looked kind of similar, so they'd need to write more description to get their classmates to guess correctly. Miss M and I also wrote descriptive paragraphs. Pretty much everyone guessed everyone right!

PTC

Whew, this day has been a doozy.

Last night I typed up a pre-conference survey for my students to take, just to see what they think about school and how they're doing. I had to print everything off before piano lessons started this morning and the office was occupied.

School itself was a doozy too. Two girls strategized to use their seating swap coupons to their advantage and they used a 6th grade boy as a pawn. The only thing is, this boy is the only one who's ever been swapped with, so he felt like no one in class liked him; they all wanted to get rid of him. This isn't the case at all... he has just had good seats!  But in the moment that doesn't matter. He felt sensitive about it, which made the others get on his case even more, which made him even more emotional... bad cycle that wouldn't stop. He left the room to take a break and hung out in the coatroom for a while. I was worried about him and left the rest of the class to their own devices (spanish tap game) so I could have a chat with him and see how he was doing.

While we were out there, Mr. E stopped by to ask something and he assumed this student had done something bad and I was out there to chew him out... so he stepped in to reinforce what I was saying. Except (to me) it felt like we went backwards instead of forwards. Of course, it had to happen right about lunch time, so we had to wrap it up.

Our school has a 'feel better' program (that's not actually what it's called, but it's all I can think to call it at the moment) where students can write a person's name down and stick it in the box and someone will write an encouraging message to that person to make their day a little better. So I poked my head in the preschool room and asked Miss F if she could quick write one up for this student.  She did and enlisted the help of some 5th and 6th graders to sneak it into his desk. I found out from his mom later tonight that it helped turn his day around! Whew!

By the end of the day, he was back to his usual self and life was better in our classroom. At afternoon recess we played human tug of war and everyone had a blast. The two boys got to be team captains and we ended recess with a boys vs. girls match. Good times.

Parent teacher conferences went well. I stayed on schedule. Most parents got to leave early since their conferences didn't go the whole 15 minutes. A few went over a tiny bit, but the next in line was never out their waiting, so I'd say things went smoothly!

I also had enough time to plan next week's lessons (it's only a two day week) and print things off for our new student! All I need to do for her is to get a hymnal from the office and get a desk for her, things easily accomplished tomorrow.

Official

It's official! Our new student starts Monday. She and her mom will stop after school Friday to put stuff in her desk/get acclimated. Woohoo! It's definitely a God thing... a few weeks ago, I had just been thinking, "You know, it'd be nice to get a new student in class. It's been a while. I'd like to have one more." And lo and behold, here we are. God is awesome. That's all I can say about that.

Mr. E stopped in right before read-aloud to tell me it was official (while my students were getting their snack, getting a drink/bathroom break). I was so excited I decided to make the announcement right after he left. My face split into a huge smile and I told the students who were in the room, "I have some big news as soon as everyone is back in the room!" They lit up like they'd been jolted with a bolt of electricity and scurried to gather the wandering classmates. Before I could tell them, they tried to guess. One 6th grader shouted, "Are you engaged?!" I waved my empty ring finger at them and they all sagged a bit. "Aww! That was my guess." But they were all really happy when I revealed we'd be getting a new 5th grade girl. The boys were excited and then not as excited when they realized they'd be even more outnumbered... "How come it's never a boy?" one asked. "Why not recruit some? Talk to your friends at Nicollet. See if they want to come here. They could!" His argument was that one guy wouldn't change schools if he only knew one person at this school. My response, "Get like five of them to come!" Then we'd have 16 students. That would be amazing! Except it would be pretty crowded. But we'd make it work.

We had a bit of a crazy day today. This morning was super windy, so chapel ended up being over here at school. My class set up the altar and brought the piano in, except the usual space was taken up by Operation Christmas Child tables/boxes/toys prepped for packing after chapel. So we rapid-fire cleaned the gym equipment out of the corner and pulled the rest of the bleachers out. This is the first time Chapel has been in the gym this year and the first time we've ever had it on the far side of the gym.

