Frantic

Whew, today has been a whirlwind! It started crazy and it ended crazy.

I have my morning wake-up alarm set on my iPod, but when I have my iPod at school, I turn it to silent mode so it doesn't interrupt our day with potential strange noises. Yesterday, I forgot to turn it back to normal sound. That means I didn't wake up until 7:00!!! Yikes! I had left all my correcting for this morning, planning to get up right away to get it all done. Yeah, that didn't happen. I did make it to school at a decent time and I did get half the spelling packets corrected while at home, but not everything.

That put me behind the rest of the day. I had thought I'd be able to correct more before kiddos arrived, except one girl came early, only a few minutes after I got there! She wanted to say memory and talk about her science fair topic. Then I had to make copies and make an art project example and before I could do either of those, the bus dropped off the rest of the kids.

Reading buddies gave me time to catch up on things a little bit, and I had a surprise visitor! My farmer's dad had been passing through the area running errands and he stopped in to say hi. It was a nice surprise! He got to see my classroom in the midst of reading buddies; of course all my students were curious who he was...

After reading buddies we had 10 minutes of free time until Princess Kay of the Milky Way visited our class. She played 'Dairy Fact Jeopardy' with my kids. They had a lot of fun! Even though I'm a beef girl, I still knew quite a few of the answers. Right after the Princess left, our Junior Achievement guy came for our very last session this year. Today's topic was all about global business and trading with other countries (where our supplies come from).

At lunchtime, I took the opportunity to make copies quickly before grabbing my lunch, so all my students were finished eating before I even made it back to the classroom (of course, they could've eaten fast since lunch was one of their favorite meals: sloppy joes). Thankfully, today was another Art Recess, so a volunteer was already in the gym and they could go out and play without having to wait for me. I had a ton of kids who hadn't said their memory yet, so instead of art time, it was listen to memory work time.

The 7/8th graders corrected their spelling books and took their tests, then we tested their earthquake resistant buildings on our jello.

Afterwards, the 5-6th graders had art. We made a project using chalk that mimics the Northern Lights. Man, they were not happy with how they turned out! They kept asking me for a new piece of paper because they didn't like the way their chalk lines looked. "Nope, you only get one," was my answer, "problem solve!" They flipped it over and used the back. But what happened when they messed up the back side too??? Figure out which way the paper should be turned so the tree silhouette would cover up the worst of it. Actually, most of them turned out really cool and I think overall they're happy with how they look.

Recess should've been normal, except the electricians came to install different lights in the gym. I was going to tell my kids to stay on one half of the gym, but the electricians said they'd work around them. It was kind of fun to watch! Some of the electricians know my students, so they were talking basketball and teasing each other about missing shots. The electricians had a scissor lift, and at one point they tried to make a basket from the top of the gym! It hit the rim, but didn't go in.

Well, now the week's over and I'm wrapping things up. I think I'll be able to make it home before 5:00 today! That means I'll make my weekly goal of leaving school before 5:30 three times this week. Not too shabby!

This weekend will be a cold one... my farmer has a snowmobile race on the lake on Saturday and the high for the day is not that high. I've already been planning how many layers I'll wear. I also have heat packs for my hands and boots so I won't totally freeze.