Last Day!

My kids asked if we could get out of class early today, so I came up with the idea to just do all our classes in a row and be done at 10:30. Everyone was fine with that plan, so that's what we did... Well... they convinced me that we should read-aloud longer.

Our book is just getting to some action, so of course they wanted me to keep reading. "It is Christmas after all Miss H!" That and, "We haven't been able to earn marbles since we've been doing virtual, and you know that if we were in school we would probably have a prize by now, so really, we should read-aloud all morning." Good point. We didn't read aloud all morning, but we did read instead of doing English, Reading, and Social Studies. Eh, it's the last day of school before break. If we were in person, we'd be watching a movie and opening presents, so I'm fine with the trade-off.

After school today, the staff met on Zoom to open our presents to each other. Mr. E asked where I was teaching from today. He said my kids always talk about that in math class with him. It's funny because they never ask me where I am. (I taught from Fulda today). My parent's dog whined and barked right outside the window while I taught, and I was sure they could hear it, so I made a comment about it. Mr. E said the class mentioned that to him during math, and that was the only way they knew where I was. 

I had Mr. E as my person. His initials were RS. The only thing I thought of that was a viable possibility was 'ribeye steak' or 'regular spaghetti-os'. So I bought both. I put the meat in the freezer at school and put a note on the spaghetti-o can. I was right! Ribeye steak! He's grilled 240 days in a row. Today will be 241. Glad I can help him keep his streak going.

My letters were AS, art supplies. I got apple sauce, athletic socks, and an apple scent candle. Very nice!

Two Days!

Just two days of school this short week before Christmas. There's no snow on the ground and the weather has been warm (well, warm for MN in December... in the mid30s-40s), so it really doesn't feel like Christmas. Add virtual learning to the mix plus a virtual Christmas program; yeah, it's hard to believe Christmas is in four days.

My kids were wondering why we even had school these two days. If we were in person we'd be doing parties, last minute Christmas program practice, and an all school movie. But we didn't know we'd be virtual when the school board decided on the school calendar. 

We got to taste test the strange KitKat flavors today. Sweet potato was weird, the chestnut tasted kind of like maple, the little gum thing was probably the best thing, my favorite at least! It was actually more of a taffy/tutti frutti thing with fizzy stuff in the center. I filmed the kids tasting the candy and sent it to our marine friend. What a neat thing technology is when it actually works!

Candy

Did I mention before that our marine friend sent us a box of candy and other goodies from Japan? He's back in California, so he just mailed it from the States. I was hoping we'd be back in person school so we could try the candy all together, but since we're still virtual, I figured I'd try to send some candy home in their packets this Sunday. 

There are a few bags of individually wrapped candy... Chestnut and Sweet Potato flavored KitKats and a few packets of individually wrapped gum. I think. It's kind of hard to tell. So I put one of each flavor KitKat in the 5-6th grade packets. The 7-8th graders got one KitKat to try and a piece of gum. We'll try them on Monday and record our reactions to send to our marine. 

The rest of the candy will wait until we can be together in person. If any kids are still learning from home, I can bag theirs up and send it home. We're doing the same thing with Christmas presents; it's more fun to open them in person.

I gave the kids the instructions NOT TO EAT THE CANDY until class on Monday. One girl said, "Oh, that's only one day. I think I can handle that." One of the 7th grade girls said, "I'm kind of nervous! I have a pretty bad gag reflex..." I don't think the candy will taste disgusting, but it will be interesting nonetheless!

Christmas Program

 Boy, teaching from home makes it hard to remember to write my post at the end of the day! When I'm at school I remember because it's the last thing I do before I leave. Since I don't have to leave my apartment, I find myself forgetting about it!

Yesterday after school I had a worship planning meeting, so I popped in to church (and then zipped over to school afterward to take care of a few things). I thought the meeting would be short since we just needed to decide if we were adding a third service. It turned out we watched the Christmas program all the way through. That sounds longer than it actually took. 

It's a very pared down service; only eleven families have speaking parts. What's cool this year is that some families actually recited their parts as a family! We have moms and dads and kids splitting up the speaking parts, older sisters and/or cousins, brothers and sisters saying parts separate and together. It is so cool to watch. All of them are dressed in their Sunday best. 

The school families' videos are my favorite. The sound quality is better, a lot of them memorized their parts (even though that was optional), and they speak slowly and clearly. The bible school parts are good too, but they're more inclined to rush and read off the paper looking down so it's harder to hear them. All the videos were recorded earlier this week and our AV coordinator put them in the service in order so they play automatically. 

All together, the speaking parts take about 15min or so. Add in the congregation songs and the program will be about 45min. Perfect length. 

