Finished

Whew! What a day!

Program practice went GREAT. We are ready for Sunday. Present opening went okay. I had three kids who weren't finished with their work, so those three worked on their late work while everyone else opened presents. They did get their work done by the end of the day, so they were able to open their presents eventually. Thankfully. We watched Emperor's New Groove as our all-school movie. I forgot how funny it is! The kids seemed to enjoy it. I got all my correcting done during the movie, so my only homework for break is to write thank-you notes!

The boy who had the spelling words turned them in right away in the morning. I didn't hear another peep out of his mom, though I got a little anxious at the end of the day when they revealed that they were getting picked up. For a while I thought she was going to come in and chew me out in person, but the boys disappeared after a while and I didn't even see their mom. So. I think that's over and done with. Hopefully. The other teachers thought I was in the right though, so that makes me feel better about the situation.

Now, my classroom is tidy, Joe is almost packed up, and I am leaving town until Christmas Program #1 on Sunday! Thank-you for the prayers, this week. They really helped. Now, I'm off until January 2nd. Merry Christmas!

Ready

I am so ready for Christmas break...

Program practice actually went super well today (thanks for the prayers!); I think we're ready. Only one day left and it will be packed full of last minute pre-Christmas things. We'll have one more program practice in the morning, take a spelling test, do religion, and open presents. The board of ed serves us lunch and we watch an all-school movie at the end of the day. This year's movie is Emperor's New Groove.

After school today we teachers exchanged gifts. I had Pastor who's 'initials' were CM. I made him a Christmas manger/message sign. He actually wanted a Christian movie. Still, I know he likes nativities, so I think he was happy with his gift. I asked for DB, which stands for 'dry bag' for kayaking. I got a dog book instead. There was just enough room for it on my books-to-read shelf at home! Other teachers got Zero Soda, Pot Holders (piano themed, for the piano teacher), Colorful Yarn, A Blanket, Christmas Tie, and a White House puzzle. Most people were pretty close with their gifts! (WH stood for warm hat, otherwise, everyone else got what they wanted).

I got a text from a parent who's child had lost a lab homework sheet that needs to be turned in tomorrow. I know I had emailed it to her once upon a time, so I logged on to my computer to resend it. There, I found an angry email from a parent who was upset with how I handled an issue in my classroom today. She called me 'the grinch who stole Christmas from [her child].' That's a new one.

There was a drill by one of the computer desks which was in the process of getting fixed. During our morning work time, one boy picked it up and was running it in the air. I told him to stop. Then I said if he did it again, he would have to write his spelling words. The kid said, "20 times!" Figuring it would keep his hands off the drill, I said sure. Less than five minutes later he was at it again! So he had to write his spelling words. He was in a funk after that and didn't want to get his food for lunch. He wouldn't talk to me about it. If he had, we could've come to some sort of a compromise or lessened the amount of times. But he didn't. He went home and told his mom, who got upset.

What's even worse is that other kids were also messing with the drill but I never said anything to them about it. I blame it on Christmas brain and the billion of other thoughts going through my head... it didn't even register. Or they were doing it when I was out of the room or working with another student and not paying attention, or it did register and I told them to stop, figuring it was a blanket statement for everyone. But to be honest, I don't remember the timeline of events except it ends with the kid running the drill after I told him not to. The mom said she tried to call me after school but I didn't answer. She must've called my school phone, but I wasn't in my room and I didn't see that there were any messages. She never tried to call my cell, and I know she has the number. So I called and explained why he had to write his spelling words 20 times. I rambled waaay too long and hopefully I didn't say anything that would make her even more upset. We'll see I guess. Either way, there's only one day of school left and we'll all get a break from each other. Sigh. It's always something.

Christmas Brain

You know how moms sometimes complain that they have 'Mom Brain'? Their thoughts are so scattered and they forget things all the time? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have Christmas Brain.

I sat in the wrong row at chapel (although in my defense, everyone sat one row back since the bell tables were set up in front of the first row). Then I forgot to bring the money from the Guatemala bake sale over to church to stick in the treasurer's box. I'm sure I forgot other things too. It's a crazy time of year!

It's also a giving time of year... Today after school a church member stopped by and gave school $10,000 to spend, a few thousand of it is set aside to help with tuition. But the rest of can be spent on classroom stuff. Mr. E gave me a budget of $500! Woohoo! Gotta start my list.

Then, we got a card from St. Paul's from Fulda. Their parochial school closed this summer (the school I attended up to 8th grade). Their PTL sent our PTL a check for $900! It was touching, humbling, and slightly sad and happy at the same time. We will definitely put the money to good use!

Light a Fire

I think midterm grades are finally lighting a fire under the 7th graders. Most names are off the board! Finally!

Program practice went decently today. It's going to be a longer program, probably around an hour. We usually try to keep it about 45 minutes or so. The speaking parts are probably about that length, but we have a scattering of congregation hymns and special music, so that adds to the time.

I kept flitting about, telling the 3-4th graders where to go and how to act during their parts. They're our 'costume' people of the program: shepherds, angels, wise men. I'm not sold on how I have them moving... we'll see what bright ideas come to me overnight.

I have three kids not participating in the program. Two are brothers and have trouble sitting still during practice while everyone else is up front. Today, since practice is at the end of the day, their mom picked them up early so they wouldn't have to sit. That worked great! The other one is a girl who loves to read, so she brought her book and read the entire time. I kind of wish I could be her...

I corrected my few papers this morning over breakfast and had enough time to read a short book before I went to school. It was a graphic novel I wanted to preview before handing it over to my kids. I haven't read a physical book in a while; I've mostly been listening to audiobooks so I can do other things while I 'read'. I listened to one this weekend while I set up my tree, baked cookies, and wrapped presents. I finished listening to that book last night (cliff hanger ending!!!) so I'll hopefully be able to read a paper book tonight after doing my other tasks.

Bummer

I am super bummed right now... Earlier today the 7th and 8th graders asked me what day we come back from Christmas break and I said we have school the Thursday after New Years. Except one kid thought we came back on Wednesday. It turns out he was right. :/ Christmas break is one day shorter than I thought it was... Man!!! Now we only get a week off for Christmas break.

Speaking of Christmas... program practice went well today. We had our first full run-through at church this afternoon and it took about 45 minutes. Now we enter Miss H crazy mode: all the thoughts buzzing around my head of where people should go, when they should move, how they should move, and every day new thoughts spring to mind as we go. Thankfully the kids usually like my ideas, so they don't mind changing things around.

A kind of funny (but also shocking) thing happened during Daily 5. A 5th grader is reading a graphic novel called Akissi which is named after the main character, a little girl who grows up in Africa. The boys have been having a hoot with the name of the book saying, "Give me Akissi... You want Akissi? Okay! Ha, ha, ha." The boy who's reading it left it somewhere in the classroom, so I had it on my desk and he grabbed it saying to his classmates, "Miss H just gave me Akissi!" Yikes!

Arms

The arm challenge was back again this morning... fewer kids did it today, but they did it for longer. This time, two of them managed to hold their arms up until lunch time! 3 hours!

My speech about presents worked. By the end of the day, only two kids had their names on the board for missing work (well three, but one of them is a girl who is was absent today). Mr. E finally gave me math midterm grades for the 5-6th graders. It was after school, so I'm not able to send them home today. Monday will have to be soon enough.

Program practice is going pretty good. We're catching on to the songs more and more. We had song practice in the morning like usual and this afternoon we went to church for the first time. We just got the kids lined up in their spots and sang a bunch of the songs. Sunday after church we'll set up the risers and the manger scene. Then every day next week we'll practice running through the whole program over at church.

The Christmas hymnal angels are slowly but surely making their way to homes. A bunch of my kiddos 'wrapped' them in brown paper bags and stapled the tops shut. I only got a few pictures of them after the mass exodus, but here are a few of them (some of the ones already wrapped turned out even better than these! my kiddos like to decorate).

 

Forgot

This morning I realized I forgot to post last night. We had bible study a half an hour earlier than usual (my church doesn't do advent services for some reason) and I had thought to write it when I got home. Yep. I forgot. 

Oh well.

The day was pretty typical. We didn't finish our read aloud book yesterday. We didn't finish it today either. We have two pages left. They were just talking too much and I had to quit reading. Sigh.

Our religion story today was Aaron and Hur holding up Moses's hands in the battle against the Amalekites (probably spelling that wrong). It always gives my kids the idea to hold their hands above their heads for as long as possible, and this year's class was no different. So they had a contest to see who could do it the longest. They lasted over an hour! I made them do it with only one hand so they could still write and do stuff with their other hand. 

Tuesday night a parent of a former student dropped off a bin of books for me/my classroom. I've been going through them the past two days. Lots of good books in there! Hopefully my kids will want to read them; there aren't any graphic novels. 

It's only one week until our Christmas party. I can't believe the year has gone this fast. To light a fire under the pokey little puppies, I told my class today that their names have to be off the board in order to open their presents next Friday (basically, get all their late work turned in). There's been a great rush to finish things up and hand them in! So far, so good. I gave the 7-8th graders the same mandate. They're a little harder to get going than the 5-6th graders...

Outside

We finally went outside for afternoon recess. Most of my kiddos remembered to bring snow gear, and they spent recess tumbling down the big snow pile near the school. Some used sleds, some used their bodies... Three boys got on a sled together and coasted down the hill singing the theme to the popular kids show "Little Einsteins".

We're getting to the end of our latest read-aloud book... only two chapters left! I have a feeling we'll finish it tomorrow. They made a deal with me to read extra today since the chapter ended on a cliff hanger. It worked out all right; they worked on their MN history projects (a town plot) while I read, which is not something they have time to work on during a typical day.