Packing boxes was fun. Miss S did a fantastic job setting everything up so it would run smoothly. And the kids had a blast filling their boxes with toys and school supplies and hygiene items (soap, toothbrush, etc.). We packed 51 boxes!

They were pretty wound up after that, and the computers weren't working, and we were SO CLOSE to finishing our read-aloud book, that we ended up reading aloud the whole morning. The climax of the book we're reading is so emotional. And right after that part, there's another even more emotional part. First your mad, then you're scared/sad. Every time I read the second climax, I tear up. (Spoiler alert, the main character's baby sister sneaks out of the house as they're leaving to take her to school and the mom accidentally runs her over... but she's okay. But you don't find that out until later). I had warned them that I might cry while I read the book, which got them all intrigued (and a little excited too... after all, how often does your teacher cry in school?). And yes, I did cry at that part. Half the class did too, so I wasn't alone. It's one of those cases where seeing other people crying makes you cry more. But we got through it and they loved the ending of the book. And now we have to pick a new one to read. I have one in mind, but we're going to wait to start it until Monday so our new student can start it with us.

CPR

We had CPR training after school from 3:30-5:30. It was good, especially after yesterday's strange non-fainting situation, but it really sucked the afternoon away. I'm wiped out and am ready for a break...

My computer is being frustrating... the Bible school teacher asked if I'd be able to make a bunch of cds of the Christmas program music for the Bible school families to take home so they can listen/memorize the music better. I made 9 out of 20 when my iTunes froze up and now I can't get it to open again. I guess I should give up and go home and do the rest tomorrow.

Before I do, one quick story from today. One of the 6th graders is starting trombone lessons this Friday. He got his instrument last week (renting it from the public school) and wanted to show us, so he brought it to school today. It was cute; right away when he got to school he let me know it was here. Then before we went to lunch, he set the case on his desk, carefully opened it (making a big production out of it) and put the horn together. Of course everyone wanted to hear him play it, but it was so nervous with everyone watching he couldn't make a sound! He made everyone close their eyes or look away... even me! He did play it for us, which made most of his classmates laugh at the crazy sound.

At afternoon recess he put it together again and brought it outside, playing it when he could. He even found a way to get it involved in a game... he used it as the starting noise for a race between classmates.  So creative!

Everyone wanted to see how he got the spit out of the trombone. They also wanted him to play the song from this video (a class favorite). By the end of recess, he actually got it pretty close! The rhythms anyway. It made me miss band again. I want an instrument to play! I was this close to asking him if I could play it, but then I thought back to my band days and how grossed out I was when my band teacher played my instrument, so I thought maybe I better not.

This student promised to bring his instrument back and play us an actual song once he actually takes some lessons!

Timber

I had a first today... a student dropped to the ground while we practiced singing this morning.

Everyone was lined up at the front of the room. We'd been singing for a while when all of a sudden she stumbled and fell into the back row of boys. They all thought she'd tripped or someone had pushed her, and they tried to catch her, but she kept falling, sliding to the floor, knocking into other classmates, finally landing on someone's shoe.

The way she fell reminded me of other people I've seen faint, so I hustled over as fast as I could, calmly freaking out in my head, if that's possible. I got to her just as she hit the ground (her head landed on a classmate's shoe so she didn't get hurt as she fell).  I called her name (quietly so other kids wouldn't get freaked out). When she didn't respond I tapped her on the shoulder and called her name again. I must've done it about five times before she finally looked at me and said, "What?" That was the scariest part. Thoughts running through my head as I called her name: Oh boy, how to keep everyone calm when they find out something's wrong? Do we need to call an ambulance? How's that going to work? Should we clear everyone out? Is she having a seizure? No, I don't think so. Maybe she just fainted. Thank the Lord everyone is staying where they are and not crowding around her...

She said she just got light headed and that she'd felt sick all weekend and hadn't eaten any breakfast (plus it was pretty hot in Mr. E's room). So we walked her to the office and called her mom to come get her. She was fine walking to the office and our room to wait for her mom, but she did look awful pale.

The poor 1st and 2nd graders thought it was contagious... Miss S said they kept asking her if they'd fall over next. Everyone in my class was super worried until Mr. E and I came back in the singing room and gave them the nod/mouthed the words "She's okay." Whew! Something I don't want to have happen again!