Right now, we have roughly 50 people signed up for each service. Not too many school families have signed up for the service, so Mrs. L sent a reminder out. Courtland people are notorious for signing up for things at the last minute (or just showing up without signing up), and Pastor is optimistic we'll have about 75-100 people at each service.

Wrapping Things Up

Today has been a satisfying day of school... I wrapped up a lot of things that had just a little bit left to do. 

We finished our read-aloud book, Someone Named Eva. There wasn't enough time to start a new book, and I got the feeling that we needed to let the ending of this book settle before picking the one we'll read next. They all agreed; the ending of this book was perfect. So tomorrow we'll pick our next one. I'm debating between switching from historical fiction to realistic fiction. But the two historical fiction books we've read have been so delightful, I might want to find another historical book to read. Maybe A Single Shard. I think they'd like that one.

In 5-6th science/social, we finished the lab from yesterday and finished learning about the aftermath of the MN/Dakota Conflict. The 7-8th graders finished learning about bacteria from Monday and finished the Virus powerpoint. 

Last night I finished correcting the papers I've been procrastinating correcting. I put grades in the gradebook and can send home midterms. There's another round of papers waiting for me at school, so I might wait to print grades until I correct these... Now I'm finishing things up at home, and I'll pop in to school to help a student finish a test from first quarter!

Another Lab

The 5-6th graders haven't done social studies in a long time. It started because of the student who didn't have her ammonia for the science lab. We did a bunch of social studies in a row until she had all her supplies. So we needed to do a bunch of science to even it out. This week we were going to get back in our normal pattern, except, a student was staying overnight at her grandma's house today and tomorrow, and the lab has to sit overnight, so the parent asked if we could do the lab today instead of tomorrow. Sure. No problem. But this morning the student said she'll have to transport the lab anyway because she's going to her aunt's house tonight.

We did the lab anyway. I wasn't going to do it, but enough of them had troubles figuring out which direction to put their box, I ended up setting up one cup. We're doing something called chromatography, which is where you separate the inks/dyes that make up a color. It's pretty simple: pull a pen apart, cut it so ink drips into some rubbing alcohol in a plastic cup, stick a strip of coffee filter in the bottom so it absorbs the alcohol/dye, tape the top of the strip to the top of the box. Let sit overnight so the ink molecules have time to move. 

I used a black pen. My students are doing black, blue, and one other color. A bunch are doing red, one is doing green, another purple, maybe someone is doing orange? On my experiment, I can already see yellow and purple molecules making up the black ink. Pretty neat. It's climbing pretty high! Normally it only goes about two inches up the strip. It's already up to four inches. Maybe I put too much ink in the other times. 

So tomorrow we'll examine our results and then if we have time we'll do social studies. I hope we have time, because we need to talk about the next project we're doing. 

Speaking of projects... The 7-8th graders were supposed to present their Europe projects today. Only two groups out of six had theirs finished. (Well, one more was done, but he said he wanted to polish up a few things and would be very happy if he could go on Thursday). It's been on their assignment sheets for at least a month. Two students said they forgot all about it over the weekend. Sigh. That's one of the problems with online learning; it's too easy to just shut the computer when live classes are over and forget all about the homework you still need to do. 

That goes for me as well. I forgot Friday was midterms and I needed to get enter grades over the weekend. Thankfully, I don't need to send them out until this Sunday's drop day, so I have time to work on them. But online learning has made me even less likely to want to correct papers. They come in such big bunches! I still have spelling papers from two drop days ago to correct... My plan is to correct them this afternoon! Just in time for the next round of papers from this Sunday.

Is it huggable?

My kids convinced me to play the Adjective Game during virtual school today. I used the 'create a room' feature on Teams for the first time and it worked really well! You can pick students to go into a separate call where they can discuss/work, then call them back to the main call. I can pop in and out of rooms, and the rooms can have their own chats. 

As per usual with this group of students, reading off the adjectives got pretty heated... and hilarious. To refresh your memory on how to play, students are given an object to describe (in this case, a clear plastic cup). They write down as many adjectives as they can, then read them aloud. If the other team has the same word, no one gets the points. If the other team doesn't have the word (and the adjective actually describes the object), they get a point.

Here are snippets from the reading of the adjective list:

Team 1: Itty bitty.
Me: Nope, I’d say a Barbie cup would be itty bitty, not this one.
Team 1: Okay, how about small?
Me: Sure.

Later…
Team 1: Big.
Me and Team 2: Uh...
Team 1: Compared to a Barbie cup it’s big!