Tonight I'm headed over to Pastor's house for the teacher cookie-baking night they host every year. I mixed up a batch of chocolate mint flats last night and they're ready to be baked tonight. They have Andes mints on top, so I'd bought a package at the store, but then I reread the recipe and realized I need three packages. Oops. We'll just cut them small. I have some mint Dove chocolates I brought along too; I think they'll also work. It should be a fun night!

Quiet

My room was so quiet this morning... it was amazing. During Daily 5, everyone worked quietly. I had a bunch of boys reading in the reading corner (thank-you graphic novels!), some girls working on word cloud Christmas presents for their parents, a few doing spelling or reading at their desks. Sigh. Lovely. I'm just worried about what will happen when the boys run out of graphic novels, because they will, and I have the feeling they don't want to go back to regular books. :p

'Tis the season for secrets... A parent told me her book order for her 6th grader was a secret, so don't let her know she ordered the book the student wanted. Another parent wants me to keep an eye out for the school apparel order that's due to be delivered this week (Christmas presents again). I have most of my shopping done; I just need to wrap them.

After school we nailed down the seating chart for the kiddos for the program. The hymns/verses have been finalized for the bulletin, I just need to finish editing the electronic document for the AV coordinator and the church secretary. Whew. More things off the to-do list, but Christmas is coming fast!

Angels

Holy cow I was ready to pull my hair out this morning... So many names on the board for late/missing assignments!!! They got most of them off, but there are a few kids who just can't seem to get their work done. Especially memory work. Grr...

We're making hymnal angels as parent presents this year. Today a bunch finished folding the pages and moved on to the hot gluing phase... adding a head and various frippery. They sure look cool, all of them standing on the lab table. But that hot glue gets EVERYWHERE. And so do the little schniblets they cut off the edges of the ribbons they're adding.

Some of the 7th graders decided to make one with the extra hymnals I had. They got really far today and two girls already glued the angels' heads on. I found the hymnals at the MLHS rummage sale and got more than enough for my class for about $2. The angel heads are gold Christmas bulb ornaments also from the MLHS rummage sale. Those fit in a bag full of other stuff, so the total cost of these angels for my entire class is roughly $3. Maybe $0.10 each kid? Regardless, the price is right!

Trips

The 7th and 8th graders presented their Europe trips today. I was actually pretty impressed, seeing as most of them were nowhere close to being finished yesterday... They had found some decent things to do at their locations! Trip locations: Rome, Italy; Reykjavik, Iceland; Tromsø, Norway; Paris, France. Tomorrow we have two more presenters. 

I set a budget of 3,000 per person (not including airfare). The most expensive flight was a $15,000 first class flight to Rome, Italy on the United Arab Emirates airline. Wow. I can't believe anyone would pay that much money for a flight. 

We might need to make a new requirement about cars... Most of them rented cars for the trip to 'make it easier and faster to get to places.' I've tried to get them to use public transportation, but they're very skeptical of it. Or else they'd rather drive cool cars. So next time we'll have a rule that if you are going to drive, you need to look up rules of the road such as speed limit, which side of the road they drive on, how crazy their traffic is, etc. I suppose I could set the budget for the trip lower too. Our next continent is the Middle East. I'll have to do some research to find out average costs of things to make it a realistic limit.

Kraken

My kids were on a token spending spree this morning. Three girls bought mystery animals. Each mystery animal costs 20 tokens plus one food token. One ended up with a giant sloth (worth 100 tokens), another ended up with a unicorn (250 tokens), and a third ended up with a kraken (also 250 tokens). The first two were totally random, but the last one, I think one of the other girls figured out my secret...

They kept telling me 'we know Miss H!' I played it coy, but they had... I had the list of animals in a document, changed the bullet points to numbers, and let my students choose a number. Whatever animal it was, that's what they got.

Now, I've updated it. I have some of the animals listed more than once (the cheaper ones) and I pasted the list into a random list generator, so now they're really mixed up. I can keep pasting the list into the random generator so the numbers aren't ever the same twice (unless it happens randomly). Ha! Take that, sneaky smart 6th graders!

Iodine

The 5-6th graders did a lab today trying to determine if starch (aka amylose) is present in various foods. I had them bring a fruit/vegetable from home and we dripped iodine on the items to see if they turned a blackish purplish gray color. It was pretty neat! And it didn't take super long.

I'd given a big speech before we started about how we needed to be careful with the iodine because it can stain your hands and it can be toxic if you get it in your mouth... I was probably a bit over dramatic. We used pipettes to drip iodine on the items and one of the pipettes sputtered iodine all over one of the 6th grade girls! She was not happy. Her mouth was closed and we were wearing aprons and goggles, but still, the iodine splattered all over a sleeve of her sweatshirt.

In an interesting development, the iodine that landed on her lab sheet turned black, indicating starch present in the paper. (Coffee filters we found didn't have any starch). The drops on her sweatshirt stayed brown, so we concluded there isn't any starch in her sweatshirt. At least we got something out of the little spill!

Tallies are in!

Final NaNo numbers are in! ALL 12 students (plus me) made our November word goal! Woohoo! 

We started the month with a goal of writing 69,600 words and ended the month with a goal of 79,540 words. We wrote... 82,372 words total. Wow! That's 13,372 words over our first goal!  Over the course of the month, six students raised their goals to challenge themselves. 

I passed out winner certificates today, but one kid was sick, so we're waiting to take a picture until tomorrow. Hopefully everyone will be in school then! 

Snow...

Grr... the snow is messing with my plans...

Courtland is right on the edge of the storm, so it may be bad or it may not. But my plans tomorrow are south where it's supposed to be worse, so if it's good for me, it might be bad where I'm supposed to end up. I was going to get together with a friend in Truman and do crafty things in the afternoon, which is when the worst is supposed to happen. My farmer plows snow for the township, so even if I could travel, he's going to be busy clearing off roads. I kind of hope it's obviously too bad to go anywhere so I just have to stay home. Of course I have plenty of things to do at home... lots of books to read, bread and cookies to bake, Christmas decorations to put up, movies to watch, papers to correct... all the things I put off during NaNoWriMo.

The first basketball tournament of the year is supposed to be this weekend in Northrop, but the Sioux Falls team dropped out (we were supposed to play them tonight) and our team got an automatic win. My guess is the rest of the tournament will be cancelled tomorrow. My kids were really bumming about it when they heard today.

One of the 8th graders had a mysterious thing happen with his spelling paper. He left class today promising to hand it in at the end of the day. I remember him coming in while we were packing up to go home and he handed something in. I found his science paper, but no spelling paper. His parents came back to school to do some winter prep with the landscaping and he came too, so I had him look for his missing assignment. He couldn't find it! He looked everywhere and I did too. Nothing. So he made a copy and redid it. I'm guessing it will turn up somewhere on Monday. That's usually the way these things work.

Finishing!

Seven out of 13 in my classroom have met their NaNo goals! I have only about 500 words to go and I'm hoping to finish mine tonight. Some of my kiddos even raised their goals today to see if they could get just a few more words. One boy bumped his from 4,000 to 7,100 just so he can write the most words in the class this year.

All except for one of my kids has passed 2,000 words written. Yay! First goal accomplished (mostly)!

My pokey writer has written 2782 of 6000... I have no clue how she's going to get her goal. She doesn't want anyone to type for her. I had her working on it any chance she got today, but she only wrote about 900ish words total. Tomorrow is the last day of November; we can write and have it count up to midnight...

In preparation for the end of NaNo, I stopped by the library and actually browsed the shelves for the first time in a month. During November, I really limited how many books I checked out because I knew I had to devote all my time to writing, not reading. Now that the end is in sight, I guess my subconscious decided I should check out a TON of books again. My to-read from the library stack is piled high yet again. I got a bunch of graphic novels from the library because suddenly all the boys have discovered graphic novels and now they only want to read that kind of book, not chapter books. Sigh. They're burning through mine like there's no tomorrow. I did notice the Bookmobile has a bunch I could check out. These boys are picky though; they might not want to read them. Tsk. Tsk.

Bird Beaks

The 7-8th graders did a lab today that teaches them how different bird beaks work better for picking up different types of 'food'. (Connecting it to the concept that God created/designed animals in specific ways for a reason). 

Each group had a food source (beads, noodles, rice, cotton balls, mini-rocks, etc) and various utensils to pick it up (tweezers, clothespin, straw, spoon, toothpick). Before the lab they had to rank the utensils in order of which one would get the most food. They had a cup as their 'stomach' and 30 seconds to gather as much of the food as possible. Then they'd count how much food they got and record the data. We only got through about half the food sources, so we'll pick it up again on Friday. They had a good time and learned some things about being careful with tippy objects... one group tipped their plate and dropped all the little beads on the desks/floor. Oops. Major cleanup.

The 5-6th graders were bummed they didn't get to do a lab, but we did go off on an interesting tangent today in science. Our topic was nutrients in food (carbs, proteins, starches, cellulose). We got to talking about cellulose and how human bodies can't digest it very well, or at least can't get much nutrients from it. That led to a discussion about going #2 and the parts of a digestive system. Then we moved on to compare animal and human digestive systems... Parts of that digression were planned, but we did delve further into human anatomy than I'd anticipated. Still, they were totally interested in it. So much so that I believe we'll learn about the digestive system more tomorrow!

NaNos are going well. I didn't finish mine; I'm on track though. Bible study tonight got cancelled, so perhaps I'll finish. A few of my kiddos reached their goals already. A bunch of them have met their goals but aren't finished with the story yet. They'll keep writing in December too. A few are going to up their goals as a challenge to complete in the next two days. My poky writer was home sick today. I asked her mom to make sure she writes. Hopefully she got a lot done! 

