Cold, Cold, Cold

My classroom was 43 degrees when I arrived this morning. The south heaters weren't strong enough to heat the whole room I guess. Maybe they got overwhelmed and stopped working. Or maybe there was an electronic glitch. Either way, they weren't running when I came inside. I kept my coat and hat on while I got the room ready for the day and I flipped the fuse back on for the north heaters. Then both kicked in. By the time the kids got to school it was a balmy 48 degrees. It took until 11:00 to get up to our normal 68.

The electricians came to work on it about halfway through the morning. I was a little worried about my kids' focusing abilities with strangers doing interesting things in the room. It's never an easy task to focus with visitors around, and with their behavior lately I was not optimistic, but they were little angels.  We got an English lesson in, had a great half hour work time for Writers Workshop. Our rounds were quiet and focused. Towards lunchtime they got a little chattier, nothing too crazy though.

We had to set up extra tables for lunch since the electricians' supplies and tools covered up part of the table where we eat lunch. Then the kids couldn't get the table legs to extend. And everyone moved so slow and no 3/4th graders knocked that they were going to lunch, so we were very late to lunch.

Today was the first day of the Fruit and Vegetable challenge. Our cook does not agree with the idea that a chef's salad equals four servings of vegetables. She wanted it to count for one, but my class had purposely gotten salads for that reason and they would've mutinied if our cook hadn't acquiesced. I'm not sure who's winning so far. There's lots of 'talk on the street' over who ate how many servings, but I can't piece it together. Eh, lots of time for the servings to even out.

It's also the first day of "I Love to Read" Month. We read 12 pages of our read-aloud book today and each student read a ton during read to self. Tomorrow we'll be reading in the gym in the morning and afternoon as another kickoff to the event. Today was also a Chew Gum Day, where kids can bring $1 so they can chew gum in the morning. There were a bunch of 1-2nd graders who thought school was providing the gum. Oops. Nope, it's bring your own gum. The money raised will be used by teachers to buy more books for their classrooms. Yay! Tomorrow is a Lunch Swap day where they can pay a dollar to eat lunch in a different classroom.