Later...
Team 1: Huggable.
Team 2: We've been over this! We did this last time with the badminton racket! It's not huggable! Don't you remember? We asked Mr. E and he said it's huggable but that's not what you associate with it! So that one doesn't count.
Team 1: But technically it is! You wouldn't give it to us with water...
Team 2: Because you can't hug water!
Team 1: But you can hug this cup!
Pause of silence.
Team 1: If it's the only thing in my house and I want to hug something, I'm gonna hug it!
Team 1: It's not about if you want to, it's just if you can!

We gave them the point.

Later...
Team 1: Scrapeable...
Team 2: How is it scrapeable!!!
Team 1: Okay, not that one. Kissable.
Team 2 (reluctantly): I suppose.
Team 1: Like I said, if it’s the only thing in my house and I want to kiss something…
Team 1: Lickable.
Team 2 (very begrudgingly): I suppose.

The whole time they were arguing, I just kept thinking of their parents listening in on class... 😂 What on earth do you suppose they thought we were learning??? 

Surprisingly, the game ended very close. Team 1: 20pts, Team 2: 21pts!

Mixing Lab

The lab today was an adventure. Normally we'd use test tubes so they could really see if the liquids we dumped together would mix. This time, my kiddos were on their own as far as glassware goes. Some had big glass cups, others had mason jars, still others never turned their cameras on so I couldn't tell what they were using. 

We had to make fifteen different mixes (putting two kinds of liquids together each time); most kids didn't feel like finding that many containers, so they washed them in between. I had told them to camp out in their kitchens if they were able, to have easier access to the sink. A lot of them made an ice cream pail into a dump bucket, which proved an even more interesting concoction than the ones we made in the lab. 

One kid accidentally knocked over his ammonia container spilling it all over the table. Oops. He kind of stared at it for a while, then picked it back up. Pretty soon I heard, "Miss H? Is this going to be enough for the lab?" There wasn't a whole lot left (he'd been one to get some from school), but hopefully he had enough. His brother came by to help clean up the mess. It smelled so bad he pulled his shirt over his face while cleaning... Then he asked, "This isn't going to stain our nice wood floor is it?!" I told him it was a cleaning product, so it probably would be fine. 

Mess cleaned up, that student resumed the lab. We were using four clear liquids: water, rubbing alcohol, vinegar, and ammonia, and two yellow ones: melted butter and oil. To tell the liquids apart, they were supposed to add a drop of food coloring to each liquid. This same ammonia dropper didn't have food coloring, so he improvised with adding colored drink mix (to the water at least) or just left it clear. It was funny to watch him. He'd pick up a container, wiggle his fingers next to the opening a few times trying to waft the scent towards him (just like I taught them! I'm so proud!), then take his measuring spoon and dip it in. 

Our school board decided to stick with virtual school for the last seven days before Christmas break, which means I need to send next week's lab supplies home this Sunday. One of my kids asked my why we're doing so many labs at home when we didn't do that many at school. Well kids, that's because we spent a long time learning about molecules (and explore with our StickyAtom models). And we skipped the first two or three labs in the book because they weren't super great. Now the labs are getting good. Next week we are separating ink from different colored pens. I have to remember to ask them tomorrow if they have some random colored pens they can cut up at home. Otherwise, I'll need to send them some in their packets...

Food Coloring and Cups

Teacher brain strikes again... I forgot to send clear cups home with parents on the last drop day. We need them for this week's science lab. Oops. The other supply I forgot to talk to my class about was food coloring. All of them (so far) have it except one boy. Another one needs to check his cupboards. I'm not sure how to get food coloring to the one who doesn't have any. We've already pushed off the lab by two days for a girl who's ammonia hasn't come. Her family said they'd buy some instead of getting some from school... except all the stores are out. So they ordered online. Hopefully it came this afternoon so she can do the lab with us tomorrow!

Christmas

Whew! I've made a lot of phone calls today... 

For a virtual Christmas program that isn't supposed to take too much work, it's been a bit complicated. First there were a few back and forth calls with the 8th grade girls who had come up with a plan to do their Christmas parts together. Then there was a talk with Mrs. L to see what she thought about having two families get filmed together. After that was a call/text to the 8th graders' parents to fill them in on what the plan is. (Long story short: the families are doing separate parts and keeping the original parts they signed up for).

Then I sent out a message to parents who hadn't signed up for a video time, followed by a message to all the Christmas program part families telling them to dress up for their video (and that they don't have to wear masks while filming). Only one family hasn't signed up for a time yet, and they live far away, so I called the videographer to see if she'd film them after church instead of Monday or Tuesday night. We played phone tag, but she eventually said yes. Now I'm just waiting to hear from the family if that's what they'd like to do. 