Zoo Purchases

The 5th grade boys decided they couldn't hoard their tokens any longer... they spent over 120 tokens today buying fences and animals for the zoo. They were short a few tokens, so they did a few odd jobs for me to earn some more. It was great! Joe's tank got cleaned and the pile of beads I'd dropped in the closet a while ago got picked up.

NaNos are going well. Two boys who I'd been worried about are catching up to where they need to be. They'll be fine. One girl has her goal at 6,000 but only has about 1,000 words. She's got a long way to go! My NaNo is all caught up. I wrote 3,000 words last night! I had hoped to get my NaNo finished tonight, but I have to run errands in Mankato tonight. We'll see what time I get home and how much time I have to write.

Back

It's been snowing on and off all day, just little bursts of snow, sometimes big flakes, sometimes small ones. Surprisingly, the kids haven't noticed a ton. Their energy level was basically normal which is kind of strange given that it's a Monday after a long break. I'll take it though!

We practiced Christmas songs this morning, the songs that we know we're keeping. Mrs. L and I met after school to listen to a perky, upbeat, kids Christmas cd for potential songs to switch out. We found two! I hadn't wanted to get rid of the first song (words sung to the tune of "Savior of the Nations Come"), but then we had the idea to have that be the processional song the congregation sings! Winner! Then we can still have a peppy intro song to get everybody sucked in. We did a little switching of the order of songs to break up the traditional songs a bit more. Now I think we're set! 

What's even better is that these new songs are on a cd, so it will be easy to get them to the bible school teachers for practicing. Whew!

There's one week of NaNo left. Most of the kids will be fine as far as meeting their goals goes. Three of them aren't very close... I'm actually worried that not everyone will make their goals... Time to contact parents and ask them to give more computer/writing time at home. That usually does the trick. Still, there's a little time yet. Four more days (not counting today).

My NaNo is going okay. I was super behind going into Thanksgiving break. I caught up a bit though, and am at 22,500 words. I should be at 26,000 today, so only 3,500 behind. Not bad considering I haven't written yet today. My plan for the night is to hunker down and write! I'd like to get caught up, but we'll see how good my brain juices are flowing.

Wishbone

My kiddos were a little quieter today, thankfully.

We did our normal rounds, finished Genesis (finally!), and passed out NaNo prizes. I'm super behind on mine... I did great staying on track until this past weekend. Hopefully I can get caught up, and maybe even ahead, over this break.

I introduced the 5th graders to Wishbone today. It was one of my favorite tv shows growing up. The 6th graders are already in love with it; the 5th graders were a little harder to convince. Most got sucked in by the episode, but there were a few that kept chatting while we watched.

Program practice went well today, so did bells. The bell songs are almost too easy. Sure there are a few measures we should run through, but overall they're sounding good already. I might end up keeping the first song I wanted to switch. We could do three songs instead of our normal two! The kids want to play it because it's easy (and it sounds kind of pretty). We'll see. It will depend how long the program lasts when we run through it all together. The people in our congregation don't like the programs (or church) to go too long or they get a little feisty.

Two Days

You can tell it's a two day week... The morning started off quiet and focused, and over the course of the morning it spiraled into loud learning and less focus. Before lunch, we played telephone pictionary, one of my favorite games to play with my cousins at holidays (even as adults!).

Each person starts with a stack of small papers, the number as many as there are people playing. You write a phrase on the top sheet, something holiday-ish usually. Then you hand your whole stack to the person to your right. That person looks at your phrase, places that paper at the bottom of the stack, then draws a picture of the phrase on the blank paper at the top of the stack. Then you pass the stack to the person to your right. So it goes phrase, picture, phrase, picture. You keep passing around the circle until your words make it back to you. Then you see how how the final picture evolved from your original phrase! They can get pretty messed up!

We let the 7-8th graders go ahead of us in the lunch line so we could finish our game. Some of them wanted to play again right away! Nope. Too hungry.

Our sewing club grandma came for noon recess today and had a good sewing class with the girls. I like it when she comes at noon so the 7-8th graders can do it if they want. I found out that this grandma drives 50mi to come to our school! Wow! She said she doesn't mind; people drive that far for work every day and she likes to help out. (She has a kindergarten grandson and usually reads a book to their class on the days she's here too).

The first day of program practice went well. Mrs. L and I switched a few songs around after school to break up the speaking parts a bit more. We also picked out a new bell song since one of the ones we picked out is too easy and isn't the melody I thought it was. Tomorrow we'll run through the rest of it and call it a week!

Parent Teacher Conferences

Anarchy. There was anarchy in the 7th grade today.

It started when one girl announced that she thought the video we were in the middle of watching was boring (about how DNA works). Then she said it was pointless and why did we even have to learn this stuff, unless we were going to be a biologist or something. Another 7th grader chimed in 'yeah, why can't we pick the classes we want to learn about?' So that led to a discussion about laws about education in our country and state, and how even in high school and college, you still have to meet certain requirements/qualifications before they'll let you graduate. That being said, I don't think I got through to them. Sometimes it feels like I'm teaching a brick wall. Thankfully the 8th graders are a little more on board with life science.

One of the 5th graders was off the wall today; he could not focus to save his life. It was so bad, he couldn't even write. His letters were all over the place, barely legible. What's worse is that he didn't have his handwriting done. None of it.

Since they have all week to do it, our rule is that handwriting has to be done before lunch the last day of the week (which was today since we don't have school tomorrow). That means if it's not done, you work on it until it's finished, then you get to eat. It's usually a pretty good incentive for those pokey little puppies who just don't want to do it.

But this poor kid was so out of focus, he couldn't do it. The rest of the class (aside from two other pokeys) had gone off to get lunch. By the time everyone had made it through the line, including me, he had only written a few words. He burst into tears yelling, "I can't even write on the lines! This is why I'm getting Bs and Fs! I'm worthless!" Oh boy. So I went over to talk to him. He wasn't ready to listen. I started eating my lunch. When he came back to his desk, I made a deal with him. If he could get day 3 finished, he could get lunch and work on the border sheet while he ate. He took me up on it. It was only after he finished lunch that I discovered he hadn't done day 1 or 2 at all. At afternoon recess he finished writing his border sheet and colored it. His writing was much neater (and so was his coloring). He still didn't get it done.

Sigh. All the kids acting up on the day of Parent Teacher Conferences.

My conferences went well. A lot of them were very short; not much to talk about. We went over FAST test scores and how to study with the new spelling curriculum. Now I'm wrapping up in my room and I'm heading out, Fulda-bound tomorrow for the long weekend. No school tomorrow!

Packing Party

My room got put back together lickety split this morning. Everyone chipped in (although some kids made excuses, 'I have math redos to do!'). The streamers are still dangling from the ceiling in some places. One 5th grader relocated a few to his desk. I'm still deciding whether I take them off or if I let him keep them on.

After chapel we packed boxes for Operation Christmas Child. We folded our boxes together during read-aloud time so we were ready to go for our class's turn. This year, each class packed at a separate time. Mine was the last to go, so everything was pretty picked over. Mrs. L is in charge of this event and she had made packing lists for everyone to follow. The younger kids hadn't read the top of the page, and they had taken items that were meant for the older kids, hence the lack of supplies for us. Still, we had stuff to put in them.

I had my 5-8th graders pick their program parts today. Some complained, some tried to get the shortest parts possible, a few volunteered to pick up extra parts. I printed the scripts off so they'll be ready to staple into folders tomorrow. We start practice Monday and Tuesday next week!

Family Write Night

Whew! Another whirlwind day!

Our sewing club grandma called to set up sewing club for today. We had a lab to do that I didn't think would take super long, so I told her she could come. The only thing is our lab ended up taking longer than expected... and there was only 15 minutes for sewing club. And a bunch of the girls asked if they had to go to it (meaning they wanted recess). I felt bad having our leader come all this way for 15 minutes and not that many girls, so I made a few of them do it anyway. Since she showed up before 2pm, she made the rounds to other classrooms, read a book to the kindergartners, sat in on 7-8th grade art, etc. so her time wasn't wasted.

The 6th grade girls have been playing music over the speakers at recess. One of the 5th graders gets irritated when they do that because he likes it to be quiet when he plays basketball. Coming in from recess, he complained about the music saying, "It's all terrible old music, like from the 90s. You don't even play any good music." I joked with him, "Well, it's all my music I put on there, so of course it's old!" Then a different 5th grader stood up for me, saying to his classmate, "You don't even know what good music is! You have to be, like, Miss H's age before you even know good music." Apparently his dad told him that you have to be older before you know what good music is!!!

After school, some of my kids stayed to help set up for Family Write Night. They had a ton of good ideas! One was to hang streamers from the doors to my room and around the kitchen counter to make it more festive. Another was to have the sharing chair out so writers could share throughout the night. They set up tables, put up signs, sorted candy, got chairs out, organized the games, moved desks... everything was in place with a half an hour to spare. They did their math too and wrote lots of words for their NaNos. Write Night was a success (it ended a little early since a lot of people came right away). Everyone loved the new pens I bought last night... we used them to make comics/graphic novels. We had 48 people come and only 3 pizzas left over. Now I'm headed home; I can make my kiddos clean up in the morning. ;)

Veterans Day

Oh what a day! Mondays are always crazy, and today was no exception.

Nicollet hosted a Veterans Day program, which our 5-8th grade planned to do, except one of the girls in my class didn't get home from a hunting weekend in time to come to school today. I had to message her mom to find out if she was coming to school today. Normally, it's just a little frustrating when parents don't tell me their child will be absent (mostly for lunch count purposes). But that parent was supposed to drive kids on our field trip today! I had no clue if she'd be coming or not. When the mom texted back that she didn't think her daughter would be at school for lunch, I messaged her about driving. I never got a response.