Veteran's Day

Guess what! I might be getting a new 5th grade student! Another girl. It's a girl who currently goes to the public school, but I recognize her from church. And, word on the street (aka- the classroom), is that one of the 6th grade boys has a crush on her. Or his classmates tease him about liking her anyway. Oh boy... hopefully that is long gone and I won't have to deal with it (but I have a feeling it's not).

The Veteran's Day program at Nicollet was really good. The 5th graders did a presentation about the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. Super interesting. We haven't gotten to that part of American history, but we will, so hopefully when the time comes my kiddos will remember that part of the service. The main speaker was a navy man who's from Nicollet. He worked for many years on a submarine and had done missions/work involving nuclear stuff. Whew! He was interesting, but used such unfamiliar, big words that my students didn't understand everything he said, which caused them to be a bit bored.

The band played. Oh man, it made me miss band. The choir sang too, but my heart isn't as tied to choir as it is to band. Both sounded very nice. This year, they told us the history of the 21 guns, or the beginning origins of the tradition... before a group would surrender, they'd shoot off 21 guns to use up their ammo and show that they were giving up peacefully; they couldn't fight any more.  My students were glad we could stay inside for the 21 gun salute. They don't like loud noises. The men went outside to shoot, but had the doors open so everyone could hear. Then they played Taps. It gets me every time. All in all a very nice service.

We got back to school right at the end of the day, prayed, and went home!

Kids...

Today's lunch discussion led to verrry interesting territory. It started by one of them going around the table asking what everyone's dream job was. Jokingly, the 6th grader asked me my dream job. "Stay at home mom," I said without missing a beat.  They looked shocked since they thought 'teacher'  would be my answer. "Teacher is my second dream job," I followed up. Then they asked about marriage and how old I wanted to be before I got married and somehow that led to what time am I going to make my kids go to bed when I have some. Which led to them sharing what time they have to go to bed... A few said 7:30, a bunch said 8 or 8:30. One said 9:30, and two said whenever they want. Then they remembered I hadn't answered.

"Miss H, what time are you going to make your kids go to bed?" My answer was not so polished: Uhh... well, I guess I haven't thought about it yet... Then I said I would probably wait until I was actually going to have a kid, then do research about it or read about it before I decided anything. They asked me a few more questions about my future children, most of which I didn't know the answer to, before I finally said, "You know, right now, you guys are my kids, so I mostly read stuff that helps me know how to teach you better. When I'm a mom, then I'll figure that stuff out for my kids."

Then they wanted to know if I would home school my future kids. I said probably not. "Why not?" they asked, "You're a teacher. Why wouldn't you want to teach them yourself?" My answer: oh because I think they should get to hang out with other kids and I'll still to 'teachery' things with them at home like reading before bed and devotions and stuff like that. That answer seemed to satisfy them.

Then we got back to the marriage topic... but I kicked them out to the gym for recess!

PTL

The PTL meeting just got over. Well, the main part ended at 7:30, but there was an 'open forum' to discuss the pork chop dinner and silent auction. Some people complained. Some people were near tears (or close to tears). Overall it was fairly civil, though I'm not sure that we solved any problems or issues. Other than that the meeting went well.

Since the meeting didn't start until six, I had time to spare after school. I cataloged the box of books that's been waiting patiently beside my desks for three weeks. They were books I got at library book sales. I was a little disappointed so many of the books were repeats, books I already have a copy of. But most of them ILS doesn't own a copy, so I'll just donate them to the school. I added some 'Miss H' reviews to the fronts of books I really love. Many of them are books I read when I was in grade school, so the covers aren't super appealing to the modern-day 5th/6th grader. Maybe the review will persuade some students to read those books!

The 7th and 8th graders had a test today in ancient history. It was on Africa and it was a hard test so I let them use their notes on it. It was still hard for them (some of the things Mrs. L hadn't covered very in-depth while I was gone), so I let them have open book too. Overall, I think they did pretty well. Hopefully these next units will be easier.