And then there were a few messages from parents asking me to send them the 'official' Bible verses for the program parts, since sometimes the words are different depending on the translation. 

Okay! I think we have everything figured out that we need to!

Laggy

The Courtland sign-up lagginess has struck again. Today was the last day to sign up for Christmas program speaking parts. Two families waited until yesterday to sign up, except there was only one more part left. Since the two families had 8th graders, they really, really, really wanted speaking parts. So... Mrs. L and I finagled it (mostly Mrs. L... she contacted the two families who had signed up for two parts, one per kid, and asked if they'd do one part as a family... they said yes), and now there are two more parts up for grabs. 

Meanwhile, the two 8th graders decided to do the part together. So I sent them both a message on Teams saying I have a part up for grabs; they could split apart and have their own. Neither has commented, so I might have to wait until tomorrow to answer that question. That leaves one part open. A parent messaged me this morning asking if they have to sign up for a time to be videoed. Yes. Except, her family hadn't signed up for anything. When I asked if she wanted her son to have a part, she said she was trying to convince him... 

The other lagginess of the day was the internet. MAJOR slowness. Even my desktop computer glitched out and froze. The pair of students who were supposed to present their projects today did, but it was pretty painful to watch. 

The one student whose internet was so slow on Friday had the same issues today. It was so laggy, we decided the two presenters could present to me and I'd record it for the class to watch, hoping fewer people on the call would let the internet work better for him. 

Nope. That didn't help. He'd leave the call (or get kicked out), it would show he was muted but really he wasn't, and he couldn't hear anything we said to him because it glitched all the time. His partner kept wanting to say the parts of the presentation he was supposed to say, but I made her wait because he needed to do some of the work too. Ugh. It took 40 minutes to do something that normally would've taken 10. The joys of technology!

Evolution

 The 7-8th graders and I had a deep conversation at the end of science class today. Our topic was evolution, followed by 'what do Christians believe?' and 'is there any part of evolution Christians can accept?' At the end of class, some were curious what to do if/when their high school teachers teach about evolution. Do you speak up about your beliefs? Keep quiet? What answer do you put on your science test if they ask how old the world is? Class went about fifteen minutes over while we talked about all that stuff. I think they had some peace of mind about what to do when they go out 'in the real world' after ILS.

The 5-6th graders struggled with the internet today... Two groups were presenting their powerpoint projects about a country in the world. (We spun the globe and wherever my finger landed that's what country they researched). One group didn't have any troubles. Their screen was a little laggy, but they knew about that from practicing, so they just waited to talk after they switched slides. 

The other group's powerpoint didn't show up on the screen for me when they screen shared. I tried logging in on my laptop and that worked better. Other kids had the same trouble, including one of the students presenting. His internet was super laggy and slow, and it took so long to get it to work that we ran out of class time. So we're going to push their presentation off until Monday. They were bummed they couldn't go today, but hopefully the internet will be faster in a few days. We can hope, right?

Same old Same old

Nothing new to report. Classes have been going well. Kids have been showing up to virtual class. 

I'm getting things ready to send home in Sunday's packets. As of today, we're just doing virtual until next Friday, but it sounds like that will probably be extended until Christmas break.

My kids have been wanting me to pray for snow... So far I've found creative ways to phrase it so the petitions are on their behalf and not mine. I'm not ready for snow yet!

There is only one space open in the Christmas program parts. I was pleasantly surprised how many families signed up! The speaking part options are to read/recite the story of Jesus' birth in Matthew, Luke, and John. The families will be videoed ahead of time and those videos will be interspersed between hymns in the church service. 

The best part is, I don't have to be around for any of this! Our AV coordinator will be filming everything and playing it during the church service. She's going to record the first service and send the link out to people who can't/won't come in person. I plan to watch it later so I can be with my family on Christmas Eve for once!

NaNo Update

We all passed our goals!!! That makes it NINE years with all my students making their goals. This was probably the hardest NaNo I've had to do. Then again, I say that every year. This year might be the truth though. Not being in school in person drained a lot of the fun out of it. No chart to fill out, no prizes to pass out, no friendly teasing between students about who has more words... 

We discussed that this morning before starting school; the 6th graders agreed. It was hard for them to get motivated to write at home. Three kids waited until the last minute to finish their stories (to be fair, I did too). I finished my last 2000 words at 9:45 and two of them still weren't finished! One said she finished at 10pm the other finished at 11pm. Both said they didn't want to be the first one to break my streak of all students finishing. Whatever it takes to get the job done! 

Final stats:

• We wrote 47,622 words of our 43,953 goal.
• The top writer was a 6th grader who wrote 5,243 words.
• One 7th grader participated and she wrote 13,171.