Lunchtime came, so I gave her a call, twice. No answer either time. Okaaay. On to plan B. We had two kids gone, so with the drivers we had we only needed room for one more kid. Thankfully, one of the grandmas came early to watch recess today and she knew another grandma planned to go to Veterans Day anyway, so she gave her a call to see if she would drive. The other grandma was free and happy to swing by school and pick kids up. Whew!

Then at Veterans Day, one of the color guard men walked when he wasn't supposed to and the officer giving orders had to call him back, saying his name a few times before he noticed. Of course, the kids thought this was funny. The color guard kept walking to the stage, and two of them kept walking to put the flags on the opposite side of the stage. The 5th grader sitting next to me didn't realize this was supposed to happen; he thought the guy forgot to stop again. So he got the giggles really bad... and they got worse when he realized no one else was laughing! And the kids from our school around him hissed at him to stop, which made more people turn and look... Finally he got it under control. Poor kid was really embarrassed. And then Mr. E came over to chew him out, but he chewed out the 7th grader sitting next to him! The rest of the program was uneventful though.

The mom who'd dropped the ball on driving came to pick up one of her other kids after school, and we learned that she'd gotten a new phone today and apparently the number hadn't actually switched over. She'd left her old phone at home, which is why she didn't get any of my calls or the second text. So. Problem solved. She felt really bad about it, but sometimes stuff like this happens, and we had enough drivers in the end. So, such is life.

Tomorrow is Family Write Night at school in my classroom. I thought I had all the supplies I needed, but now I remembered a whole bunch of things I need to get still. So, I'll  have to do another New Ulm run when I leave school. Hopefully it won't take too long. I have words to write and papers to correct!

I didn't get much correcting done this weekend. I helped my friend move Friday night, walked with Mrs. B Saturday morning, helped my moving friend pick up things for her new apartment afterwards, ran errands, had Spanish Club, hosted a youth group painting/games night at church (we were supposed to have a bonfire, but it was too cold). Sunday we sang/played bells at church. The 7-8th graders hosted a chili dinner as a fundraiser for their class trip. I got takeout and my farmer came over for dinner. Then we put the plastic up on my porch (yay! now you don't have to Dad) ;) and ran his errands in Mankato. A very good day, but not much time to correct papers!

Book Overload

So... there's no such thing as too many books, but I have too many books on my desk. My aunt went though my cousin's books and cleaned out their bookshelves, passing them on to me. I finally took them out of the box and piled them on my desk... it's a big stack! Plus I have the books from the last book order to process still (aka- type them in an excel spreadsheet so I know which books I have copies of). All week I've been saying, "I'll catalogue them today!" but so far that hasn't happened. I was hoping to work on it some today, but I didn't get very far.

It's been a snowy, blustery day. I drove my students over to church to practice bells for Sunday. I don't know if we would've survived a walk! After school today I'm helping a college friend move to a new apartment. Hopefully we won't blow away! It should be a more sheltered area though.

My kiddos made their first purchases for the zoo today. One girl bought 2 wolves, a hawk, and some fences. Another bought a hippo and fences. A few just bought fences. One bought a mystery animal (he ended up with a platypus that he named Perry the Platypus). The big spender bought two trees, four fences, two balls and three toys, plus two pools for the animals. Our zoo is slowly coming together. One kid somehow ended up with 60 tokens. 40 of them were given to him right away; I'm not sure how he got the remaining 20. I know I didn't give him that many. But since I can't prove that he took them, I'm not going to make him give them back. Plus I have been leaving the jar open on my desk during the day; anyone could've easily reached in and grabbed some. So it's kind of my fault. From now on I'm shutting the jar so it's harder to get into and at night it's going in one of my desk drawers.

Basketball

I got roped into watching the boys before their basketball practice started... Mondays and Wednesdays are practice days, and the girls and boys switch off who has practice first. Normally parents watch the team not practicing, but it was the first day today and no one's volunteered yet. So Mr. E asked if I'd watch for a while. I came to his room loaded down with stuff to do... continuing ed forms to fill out, Christmas bell songs to pick spots for, CDs to find mp3 versions of our Christmas songs, and then papers to correct if I ran out of things to do. It was a decently productive time. 

I didn't get much accomplished after coming back to my room. We have a PTL meeting tonight at 6pm, so I do have a deadline. I worked on putting together the Christmas playlist to be burned onto CDs later on. We have one song that needs to be recorded, and I decided to wait to burn the CDs until then so we don't just have a random song that doesn't fit in with the rest. 

My NaNo is going okay. Last night was a decently productive one, though I'm still behind on words... I'm at 4,500 roughly and I need to be at 7,000, but I haven't written at all today. That's on the after-meeting to-do list. My kiddos are doing okay; some are fantastic, others are a little slow going. It would be better if they all had devices to type on during the day. As it is, we have to take turns. About half the class can type at a time unless they bring their own tablet from home or use one of the iPads (which tend to be slow).

Patriotic Morning

This morning was particularly patriotic for me... The polls in Courtland opened at 7am, so I left my apartment early and swung by to vote before school. Then, on my way to school, I saw a bald eagle eating roadkill on the side of the road. It took flight when I drove past.

My kids all wanted to know who I voted for. My answer went something like this...
"Lots of people."
"Oh come on Miss H! I mean like who?"
"Well, I voted for governor and for a senator and for a representative..."
They gave up after that.

School was busy as usual. Since we didn't have school yesterday (end of the quarter teacher workshop day), I had to meet with spelling groups and individuals during Daily 5. The class won a prize for getting enough Challenge of the Week answers correct, so we discussed options. We were supposed to vote on the choice, but we ran out of time. Then I explained the Zoo Project Mrs. L and I have been working on.

Last night she and I got the 'catalog' of animals typed, printed, and stuck in a binder. My class got their tokens today and spent their free time flipping through the binder figuring out what they should buy first. They were all super excited to discover that they can earn more tokens by getting good grades on their assignments... 1 token for 95-100%, 2 tokens for 100%, and 3 tokens for over 100%! Plus they can earn tokens for saying memory work earlier in the week and for keeping their desk/crate clean. I can charge them tokens for getting a drink of water or going to the bathroom when it's not a break time. And if they forget to put their supplies away, I can hold it for ransom until they pay a token (or do a job). Genius! This is going to be great!

They already have ideas of what they want to do. One girl is going to buy all fences to make pens for the animals. There are mythical creatures available for sale for lots of tokens (typically 200-275 tokens each): unicorn, dinosaur, yeti, bigfoot, kraken, dragon, etc. Since my kiddos want to build a better zoo than the 1-2nd graders, they want to buy all the mythical animals so it will be really cool. That's a lot of tokens!

One of the prize options is for everyone to get another 20 tokens each. I wonder if they'll pick that one or if extra recess will win out.

Fall Carnival

Boy am I glad this week is over! The kiddos have been crazy since Wednesday (Halloween, the candy hangover and sleep deprivation day after, and who knows what it was today...).

My class puts on a carnival for the rest of the school the Friday after Halloween. The students plan everything; I'm just the organizer. That means they bring their own supplies too. This year they went all out with the games/booths. We had hairspray, nail polish, face paint, 'fishing', football, basketball, soccer, hockey, guessing jars, bottle flipping, poke a pumpkin, a cup game, and musical chairs. Some bought new candy to give out as prizes, some brought leftover Halloween candy to give out. Everyone had a blast! (Even the 7-8th graders who are sometimes hard to entertain).

We didn't get a ton done in the classroom, but everyone turned everything in that they needed to, read to self, did their spelling tests, and worked on their NaNos. I even got them to clean up our classroom at the end of the day (they do that every day, but today was particularly messy). I'd count that as a successful day.

NaNo Kickoff

The first day of NaNo went great! My kids wrote a ton (many of them typed faster than I thought). A few are already planning to up their word goals. Many of them wrote during study hall time in Mr. E's room. I have five words written on mine, but I did get a rough idea of what I want to write about. However, I still need to come up with the motivation/wants/needs. I'll let you know when I figure it out!

No one stayed up until midnight to start writing. One kid said he stayed up until 11:30 doing homework since his mom was out late with his sister trick or treating. Another kid said she woke up at 2am and listened to an audio book. A lot said they were going to write a bunch at home after school. We'll see how many words they have tomorrow!

T Minus One Day

Tomorrow is NaNo! And I still haven't figured out what I'm writing... My kiddos are super pumped though. I am too, but my excitement is tempered by all the things I need to accomplish in the near future... end of the quarter grades/report cards, helping a friend move, finishing cleaning/reorganizing my apartment, reading the books I checked out from the library, parent teacher conferences, Family Write Night (in conjunction with NaNo), Thanksgiving, Christmas program planning, and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting.

Sigh. Baby steps. Just do one thing at a time.

I actually left school before 3:30 today. I went for a walk with a friend, then went to Mankato to help a different friend go through her stuff pre-move. She was in a purging mood and gave me a whole bunch of stuff for my classroom. I had told my students if they wanted to trick or treat at my house, they'd have to come after 7:30 because I wouldn't be home before then.

Right after I unloaded my car, I heard voices and saw a group of kids coming up the sidewalk (it was 7:31). In a few minutes I had a knock at my door. Only two groups of kids came, but that's okay! That's usually about the amount of trick or treaters I get. My neighbor to the left had said she'd be home for visitors, so I pointed them in her direction too. I hadn't talked to my neighbors on the other side, but their porch light was on, so I sent my kiddos that way too.