Prizes and Seats

Ah, the first day of a new quarter... always a full day.

First, we changed the seating chart. I did pretty good this time; only one person was dissatisfied with her seat. In preparation for the (potentially) many complaints about who has to sit by who, I made some 'Seat Switch' coupons they could earn by reading more books (BINGO prizes) or writing more words (NaNo prizes). They were huge hits. Since I was in coupon making mode this weekend, I made a bunch of other ones: Miss H types for one round, chew gum in class one morning, pick a redo round for Daily 5.

We only had time to pass out BINGO prizes today, so not many coupons were taken. NaNo prizes are on the agenda for tomorrow and I'm sure many coupons will be picked then. There was quite the class discussion about the use of the coupons, most resulting in a class vote. How many can people take at a time? The result from voting: up to three. Can people switch seats with people who don't want to switch? Yes, but if that person has a coupon, they could switch back. Can the seating swap coupons be used for lunch seats?

Yes, my class has not forgotten that lunch seats are assigned. Their choice, not mine. That was the second thing we did this morning. I had totally forgotten about it until someone said, "Yes! We get to change lunch seats today!" So we drew sticks right away since I knew they wouldn't be able to concentrate if we didn't get it out of the way. It mostly went the way people wanted it to, although two people are very disappointed with their seats. They were the ones who asked if coupons could be used for lunch seats. Surprisingly, the class voted that yes, they can be used. Personally, it doesn't matter to me, so if they want to use their coupon at lunch, by all means. Only four seat swap coupons were made, and they can't be reused until someone redeems one.

On a totally different note, some of the games for our Family Write Night came today. Super fast! I only ordered them Saturday. I wonder if my kids will notice them on my desk and ask to play them early. Perhaps. Or maybe they'll be too focused on NaNo to want to play games. Some kids are way ahead and some are way behind. It's a good thing Miss M is coming tomorrow; she can help type for kids too. I already have a meeting scheduled with one of the 5th graders who doesn't know what to write next in her story.

The prizes are a huge motivator. Two students told me they're going to write so they get over 1000 words so they can get a 'big' prize tomorrow (aka- a class coupon). We'll see! I still need to write my words tonight, but my energy is flagging. Running errands all over town will do that! The rest of the nights this week won't be much better, energy-wise. Tomorrow there's a PTL meeting, Thursday I have errands in Mankato, and then Friday I have nothing. So maybe I can take it easy Friday. Good thing it's a short week!

Fall Carnival

Whoa boy, today was a doozy. Go, go, go!!! All day long.

Spelling took longer to correct this morning than I thought it would, so I didn't have time to correct their science tests (a lot of them are worried about it). Then I thought I'd work on it at school before they came... I was halfway to school when I realized I left part of my Fall Carnival costume at home. So I turned around to get it and got to school later than I wanted to. Then there were emails to deal with and students who came early and questions to answer for the 7-8th graders. I got back to my classroom five minutes after the bell rang which pushed our whole morning off schedule.

But, as I knew it would, it turned out okay. We had enough time to squeeze everything in (spelling tests, carnival setup, Reading Buddies, preschool carnival). The preschoolers had a good party. We had enough time to do a Read to Self round and time to work on NaNos, although no one was very focused. We even had time to play the spanish tap game before lunch.

The 7th and 8th graders were supposed to present their video projects today, but not all of them had finished editing the videos. One one group of three was ready, and they were the group I had been most worried about finishing! Their video was pretty good too, although it took a while to figure out how to watch it at school. He uploaded it to Facebook, except he didn't know his password to log on via my computer. Thankfully, another classmate was friends with him, so that classmate logged on and we watched it through his page. The other two groups decided they would take a test instead since they wouldn't have their videos ready. Sigh. All that work for nothing. Yet most of them said they'd do a video project again. They just didn't get their act together in time. Maybe they'll send it to me over the weekend for extra credit.

It's the end of the quarter today. No school Monday! I'm excited to have an extra day since last weekend was pretty packed. Hopefully I'll have time to de-stress and get caught up on a few things. Everything is loaded in my car so I can leave straight from school. I'm Fulda-bound, with a possible detour to Truman, and a for sure detour to the New Ulm library for their annual book sale!