Teaching From Home

I'm teaching from Fulda today, the rest of this week actually. That is one of the perks of virtual learning; you can do it from anywhere. I have everything I need tucked in a crate, plus I have two laptops set up for live class. It helps to have one that I'm teaching from and the other to watch the comments and see if any students have their hands raised. 

The day was pretty typical, though everyone was moving a little slow after a long weekend. The 5-6th graders learned about infectious diseases: yellow fever, chicken pox, measles, and scarlet fever. The 7-8th graders learned about how DNA works. 

It's the last day of NaNo and three students are still a ways off from winning... this is the most kids I've had waiting to the last minute to finish. I'm doing the same... I still have two thousand words to write before midnight tonight. Just a little ways to go!

Virtual Lab

It was a much better day of school today! 

I taught from home since I had packed up all my school books yesterday. One of the kids asked where I was because he didn't recognize my surroundings (I had blurred out the background but they could still tell I wasn't at school). Another girl was visiting her grandma, so her background was different too. Her little cousins came in to see what was going on from time to time. 

We just did religion, read aloud, and our science lab today. A nice, short day before break. We're at the part of Exodus where God gives Moses the 10 commandments and all the other instructions for things the Israelites have to do. We skimmed over most of it, but I showed them pictures of the replica tabernacle I visited a few years ago. 

The science lab was interesting. It was a titration of vinegar/cabbage juice to ammonia. I wasn't sure how it would go because some of the cabbage juice had been sitting out a long time, plus I couldn't control which measuring utensils my class used to put vinegar in the cabbage juice. I gave each of them a pipette to control how much ammonia they added to the solution, but some of them couldn't find the pipette in their packet, so they used a teaspoon instead. That actually worked better because it put more liquid in at a time. The pipettes hold 5ml, but you have to work really hard to get the 5ml in the pipette each time. It usually holds a smaller amount. 

Some of the kids got frustrated with how long it took to turn, so I let them switch to a teaspoon. I figured it's only 5-6th grade science; it won't skew the results that much. One boy accidentally dumped the cabbage juice in the ammonia instead of vinegar, so he had to do his experiment 'backwards' and get it to turn from green to red. I could tell he was frustrated, but at the end of the lab he said he still had fun. 

No class with the 7-8th graders today! We did double class yesterday so we wouldn't have to meet. 

The Christmas program planning meeting last night went well. We decided to pare down most of the program. We'll keep the bible school parts the same, the congregation will sing all the hymns, and school families can sign up to read the bible verses about Jesus's birth. They'll have to come to church to be videotaped and our AV coordinator will tape/put the videos together. So, more work upfront for Mrs. L and me, but overall less work for both of us. If not enough families sign up, the congregation will do responsive readings with the speaking parts. There are only 11 speaking parts, so there's a good chance we will only be missing a few parts. I'm not super optimistic about families signing up to do speaking parts, but I could be wrong! 

The other topic of discussion was how many services to have. One person thought we might need three services to space the people out. I don't think there's going to be nearly as many people, especially if school children don't need to be there. I think we could probably have one service and be fine. But we're going to start with two and see how much of a response there is. People have to sign up ahead of time to reserve a spot; up to 150 people can be at each service. There will be one the Sunday afternoon before Christmas and one Christmas Eve. If there are so many people signing up, we'll have a third one Wednesday night. The plan is to videotape one of the services and put it out for people to watch at home, which makes me even more sure we won't need a third service. 

Frustrating

Today was a frustrating day, all around. :/ 

A friend stayed over at my house last night, but accidentally locked her keys in her car and realized this at 6am. Thankfully that was soon enough to get a tow truck to come rescue her before she had to leave for work. 

During class, school's internet quit working for five minutes, so I was kicked off the Teams call with my class and had to wait around for it to turn back on. 

At school, I found out that two kids don't have their cabbage juice because their parents didn't pick it up at packet pick-up day yesterday. This is extra frustrating because they need it for a lab tomorrow and because yesterday I sent a text reminder to all the parents (with a picture) saying they needed to grab a bottle of purple cabbage juice along with their packet. Sigh. Thankfully, both families made arrangements to pick up the juice today, so we'll be all set for tomorrow. 

Class with the 7-8th graders was fine, but some of them had a hard time following along on the worksheet or their internet made the screen glitchy so they couldn't read it. After class, I emptied the folders with their homework in it. There are quite a few who didn't turn in spelling or other late work. One of the 6th graders didn't finish the back page of her lab, so I'll have to return that to her to fix. Grr... frustrating.