I'm pretty sure everyone is home for the night, so my light is off and I can settle in to more correcting papers. I guess the rest of the candy is mine!

Smoke

There was a bit of excitement at the end of the day... Two boys had a 'contest' to see who could touch the long light bulb in the coatroom while they packed up their bags. As soon as one boy touched it, the light began to flick bright and dim, and pretty soon smoke came out of one end of the fixture. Everyone freaked out! I had them shut the light off, which made the smoke quit, but the air in the coatroom still smelled burnt for a while after that.

After school Mr. E and I checked the light; it still worked and nothing smoked again, but we changed the light bulb anyway, just in case. When we took the other one down, one of the metal prongs was bent and charred and the lighting casing also showed burn marks. We're keeping an eye on it.

A lovely grandma had her first sewing club session this afternoon during our last recess for the day. She was super prepared (she used to be a teacher) and came with supplies, expectations, and a plan. The girls had a great time! She's hoping to come once a week. She had nothing going on earlier today and came at 1:30 to help with our lab. Then, after school, she did clean up too!

Her grandson is in my class, and I heard him ask before he went out to recess, "Grandma, would you be upset if I didn't stay in here and do sewing class with you?" Aww! So thoughtful of his Grandma's feelings. She waved him outside saying, "No, I'll still love you if you go out to recess."

Coming soon! Class Zoo

Mrs. L put her construction zone bulletin board up! My 5th graders were confused when they had bells in her room. I still need to put mine up...

Another zoo idea popped into my head this weekend... disaster cards. If students are being naughty, they can get a red token, which means they have to draw a disaster card from a pile. Some of them could be small disasters, like pick up litter, turn in 2 tokens. Or it could be bigger ones like, celebrity visitor, hire more security, turn in 10 tokens. We made a shared document on Google and started listing animals to buy, the rules for purchases, and possible disaster cards. It's going to be fun! My mom gave me some drawstring bags for them to put their tokens in to start with. I'm sure some kids will upgrade their container, but that's fine with me!

Slowly but surely, kids' names are getting erased from the board for late/missing assignments. The end of the quarter is this week, so it's pretty crucial that they get things done before then. I had three students stay after school today. They were pretty productive, but they didn't get everything done. I really need to be on top of correcting this week (and entering grades in the gradebook) so I'm not working on grades and then realize I'm missing something from someone still.

Nano starts in two days! (Still need to brainstorm my story... maybe tonight).

No David!

My class loves the "No David" books by David Shannon. Most of my past classes were obsessed with them too. A new one came out this month and they've been begging me to get it; it finally came in at the library last night.

It was the first book grabbed for reading buddies. Thankfully they were willing to share it, so there weren't any fights. The 8th graders even had a chance to read it during their work time in my classroom today. It brought back so many memories they dug through my picture books until they found their favorites from when they were in my class... Be Brown, Chicken Cheeks, Black White Day Night, the other David books... They read them so many times they had them memorized. Today, they bet each other they still had the books memorized. I think one of the books they wanted is on 'vacation' in the closet. I have a bunch stashed there to pull out after Christmas so they don't get sick of the same old books.

At the end of the day the student council led us in making scarecrows. My group's had a pumpkin for a head and a sombrero. One 3rd grader named him Taco John. His legs look like he's doing the splits! Or maybe the Mexican hat dance?

After school Mrs. L and I brainstormed behavior problems in our classes. She and I attended a sectional about using classroom games (and virtual prizes) to improve student behavior. We decided to have a contest between our classes. Students can earn tokens to be turned in to 'buy' animals to put in our class zoo. If they buy the animal, they can find a picture of the animal, print it, name it, and choose where it goes in our zoo. Each animal costs a different amount of tokens, and they have to buy food for it too. They can buy trees, plants, landscaping, etc. to put in the enclosures. It's perfect because we're reading aloud a book that takes place in a zoo, so my class should have tons of ideas. We decided to start next quarter, which is in about a week (Nov. 6th).  Mrs. L is going to put up 'under construction' signs on one of her bulletin boards. I'm doing the same in my entryway. I wonder if my kids will notice it at all...

Big Spenders

Book order time! My kids had a bunch this time... Over $100! That means I got lots of points to order books for our class. Woohoo! And I had a big list of books to buy, so it worked out for everyone. There's one 7th grader who might still order books online tonight, so I'm waiting to officially place the order until tomorrow. So far, nothing, so she might not be ordering anything.

Don't worry, I'm not still at school at this late hour. Time slipped away from me after school (I was quite productive) and I had to run errands before I had a chance to write on here. One of my errands was a flu shot... my arm is starting to get sore. It gives me a good excuse to take the night off from cleaning and focus on other things.

Our morning was full of brainstorming... lots of kids needed sparking for NaNo ideas, and I think all of them have ideas they're excited about now. One girl's story is particularly intriguing... There's a girl who cleans houses for people. An old lady died and her family hired this girl to clean the house to get it ready to sell. The girl has a pet pig that comes with her, and she puts her hand on a door to open it and gets sucked through into a new world. On the other side her hair and clothes are transformed into crazy things, her pig can suddenly fly and talk, and her cleaning stuff has turned into things that she might need in this world. Everyone is going to hear the queen talk, so she heads to the palace too to see what's going on, and a guy knocks her over as he's running away. It's the prince! He's on a mission to do... something she's not sure yet, and her main character has to help him. In the end she has to decide if she's going to stay in this world or go back to being a cleaning lady in the real world. Dun dun dun!

Another boy is going to have his character get knocked off a bridge into a river. He can't swim, so he thinks he's going to die. But he gets sucked into a tunnel and in the tunnel is a thing that can make his dad not be dead (the dad died in the story right away in the beginning).

And that's just two of the stories! We focused a lot on character wants vs. character needs and conflict in stories, so I'm sure our stories this year will be better than ever! Only six days til NaNo starts... I still need to figure out what I'm writing. Or at least find a first sentence. Again, a few prompts/dialogue chunks on my pinterest board popped out at me while I brainstormed with students, but nothing that I wrote down. It's a task for this weekend.

Last night I buckled down and got my papers graded. But there's another big stack to work on tomorrow morning. Sigh, oh well, it's the nature of the beast.

Piling Up

I need to devote time to correcting papers... I have a large stack that doesn't seem to be getting much smaller. With NaNo starting in about a week, there's even more paperwork being generated by my class. Some stuff takes more time/brain power to correct than others; I just need to make myself do it. The trouble is, I'm still focused on getting my apartment put back together after cleaning (and finishing the cleaning). There's only so much a girl can do in one day!

My class was more focused this morning, but the afternoon, not so much. We had a quiet, productive morning working on NaNo ideas. Some kids have super great ideas! A few have no clue. I am in the same boat. Closer to lunchtime I remembered I have a pinterest board of writing prompts, so I scrolled that a bit and found some potential ideas for myself. Tomorrow I'll show it to students who need a story spark. I can't believe next Friday is November already!

The end of the quarter is near too... next Friday as well. There are a lot of kids with their names on the board for redos/late work! I talked to parents today and a bunch of kids are staying after school tomorrow to get things done if the soccer game is cancelled. There's one on the calendar that's been rescheduled two or three times already. The only thing is there's rain in the forecast for tomorrow, so it doesn't bode well for playing. It's the last one and won't be rescheduled again since it's been postponed so many times already. It'd be a bummer to end the season with a cancelled game, but we'll see what happens!

Daily 5

Look what I made! I am so proud of this:

First, I can't take credit for the cute rainbow Daily 5 graphic at the top of the page... I did a screen clipping from a download from Teachers Pay Teachers. But I put together everything else.

The version we actually use in class looks a lot cooler... I have my students' names typed on the side along with a star showing which color spelling group they're in. Above each day of the week are the names of the students I meet with individually that day (that way both they and I remember). Those little clip art pictures at the bottom right corner of each category are reproducible, meaning a student can click and drag a copy to their name to show which round they want to do.

We tried it for the first time today. Everybody seems to be a fan! I like being able to see at a glance who's doing which round. I can keep an eye on which rounds people are skipping, or which ones they repeat a lot. Students can pick their rounds before school starts (as long as I remember to have the flipchart up on the screen. And if they want to switch rounds around during Daily 5, they can easily do that too.

Now, we just need to figure out how to make Word Work go better... everyone was off the walls today for word work. They all wanted to do their sorts on the board, but when it wasn't their turn, they lolled around on the exercise balls doing nothing! I had to repeatedly redirect them. So that's on the agenda to talk about tomorrow: how to do word work more efficiently. I think we need a whiteboard checklist...

Revamping

We had quite the talkative day today... Mondays usually are much chattier. Maybe it was worse today since we're coming off a long weekend? Hmm, I'll have to gather more data.

After getting frustrated at their lack of filling things out completely, I revamped the Writers Workshop Check-in sheet. Instead of writing how they did at the end of the week and goals for next week, we're starting Mondays by writing a goal (or goals) for our writing. Friday we'll assess how we did on our goals. Hopefully making it more concrete will help them know what to write. Other weeks I had it phrased, "how did you improve your writing this week?" and a lot of them didn't pay enough attention to their writing or didn't try to improve, so they wrote 'nothing' or left it blank. Only a few filled it out the way I wanted them to. So we're trying goals.

After school today I worked on a different way to record our Daily 5 rounds for the week. It seems to take so much time every day to write down what everyone wants to do each round. I'm looking for a way to streamline it (or even have them do it before school starts!). I created a flipchart on the smartboard where they can write their rounds in for the day and see what they've been doing throughout the week. We'll try it tomorrow and see how it goes! It's going to take some trial and error, I'm sure...