Pictures

School pictures came today. The kids were all excited, although some were not terribly thrilled with their photos. Retake day is coming up in a few weeks; some of mine will probably get retakes.

I got school pictures too. They give each teacher complimentary pictures. I liked mine better last year... oh well.

NaNo day two was even better than day one. A bunch had written at home last night and their word counts showed it. One girl (the midnight writer) wrote on her phone as she rode the bus to school! She's up to 800 words today. Two others are close behind, both in the 700s, one 5th and one 6th grader. They're having a competition!

Our total class goal for the month (including mine) is 755,000 words! So far, we've written a collective 7292 words! Woohoo! That's a lot of words. We'll get there though! I have a feeling some will boost their word goals more as the month goes on. I did get 2000 words of my own novel written last night. Let's see how many more I get tonight...

After school the Courtland Guatemala team had an interview over at church with the Lafayette Ledger for an article about our trip. She wanted more pictures of the kids doing crafts than Vicky had, so I volunteered to send her some. While I was at it, I made a sharing folder for the pictures so everyone on the team can upload there. Another person was supposed to do it, but she's swamped with school work, so hopefully she isn't disappointed I took that job off her plate. And hopefully everyone can add pictures to it. You need a google account. We added some other interested persons to the group so they can see the pictures, but can't upload. Good way to share!

My pictures are taking forever to upload them all. For some reason, my computer is being really slow. I think I may give up for the day and go home. It's time for me to eat some supper.

Speaking of food... there have been so many birthdays this week, and therefore treats! I've had three cupcakes, plus other candy my kiddos have shared. Today's lunch menu featured dessert, but I had to pass... just too many sweets this week. I still have one cupcake sitting on my desk, waiting for me to eat it, but the thought of more sugar just isn't doing it for me right now.

Tomorrow is the Fall Carnival, hosted by the 5th and 6th grade class. It's all planned and run by the students; I just organize the times and setups. Still, I should dress up, since it's my class. I think I'll go as Abigail from National Treasure. She wears jeans, a black shirt, and a tan leather jacket. Simple, comfortable, still festive.

Treats

Well, that student didn't wake up at midnight to write her NaNo... she forgot, which is fine since I'd rather have her at school well rested.

Whew! Today was a doozy. The NaNo site froze a few times since it's the first day. Then students couldn't figure out how to log in or why their word counts weren't showing up (they'd been writing in the Novel Notes section, not the Chapter section). But we got it all straightened out. The word count chart in the front of the classroom is sprouting little bars of color. One girl's goal (the midnight writer) for today is to get up to 500 words. She said if she writes 500 words each day, she'll meet her goal in 8 days! But she doesn't want to do that; I think she'll bump her goal up when she gets close to the 8,500 words she set.

I played music (instrumental) during the morning and shared cookies and hot chocolate from El Salvador (yes, I still had a little left). At first they all thought the cocoa was good, but I think I added too much water or else the cocoa settled at the bottom so it wasn't as sweet and flavorful as they thought. It's much different than American cocoa, that's for sure!

Half the cookies were ones I brought back from Guatemala (Lily, our Guatemalan leader bakes them and sells them in stores in the area... Walmart actually asked her to mass produce them for their store, but she didn't want to expand her business that much so she said no.) and half were ones I baked last night for trick or treaters. I had a bunch, all were kids from school. A few that said they would come didn't, but that was because they couldn't remember which house number I was. Oh well, they got cookies today! Only one kid took candy; everyone else went with warm cookies. Man, they were good! It was a premade jar someone had given me a while ago as a present... just add butter and an egg! Super easy, super delicious.

Our student teacher, Miss M visited after school. Oh the kids are going to love her! She's pretty and has a kind face (steps one and two to winning over my students' hearts) and a nice voice. I gave her copies of the class roster with pictures, a potential reading/English plan for the month, and the two books I use to run Daily 5 and Writer's Workshop. She's going to come in right away in the morning to help kids with math and other stuff, so she'll actually be here from 8:15-11ish most days. She starts next Wednesday.