Full Day

Whew, today was a packed one. There's no school tomorrow, so today was our Friday. Kids said memory, did spelling tests, worked on their nanos... the usual. With Thanksgiving next week, I wanted to do extra planning this week to be prepared. We're having parent pickup days on Sundays, and since I'll be out of town, I needed to get my packets ready today. 

First, I had to plan my lessons, then figure out what I wanted to print and send home. The 7-8th graders were pretty easy, so I did them first. I couldn't remember which worksheets I'd already sent home, and none of the students responded to my messages about it, so I just printed and sent all of them. Hopefully there aren't doubles. I knew I should've written down which ones I sent. I did a better job keeping track this time. 

The 5-6th graders have another lab they need to do; this one involves red cabbage juice (actually a purple color). I made the juice yesterday. Today I bottled it up for each kid in a plastic water bottle. Some students don't have ammonia at home, so I had to bottle that up too. I used empty bottles from the recycling bin (I washed them first). Thankfully I had just enough! They're on a tray at the drop zone labeled with each student's name. I forgot to leave plastic bags down there in case parents need a way to carry all the stuff.

I had planned to go walking with Mrs. B, but my packet-making took too long. I did get most of my lessons planned and looked over up to the week after Thanksgiving. After that, I went over to church for bible study and helped Pastor get his chapel message video uploaded to YouTube. I'm not very familiar with making videos on YouTube, but I think we got it set up so he just has to click a few buttons to film next time. Hopefully that will make it easier to do!

Lab

 Oh man our read aloud book is putting my kids through the wringer! It’s all about yellow fever, so you know someone close to the main character is going to get sick. Well, today the mom got sick. She had so many close calls with death, my kids kept typing their dismay in the chat. Things like: Nooooooo! Crying sad faces, She can’t die! Wait, what?!?!, etc. 

Then, to top things off, the grandpa gets sick! And that happens while they’re trying to leave town. My kids wanted to keep reading because they had to find out if the grandpa makes it. So we read one more chapter and he lived through that one, so we stopped there. Little do they know, the main character is going to collapse from the fever in the next chapter. Good thing I didn’t read another chapter! 

The 5-6th graders did their first at home lab today. It was all about finding the pH of liquids, or if something is an acid or a base. The lab actually went really well. It took a while for everyone to get everything ready, but once we were ready, the lab went fast. We used vinegar as our control acid, and we used bleach for our control base. That was not a great idea; the bleach bleached the litmus paper and turned it white. So the one girl who used ammonia instead had better results. Our next lab involves ammonia again, so I might have to send that liquid home in the drop packets. I already have to send cabbage juice along (it’s an acid-base indicator). 

Fake Powerpoint

 Waaay fewer tech issues today, thankfully. It was a pretty typical virtual learning day. A bunch of my kids wanted to know if we're coming back to school in person; I still don't have an answer for them. The 5-6th graders learned about the civil war and towards the end we had a discussion about the confederate flag... that was interesting. I have students on completely opposite sides of the issue. Thankfully, we were able to keep it neutral and explain both sides' points of view kindly. 

Read aloud was extra fun today! (When is it not?) There are a bunch of unfamiliar objects mentioned in the story since it's historical fiction, so I just pick a student (or one volunteers) to search for pictures of the things mentioned. We learned that savory is a kind of herb. Hoe cakes are basically smallish pancakes or johnnycakes. There were banks back in 1793, but there was a run on the bank that year (maybe cause by the fever??? we're still debating that) and people didn't always trust them. Pepperpot is a kind of soup, hot corn is a dish of seasoned corn you can eat, and a mangle is a thing to wring water out of clothes. There were so many pictures in the chat, my students said it was just like doing a powerpoint! I love it.

Tech Troubles

 Boy, I needed a lot of patience today... Lots of tech issues. One family has struggled with super slow internet this week. Their videos have been grainy and the kids say the reverse is true too. The 7th grader said the top half of a slide will load (when I'm screen sharing), but the bottom half will be pixelated for about 30 seconds or so before loading clearly. No one else had those troubles. 

The 5-6th graders are prepping for a lab they can do at home. It involves dunking litmus paper in various liquids. We read over the lab today as a class so they know what to do when we try it on Wednesday. One girl couldn't find her lab. We were doing Lab 4; she could only find Lab 5. 

"I don't have it Miss H!"
"Well, that's very strange because I sent it home in the same packet as the other one."
"But it's not here! I looked everywhere!"
"Hmm, I'm not sure what to tell you."
"Maybe you could send me a digital version of the lab?"
"Sure. I'll do that after class."

After class, she messaged me, "I found it; it was in my hands the whole time." 🤦 At least she used a semicolon properly! (That was our English minilesson for the day).