Long Week

I know it's been a short week, but man, it's felt long. My brain needs a break. I don't know how many times today my kids looked at me like, "Huh?" Whatever I had said made no sense! They were all a little stir crazy too... But our afternoon was productive! Morning, not so much.

Thankfully, MEA break starts tomorrow. Of course I don't get the whole rest of the week off; we teachers are 'going to school' at the Lutheran Educators Conference tomorrow. We get Friday off though! I heard it's going to be nice, so I'm bringing a bunch of my painting projects home to the farm so I can paint outside while the weather is nice. 

We had a school safety planning meeting with us teachers after school today. It's just to come up with basic procedures in case of fire/tornado/intruder/bomb threat/etc. We mostly copied Nicollet's plan (since it's so good) and changed the wording a bit. We'll delve deeper at our next staff meeting. At least we have the ball rolling! 

Speaking of safety... the IT guys finally installed the fob entry system at the main door of school. Each teacher got a fob that will let us in any time. Starting this weekend, the doors will be locked from 7:45am-5pm every weekday. I assume it will be locked the whole weekend. Hopefully this will put some of the church naysayers at ease (or quiet them down a little).

Picture Day

Ugh. Picture day. It's so hard to decide what to wear. I thought about wearing my favorite scarf, but I wore it in last year's pictures, so I went with a different outfit. I thought pictures would be a quick thing... how long does it take to pose and snap a few shots?

Nope.

It took FOREVER.

The lady had them stand with their feet on the footprints. Then they had to turn their body. Then they had to turn their heads. Okay, now drop your shoulders. Now lower your hands. Just a little lower. Okay, now turn your head again. Lift your chin. Oh wait, now your shoulders are up, drop them again... Okay say 'puppies'! Wait, your eyes were closed. Try again. Except now you turned too much.... And the process starts all over again.

It took over half an hour to do my class of 12 students, closer to 40 minutes. One kid wouldn't smile. Or he would, but then drop it right as she took the picture so it looks like he's biting his lips. That kid took over five minutes just for him.

Thankfully, it's over for another year. And tomorrow's the last day of school this week since it's MEA break. Woohoo!

Pork Chop

Can you believe it snowed Sunday?! I had no clue. Through the cracks in my blinds I saw bright white on the bushes outside my windows and thought, "huh, that looks like snow. But we weren't supposed to get any precipitation this week..." Sure enough... snow. And it didn't stop until lunchtime! I thought for sure it'd be done by the time church got out.

The Pork Chop Dinner/Silent Auction was a success. We didn't run out of chops. The Silent Auction went smoothly. I had everything dropped back off at school by 2:30pm, not terribly late. Now we're just waiting on seven people to pay/pick up their stuff. Hopefully they do that this week. I hate having to hunt people down.

School was crazy today. All the kids were wound up, talking non-stop. Not just my classroom, everyone said their kids were off the wall. We're going to try a science lab tomorrow. I'm not sure if I got enough content in today; we'll have to start tomorrow's science class off with a little more information before we dive into the lab. I still have to correct the last lab. This weekend was too busy for me to correct any papers. Oops... maybe tonight when I get home from errands.

I can tell it's past time for me to go home; my room is feeling cold. I have the heater set to drop down to 60 degrees after 4:30 to encourage me to leave school in a timely manner. It didn't work today! Tomorrow, I'll be better.

Silent Auction

A full day, but a good one. We did art in two chunks today. The project involved gluing string in a loopy line on cardboard, then covering it with tinfoil, pressing it down so the string parts bump up, then coloring the lower parts. It looks cool when it's finished! So we glued before lunch. Art time= tin foil time! (and coloring) We turned on some tunes and jammed out while pressing the foil and coloring. One girl even salsa danced! She got pretty crazy, chasing the boys trying to get them to dance with her (and did some of the strange salsa arm movements around them... she went a little too far I think). I did a mini-salsa lesson with a few of them so now they actually know how to salsa instead of just copying the movies.

After school we moved tables around for the Silent Auction. A parent volunteered to write in all the minimum bids, etc. so it was much less work than I thought it would be. I need to drop a student off at home now that she's gotten her math corrections all finished. Hopefully they're finished correctly!

Tonight I'm going to a book gala with a college friend. She convinced me to volunteer with her at the book sale the next day. I'm going to wear my new shirt that says "bookmarks are for quitters". Then I have a youth group painting event in the afternoon Saturday. Sunday is the Pork Chop Dinner and Silent Auction for school. I work the Silent Auction part. After that I'll hopefully be able to see my farmer for a while!

Mold update: last night when I got home, my bedroom didn't smell moldy. It smelled kind of strange, but that could be because I have machines going and the door closed. I cleaned a few more things and slept in the living room again. The apartment manager didn't smell anything (and she even got down to sniff the carpets she said). She thought I could go back to using the rooms again. Her only suggestion was to open the ceiling air vents since they're mostly closed and don't let much air move around. So, now I can put my house back together again. I still have to clean my guest closet; a job for tomorrow.

Testing, Testing

The 7-8th graders took their first science test yesterday. I corrected them this morning. There were mixed results... Most of the 7th graders didn't do so hot. It's not a big surprise since they haven't been paying much attention in class. There are a lot of redos! Grr...

It feels like they're giving up and hating school, which I definitely don't want. But I don't want to make the tests any easier either. And I don't want them to fail. I guess I mostly want them to pay attention and to learn what I'm teaching them. I probably need to try some new tactics with them. More things to think about.

After school my kiddos staying for the soccer game loaded my car with silent auction items to bring over to church. It didn't take too long since we stacked items in a few tubs I found in the closet.

Mold update: no one has been in my apartment. I got an email from management today asking if everything got picked up by maintenance... so they didn't have any plans to do more cleaning or fixing. We emailed back and forth a little, and tomorrow morning she (the apartment manager) is going to stop by to smell my apartment. Hopefully she has some bright ideas of what to do!!!

Christmas Program

Our Christmas program meeting was a success! It turns out there is NOT a CD for the music, but most of the songs are tunes from the hymnal if not just hymns, and the program did come with sheet music, so we're okay there. We chose to switch up a few of the songs for some modern-ish, upbeat, versions just to mix it up a little. Mrs. E will contact the bible school teachers to find out how many kids they have this year. After that we can assign group parts. I typed up our edits so we are all ready to go for next week's xmas planning meeting.

It's Fire Prevention Week, and today was the day the Courtland Fire Department visited our school. The rain stopped and the sky brightened a little while we toured the trucks they brought out. It was our year for the smoke house (a tiny model house on a trailer that imitates the smoke from a fire so we can practice how to escape from windows); everyone was excited to go through that! Smokey the Bear also paid us a visit. Cool! The younger grades were terrified of him. One 1st grader hid in the kindergarten room until the bear went outside school. My class all wanted to pose with him. So I took advantage and snapped pictures!

This year's visit went super smoothly. Normally kids run amok, honking the horns too much, chaos everywhere. This year we teachers made a schedule of who goes outside when and which classrooms have the inside conversations at which times. Way less of a mess. We made a note to do it this way every year!

Mold update: a friend came over last night and helped clean my guest room. Now I have my spare closet and both bathrooms left. Since it's rainy, the moldy smell is back in my bedroom, so I hauled my mattress to the living room and slept there last night. No maintenance guys have been there yet (unless they came today). I might end up having to swap rooms. I moved a few of the lighter pieces of furniture out of my bedroom already and will probably move the rest tonight, unless maintenance has made any progress...

Chemical Reactions

The 5-6th graders had their first big lab today. And by big, I mean we pulled out the goggles and aprons and had a safety talk. We just mixed different household liquids to see if a chemical reaction happened; none of the supplies were toxic, but it's still good to practice safety from day one. They handled the lab really well. We need more ice cream pails, dish towels, and lab aprons. Clean-up was pretty good too. We had to rush to tidy up since it was the end of the day. I'd been hoping we'd finish in time to have recess, but it took a full hour to do the lab. Oh well. They had a good time.

After school some of the girls were interviewed on the radio to promote our Pork Chop Dinner fundraiser on Sunday. I listened online; they did just fine. They had to rush back to school for a 4pm volleyball game.

A helpful parent came to the game early to put together a list of Silent Auction items that have been accumulating in my closet. There are still a bunch to come in. Hopefully they'll trickle in throughout the week so it's not a lot of paperwork to do on Friday.

Mold update: I have a few rooms left to clean. The ones left smell alright, but my bedroom still smells moldy. I think it's coming from the outside walls... and it keeps raining. I called the apartment manager this morning and left a message. We'll see if anyone did anything.

Bank Run

Two parents waited until the last minute to send their money for Camp Omega registration. I had their checks all set to be deposited in the bank's night deposit drop Friday morning, but when I tried to open the slot, it wouldn't go! I asked Mr. E if he'd deposit it for me later and put it out of my mind.

This morning I found the envelope in my box, checks still inside! He hadn't dropped it off! Worried about an overdraft fee (since we paid for camp on Friday), I called the bank during lunch (thankfully a grandma stopped by and offered to watch the kids at recess so I didn't have to worry about supervising them). They said the Camp Omega check hadn't come through the bank yet and if I dropped off the checks today, the account would be fine. Whew! I went there while my kids were at PE and had no other troubles. Cutting it a little close though!

It's already time to start planning the Christmas program... It's always a challenge to find a program to use, one that's fun but biblical and hasn't been used recently. Pastor has one about angels we haven't done yet that we've kept as a backup for the past few years. I thought we'd have to use it this year, but it needs polishing up since it's a little formal and dry. Mrs. E had the idea we should find one on prayer since our school theme is "Prayer Power". After school I did a quick Google search and found one based on the Lord's Prayer. Awesome! It has all the songs and everything, including a CD of music available for download. Definitely a God thing. It almost seems too easy...

