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!