This week is parent teacher conferences. We're doing them virtually this year, so I opened up my schedule all week. I had two tonight, one tomorrow, one Wednesday, and two parents that haven't signed up yet. Since their kids know how to use Teams, Mr. E and I are doing conferences through Teams. That worked really slick. The kids can help their parents get set up, I can message them when I'm ready, they can message back, we can video chat securely, no problems. Both of them tonight were super short, less than five minutes a piece. It was great.

In between video conferences, I had a Habitat meeting (also virtual). Last month, I was selected to receive a Habitat for Humanity House! Each month we have a meeting about home ownership and the hour we spend is credited to our 'sweat equity' on the house. There were a bunch of safety videos we had to watch in preparation for working on a dig site. I finished two of them and have four more to go. 

While watching the videos, I saw I had an email from Pastor/the worship planning committee about some of the songs in the Christmas program. I'm not sure if we can even do the Christmas program the way we have it planned if we switch to virtual learning after Thanksgiving break. Both Mankato and Nicollet are going virtual from November 30th through mid-January. There have been a lot of covid cases in our area (which seems to be true all over the place). New Ulm however, has made no announcement about shutting down. That makes it a harder decision for our school since we'll only have half busing if we keep going in person. I thought it was a done deal that we'd be going virtual after break, but apparently no official decision has been made. The New Ulm superintendent hasn't contacted Mr. E back to let him know their thoughts, which makes it harder for us to decide what to do. Sigh. What a mess.

And then, a parent texted me that her daughter's computer (a new laptop she just picked up from school tonight to replace one with a very badly cracked screen she'd previously been using) showed an error screen when turned on. 

Okay. Let's call the IT guys.
No answer.
Okay, let's text the IT guys and come up with a backup plan.
Ten minutes later...
Praise the Lord, he actually texted back! And better yet he got it working again! 

Hopefully that's all the tech troubles we'll have for a while...

Readers

 My kids... man, they are adorable. Yesterday they'd asked if we could read all morning. I said something moderately noncommittal, thinking to myself that we probably could. Today I just kept reading. We only had 60 pages of our book left when we started so I was pretty sure we could finish it without taking up the whole morning. 

One girl noticed what time it was and wrote in the chat, "um, when are we going to be done. It's past time." And another girl wrote back, "Shhh!!!" Then I told them we'd read for 10 more minutes and start our writing time at 10:00. Well, 10:00 arrived and we only had two chapters of our book left... Because I like to make them squirm, I dramatically paused and put the bookmark in the book. Then we made a deal that they would all write their NaNos over the weekend. Ha! Aren't I sneaky? ;)

As you might have guessed, they unanimously voted to finish the book. It was an extremely satisfying ending. Then they wanted to pick our next book to read. So we voted. They unanimously chose a historical fiction book. We had two to pick from and the one that won is Fever, 1793. They convinced me to read the first chapter to them. 

On Fridays we've been doing a 'random topic day' for science/social studies. Today we learned about the Black Plague again. They decided we should do yellow fever as our next topic because that's the focus of our next read aloud book (it takes place during a yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1793). Nice. It's all coming together!

Day 2 Virtual

 Another day much like yesterday. The 7-8th graders were a little more with it today. The 5-6th graders had a little more troubleshooting to work through. 

Two 5-6th graders are making a powerpoint together and couldn't figure out how to let the other person access/edit it. So we spent 20 minutes figuring out how to give him access. We did figure it out eventually! We would've gotten it sooner, but the internet was super laggy. 

My class and I like to blame it on the weather. It snowed most of the morning, about an inch or so, nothing major. Mr. E thought there maybe was an accident on Hwy 14 since there were so many cars on our road outside school. Sometimes, the police use our road as a detour when they don't want people driving on 14. 

NaNos are going all right. It's going to be a lot harder to keep my kids going on their stories. I'm slowly getting caught up... I'm about 4,500 behind, but I haven't written any words yet today. Since school gets out earlier when we learn remotely, I've had more time to write (and read too!). I wonder how many words I'll write tonight...

Going Slow

Our first day of virtual learning in the 2020-2021 school year went very well today. There weren't too many technical troubles and my kids showed up when I needed them too. I didn't have a ton of downtime in between classes. When I made my schedule, I built it so there are little bits here and there for kids to work on things (to make sure they actually work on their stuff) bookended by minilessons. That also gives me a chance to meet one on one with students if needed. That's what I did during those breaks today. 

The 5-6th graders and I are done with class at noon. They still have math with Mr. E at 12:30, but their school day ends at 1:30. I still have class with the 7-8th graders from 12:30-1:30, so pretty much everyone's school day ends at 1:30. Nice. Then, even if I have things to wrap up or get ready for the next day after school, I can still get my tasks accomplished and leave school at a decent time! It's great! 