Camp Omega

The past two days have been full, but fun. We had no troubles getting to Camp Omega; we actually got there a little early. Yesterday's weather was sunny, but chilly.  A few weeks ago a tornado went through camp. It knocked down a ton of trees and we could definitely see the aftermath of that. Much of it is already cleaned up. No buildings were damaged. We learned that the cook had been in the kitchen during the tornado. She hid in the freezer and called the owner to let him know where she was. They said it took them four hours to cut a path for her to leave camp so she could get home.

Our service project for this trip was to haul wood. We had to sort out the big logs/pieces into the back of a pickup to be brought to the chopping station up the hill. The smaller pieces had to be stacked in the dry wood shelter. We got a lot done in an hour, but there's still so many brush piles (and bigger piles) to deal with. They've had many volunteers helping with cleanup and I'm sure more are coming still.

Normally by 5pm Thursday I am about ready to pull my hair out and need alone time. This trip, I didn't get that feeling. There were enough parent chaperones along that I could relax a bit more and take time to watch the kids in the cabin during canteen (aka- sit on my bunk reading while reminding the kids who popped in that they had to eat their snacks outside... there were some girls who chose to lie on their bunks and talk instead of being outside). Most of the kids were good listeners too.

Rain came after supper, so no after supper bonfire, but we had a good time singing indoors. Afterwards we had free time for reading, playing cards, making bracelets, or playing other games. Some girls played dance, most played dark hide and seek.

The boys got pretty crazy at bedtime. The dad who came along didn't do much shushing (I think he's a pretty sound sleeper), so the boys talked past when they were supposed to. This class didn't beat the record for earliest risers (one year it was 4am- they wanted to go outside and play gaga ball), but they were up around 6am. The boys were at any rate; our male chaperone had to leave early in the morning to bring his wife to the hospital for a scheduled surgery (she made it through surgery fine). We had enough room to bring everyone back, and we mostly needed a male chaperone for the night part of the trip, so it was fine he left. But that meant the boys were left to their own devices for a few hours before the rest of us got up.

The cabin we stayed in had two sides, one for girls and one for boys, with the doors in between locked so there isn't any 'purpling'. The doors are super thin though, and you can hear anything said on the other side of the cabin. The boys got loud after our male chaperone left, but after a while they got really quiet. We female chaperones thought they had disobeyed orders and went outside to play gaga ball without an adult. It turns out they were all in their cabin still; no one was outside at all! What a pleasant surprise!

Yeah, this group of students is definitely more relaxing than some years past.

Since I'm pooped after two full days of activities, I'll give you a quick list of the things we did and then I'll head for home: ABC nature hunt, wilderness survival scenario, hatchet throwing, fire building challenge, read to self, gaga ball, soccer, canoeing, archery, our service project, and read-aloud.

DNA extraction

The 7-8th graders had a fun lab today... DNA extraction! We smashed strawberries to break down the cells, then added salt and soap, then layered it with icy cold rubbing alcohol and the DNA came out of suspension in thin, white strands. Everyone got it to work! (Probably because the alcohol was so cold; I stuck it in the freezer a few days ago so it'd be super cold.)

After that we tried bananas (not as much, but still some strands) and wheat germ (kind of saw some, not as much time to do that one). I still have a lab table full of stuff to clean off, but it was really fun. Now the 5-6th graders are jealous.

We have a faculty meeting, like, right now. Then I have bible study tonight too, plus I want to get a little more cleaning done. We leave for Camp Omega tomorrow, so I need to pack too. It's going to be a busy night!

Flashback

Another wet-ish day at school. It wasn't raining during recess times, so we did go outside. Underneath the big tire swing sat a puddle of water. One of the 5th graders somehow ended up sliding off the tire into the puddle. Oops. Wet pants. It brought me back to one of my earliest memories... pre-school.

It had rained and filled the track marks under the swings with water. That was before pea rock was added to our playground, so it was all dirt and mud. The other girls in my class figured out we could still swing on them by pulling the swing to the side, carefully climbing on, letting it swing back out, and pumping our legs to get higher. I wanted to try too! But, I wasn't all that coordinated and slipped off the swing straight into the mud puddle. My favorite dress= totally soaked in brown water.

Earlier that day I had been playing with a big, fancy, white dress up dress. I had wanted to bring the dress home with me earlier, but my teacher said we had to leave it at school so other kids could play with it too. I got to wear that lovely dress the rest of the day, and maybe even got to wear it home... although my memory is a bit fuzzy on that point. Maybe Mom brought me a change of clothes at the end of the day.

Anyway, this kid wasn't too upset about it. There's a soccer game after school, so his mom would be bringing his soccer clothes and he'd end up changing anyway. No harm done.

God is Good

VIP day, check. One big stressor off my plate. The author showed up, the books we ordered came in time for families to get them and her to sign them (I didn't think they would), people enjoyed her presentation (some said it went a little long).

The pastor's daughter we've been praying for lately is out of the hospital and was in church yesterday.

There's enough room in cars for going to Camp Omega on Thursday/Friday.

God protected my farmer's uncle from injury yesterday too. While his uncle waited for a load of corn to unload, his coat got hooked on an auger and he got trapped! His uncle used his free hand to call my farmer, who could only hear yelling, nothing understandable. He rushed over from across the farm, shut the machine off, and cut off his uncle's coat so he could get free. Thankfully, the sleeve of the coat had stopped the auger from turning, so his uncle escaped with no broken bones, just some internal bleeding and bruising on his upper arm. Again, God is good.

My apartment is still a major stressor. My bedroom is still musty smelling, so I slept on my couch last night and kept the apartment fan going. The maintenance guys are going to try washing the carpet again tomorrow. I guess that means more cleaning is on my agenda tonight. I need to enter grades and get midterms out to students. Pray that God gives me the energy to get everything done!

Friday

Thank the Lord it's Friday. I am so tired. School has been great this week; it's just the after school parts that have been draining.

I stayed up late cleaning last night. I figured out I could let the dehumidifier run if I had a bucket under the drippy part, so I had it on high the whole night. I think the musty smell in my room is coming from the carpet by my headboard... I called my landlords and left a message asking them to shampoo the bedroom. Then I moved my bed away from that part and woke with no ill effects. The doctor seems to be right about me just having a cold; my nose is a little drippy today and I haven't had any other troubles breathing. My kids are so sweet; they asked right away how cleaning is going and what the doctor said.

This group is crazy good at getting me to joke around with them. There are so many moments that warm my heart. One prayer I have right now is for another boy to join our class. There's an odd number which makes partnering up difficult. Two sets of brothers makes it even harder to find partners some days. One boy is usually left out of the pairs, so lately I've been asking God to send me a new boy.

We got our videos of offering/messages for Africa finished. The 5th grader who filmed them is so proud! The hardest part for me was getting those videos on a flash drive. After futzing with them on and off all day, I finally got it figured out. Hopefully if I ever have to do it again it will be easier!

VIP day is Monday. The IT guys said they'd get a projector and screen all set up for us. I'm worried. They've fallen through many times in the past! A few parents ordered books ahead of time, and they're due to arrive on Monday, except I'm not sure what time Monday. I have a sinking feeling it will be in the afternoon. We're usually one of the last stops the UPS makes in the day. Maybe Mr. E can pull some strings...

Progress

Last night I planned to get a lot of cleaning done. I only accomplished the kitchen. When I did my laundry, I quickly discovered my dryer didn't put out any heat! So much for that. I ended up bringing my wet blankets to my neighbor's apartment and she graciously let me use her dryer. Of course, she wanted to talk while my things dried, which was fun, but I didn't get much cleaning done during that time. I disclosed my mold problem to her, and she revealed that her daughter has a big air purifier I can borrow.

My landlords sent maintenance guys in to check out my apartment. The replaced the blind in my bedroom that was too big, checked the carpet for dampness (only found it in my guest room), looked over the dryer (have to order parts), and brought in a dehumidifier until the one I ordered comes in. Unfortunately, there's a place for a hose attachment at the back and all the water collected from the air drips out the back. I called and they told me to shut it off and point a fan at the wet carpet area; they'll send someone out tomorrow.

As the day progressed, I noticed my chest feeling tight and a sore throat lingering. I thought it was mold induced, so I went to the doctor. He thinks it's just a cold going around (there's one lots of people have that involves wheezing). He prescribed an inhaler and some daytime antihistamine stuff, but since the tightness is tolerable and is getting better as the day goes on, and the other stuff is over the counter and isn't covered by my insurance, I didn't get them. I have antihistamines at home.

As far as school goes, my student who knows how to do videos taped kids at school singing and saying greetings to the kids in Africa. She almost has all of them strung together. It was fun to watch her work; she even taught herself some things! The video will have a little banner show up at the bottom of the screen saying which class of kids is singing. Then she has music playing behind the chapel offering video. Now my job is to figure out how to get the video from the iPod to the computer/flashdrive. I need to bring my laptop since somehow iTunes got deleted from my school computer and the IT guys haven't reinstalled it.

The 5-6th grade girls have been making a dance during recess, like the full on dramatic one. Two girls are the 'coaches' and two are the dancers. One is the sound person (she pushes play on the iPad) and then pretends to be the judge and gives them pointers and takes points off their performance. It's hilarious to watch them playing, and their dance is really, really good! They've come up with all the moves themselves. Of course, now the song is stuck in my head all the time...

Mold

Ugh. I have been battling mold in my apartment this week. It's white like mildew, but fuzzy when it has the chance to grow more. I've only noticed it on my wood furniture. The first time was a few months ago... I thought it was dust, so I just wiped it off. It's been so rainy and humid lately, I don't think my apartment has had a chance to dry out. Now it smells musty when I walk in the door, especially in my bedroom.

Last night after I got home I completely cleaned everything in my room. I used bleach to wipe everything down, I vacuumed, I dusted, I put things away, I did laundry. Tonight's goal is to finish washing my bedding and get the living room and kitchen done. There aren't as many spots in those rooms so hopefully it won't take as long. I had thought the kitchen was free of mold, but this morning I found spots on some of the lower cabinets, so it's added to the cleaning list.

We all got a note from the landlords saying we should all try to keep humidity down in our houses by cracking the windows, running the fans and/or a dehumidifier, etc. Over the weekend I bought an air purifier, which is helping a little with the smell, but I think I have to cave and buy a dehumidifier. Man, I was hoping to avoid that!

I had had grand plans of things to do after school this week, but those have all gotten pushed aside by the need to clean. Grr... On a positive note, I can listen to an audiobook while I clean! Still, papers aren't getting corrected and they're starting to pile up.

Midterms are next week, so I have to put grades in the gradebook; I started that today while my kids were at PE and got maybe a third of them entered.

We're doing a special offering in conjunction with the ladies' LWML rally on Saturday. It's a collection of items for young girls escaping the sex trafficking industry. We had a ton of donations come in so far and offering today was $69! Woohoo! Evelyn, the lady in charge of this safe house mission, wants to meet the kids who are giving so much. Since our students can't all be at the rally Saturday, we filmed them bringing their offerings up front and we're making a video of students who want to say things to the recipients of the items. All of it's going on a flashdrive to be given to Evelyn to take with her to Africa. One of my 5th graders loves editing videos on iMovie, so I put her in charge of the project. She is jumping in with both feet and has already filmed the kindergartners singing 'Jesus Loves Me'! Who knows what tomorrow will bring!

Another Speaker

Our Australia speaker showed up today! I hadn't checked in with him since we scheduled this date about a month ago, so there was a small part of me that didn't know if he'd come or not. He came at noon (I thought I'd told him 12:30, but I guess not). He brought Vegemite with him and let the kids sample it while they ate lunch. Most thought it tasted disgusting. One 7th grader said he threw up after eating it. Our speaker said most people compare it to road tar. I thought it tasted like soy sauce; it wasn't too bad, but I wouldn't eat a whole sandwich of it. It's made from yeast extract. Overall, it's a very strange food...

This guy has a very exciting life. He used to be a pilot (for a Canadian airline I think) and was in the military. Now he lifeguards for the state of MN at Flandreau State Park (after he said that all the kids recognized him) and occasionally for the city of New Ulm. When he's not doing that, he judges white water kayak racing, sometimes for the World Cup and even the Olympics! And he's acted in various things (extras in movies we haven't heard of), even in Crocodile Dundee! He was part of the airplane scene, except his section got cut. Bummer. He just got back from England from doing a callback audition to be on Dr. Who!

How'd I get in touch with him? The library! One day, in passing, I mentioned to the librarian that I am teaching geography this year and I like to have guest speakers from each continent visit my class. She knew of this Australian gentleman who frequents the library and thought he'd be a good speaker. So she passed on my name/number the next time he came in! (I gave her permission of course).

We've missed two days of bells due to speakers, so the 6th graders convinced me to have bells Friday to make up for lost time. That's actually a good idea; we haven't practiced our new song yet and we perform in less than a month...

Bake Sale

After school Friday was so busy I didn't have time to write a post before I left! My main objective was to order the pre-ordered books for our author visit coming up October 1st. Easier said than done. Only four families ordered a total of five books. They are through two different publishers, and one of them has a minimum order number (10). We only want to buy one from them. A guy was going to check around and see what he could do, but so far I haven't heard anything from him. The other order needed to be faxed. After getting that straightened out, I headed to Mankato for Theater Physics with one of my college friends.

I heard back from the faxed order today and I'll probably have to put the order on a credit card (mine, since school doesn't have one). Of course they're on Eastern time, so by the time I called it was ten minutes until closing time. The lady I talked to will get back to me tomorrow for my payment information. I'll probably have to call the other guy back to see where we're at for the one book order.

Sunday we had another bake sale to raise money for Camp Omega. We did even better than last week even though there weren't as many people in church. The leftover items were sold at today's home soccer game, and we ended up with about $200 towards our trip. Most families don't have to pay anything since they helped out. A few decided not to do the bake sale and just pay. I can't believe our trip is next week already!

Well, my brain is shot. I'm headed home, grabbing supper, and then heading to bible study. Our normal schedule is disrupted since our bible study hostess's work schedule has been switched around. Next week I think we're back to a Wednesday night.

Antigua

First round of guest speakers today! Since the 7-8th graders are learning about North America, I teamed up with MLC to get student (teachers) from other countries (or travelers to those parts of the world) to come speak to my class. Today's speakers were two girls from Antigua, which is an island in the West Indies (near the Caribbean). It turns out I've been pronouncing it wrong. It's pronounced an-TEE-gah. No "gwa" sound in it at all. Learn something new every day!

I had a lady from church pick them up from MLC since they didn't have a car. This is the first time I've tried that and it worked fantastic! The lady said they had good conversation in the car on the way here and back to MLC. I think we'll keep doing it that way. The 5-6th graders stayed for half the time, going to math the other half. The girls were mostly done presenting by 1:00, so the 6th graders got gypped a little, but we kept coming up with questions, so they did learn some things.

Lots of pretty tropical beaches and clear, blue, water. Both girls are here on scholarship, being trained at MLC so they can go home and teach at a Lutheran Antigua school. They've taught in Antigua previously (preschool) and they had pictures of their classes, so I'm wondering if they started teaching right out of high school and now are officially being trained. They mentioned needing more classrooms to student teach in, so I volunteered to let them come back anytime. I wonder if the teachers at MLC would be okay with sending students out for clinicals at our school since we're Missouri Synod. Our school is so close to New Ulm that it wouldn't be too difficult to send people out here. Ah well, I guess we'll see!

Training

It was a long day. The dreary weather had everyone feeling droopy, and my kiddos were harder to engage than usual (to say nothing about the 7-8th graders... their class was rough). After school I had plans to buckle down and cross things off my to-do list, but it wasn't meant to be.

A stranger showed up after the buses left. He had a clipboard and looked pretty well put together, not a dangerous sort. We couldn't figure out who he was and why he was here. Then one of us remembered a topic at our last staff meeting about doing active shooter training sometime in September. Today was one of our top choices for the training. Except no one told us it was officially on the calendar. So we had an impromptu (for us) session. It was depressing and sad, but good.

Instead of schools going into lockdown mode, law enforcement officers are teaching people to Run-Hide-Fight, depending on the situation. Barricading the door is a big yes, and escaping is also a yes if you can do safely. We need to come up with a few safe rendezvous points for kids/teachers to go to if a situation were to happen and we escaped school. Then we can do headcounts of our students. Also, to cut down on congestion when parents come to pick their kids up, we could have the buses pick people up from the safe zones and drop kids off at a central location parents know about (but is away from the school). Lord willing it will never happen to us, but it's always good to be prepared.

Mr. E will work on putting an action plan together with this officer. When it's done, he's going to come back and talk to the upper grades about what to do, and also to parents so we're all on the same page (and explain why we're doing things the way we're doing them). Whew.

After that I had a short time in my room before we teachers headed over to the Ice Cream Social fundraiser at church for supper. It was fun to interact with them in a social setting, plus I could talk to a bunch of church people I needed to talk to all in one place!

We're starting a once-per-week lunchtime book club- 5-6th grade girls are the primary members, plus a sweet older lady from church who volunteers at school often. She's very excited to start next Tuesday! The girls unanimously picked out the book today before lunch.

Some of the girls have expressed an interest in learning how to sew, so I talked to a different lady about doing sewing lessons during afternoon recess (the time those students requested). We haven't set up a specific date to start. I brought my sewing basket from home and another student said she'd bring scraps for the girls to use. We might start tomorrow if she remembers to bring the stuff.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Holy buckets did it rain this morning! I put off leaving my apartment until the very last minute, hoping the rain would stop, but it didn't. The wind blew and blew (thankfully going the direction of school), and I had to run from my car to the building. It stayed dark for a long time, but it's actually kind of sunny out now. The rain stopped around noon. It sounds like almost all week will be rainy.

Last night was a big correcting papers night... I haven't had much time to correct since I've had so many things going on over the past few weekends, but last night after bible study I buckled down at got almost everything corrected. Of course they turned in more assignments today. I don't have much going on tonight, so maybe I'll spend another night correcting.

I wish I could pause time to do some reading! I have a stack of library books on my shelf waiting patiently for me... Did you know the New Ulm library system automatically renews your books for you? Best thing ever! Now I don't have to worry about getting late fees on my books. I still keep an eye on it though, just in case I reach the renewal limit.

Today was the first day my students could pick their own rounds for Daily 5. It actually went really well. I met with all my Tuesday people, it was quiet, they seemed productive, and I even had time to re-shelve the 'on display' books I've had out from the beginning of the year. I have to make room for our first book order! They will hopefully arrive this week (but maybe next week). I had a lot of kids order this time! Yay, more books!

We had a bake sale Sunday to raise money for Camp Omega. Two moms are going to chaperone. They decided to split the free registration PTL paid for and each will pay $43. This morning another girl told me her grandma wants to come and her uncle is going to pay the $86 fee for her. Still waiting for a male chaperone though. There are a few nibbles, but no bites yet.