Class with the 7-8th graders was a little slow going today. Some of them couldn't figure out how to raise their hands via Teams, then no one muted themselves and they talked over everyone else. I joined the call with two computers so I could share my screen and see them at the same time (that was a brilliant idea!), but when I muted everyone, it muted both my computers too. So it took me a while to figure out which computer I wanted to unmute/get to that button on the screen. Meanwhile, all of this is being recorded because one of the 7th graders wanted to be able to rewatch it just in case he missed filling something out on the worksheet. Sigh. 

There were quite a few times I wanted to pull my hair out trying to get all the 7-8th graders on the same page with the worksheet. We're doing Punnett Squares, which at first seems complicated. Each question had a bunch of steps that I wanted to be done in order so they would get used to doing it, so it was important that everyone follow along. Eventually everyone was where they needed to be and we made it through all but two of the problems. I assigned one as homework and we'll do the last one together in class Friday. Whew! 

Now I'm off to help Pastor figure out how to share his chapel video...

Pivot Day

 We're having a "Pivot Day" today, which is where students get the day off while teachers prep to switch from in person to virtual learning. Yep. Immanuel is going virtual for two weeks. Right now we're scheduled to come back the Monday before Thanksgiving, but that's subject to change. It seems a bit silly to have in person school for two days before having a bunch of days off school. There are a few parents who want us to go virtual from now until January since so many people will be seeing family over Thanksgiving/Christmas. Time will tell.

Now I'm wondering how we're going to accomplish the Christmas program... but that hurdle can wait. For now, my focus is on getting things ready for distance learning. Half of my kids picked up their crates yesterday. I put the other half down at the north end of the building where we do pick up/drop off of materials. I printed things we'll probably need in the next two weeks and either put them in crates or made packets. 

We were supposed to have a virtual guest speaker today and since I didn't want to postpone/reschedule it, I made my kiddos tune in. That made my day a little crazy since I had to make sure I was online at the right times, but I'm glad we did it. 11-11:30 for the 5-6th graders and 12:30-1:30 for the 7-8th graders.

It was so nice to be able to sleep in a little bit! Since I knew a storm was coming later today, I ran my errands before coming out to school so that as soon as I'm done here I can go home. I'm glad I did! The snow is starting to come down hard. I'll bring all my stuff home so if I want I can teach from my apartment tomorrow. But, I'll probably come in to school. Pastor asked Mr. E if I could help him get set up for confirmation class, so it would be good for me to be here at school if he has questions.

Lost has been found!

 I found my library card two minutes ago! It was in my purse, tucked in the back of my checkbook where I 'wouldn't lose it.' I had flipped through my checkbook when I searched my purse, except I hadn't looked in the back since I never put any cards there. Ha!

I didn't get caught up on my NaNo yesterday... I didn't even write 1,000 words. I tried writing before bed and I had written about 700 when my eyes got droopy. I think I fell asleep while typing! My story didn't make sense at all! 

I was at the part in my story where Kate (13 year old girl) is getting tools to help her in her new job from Millie, an old lady. Here's the last two paragraphs of my story:

Millie had lost interest in me and my cloak shennanigans and had resumed floundering around in the armoire. 

"Aha!" came the disembodied voice from the trunk. Her bottom half dangled out the opening of the wide trunk I'd brought with me. Mom had no use for it and she thought it would brighten the place up. I didn't care about furniture. They could have used the land for the 

Kate didn't bring a trunk with her. Millie should be digging around in the armoire. The mom knows nothing about this new job. I'm not sure why Kate doesn't care about furniture; that doesn't have anything to do with the story... And the half finished sentence about the land? I remember from my half-sleeping brain thinking to finish the sentence with something about giving it to the church so they could build another building on it. That's when I realized I was making no sense anymore and I shut my computer down and went to bed! Yikes!

Lost

 I lost my library card... I can't find it anywhere!!! I remember I had it last Thursday for Bookmobile and set it and the movie I'd checked out on the window ledge in the gym. I think I brought it back into the classroom and put it on my desk? What I did after that is a mystery. I dug through my whole purse and my entire snack drawer in my desk to see if it fell. Not there. Sigh. I'll keep looking. Maybe I set it somewhere when I got home and didn't put it back where it belongs.

Better news, NaNo is going great for my students this year! Our word goal is 46,268 (30,000 is mine) and some kids are already pretty close to their goal! Most said when they get closer they're going to bump their goals up. So far we've written about 8,000 words. I am about 2,500 behind, but I haven't written my words for today yet. There were two days I didn't write, otherwise I've written every day since! I was hoping to catch up today after school, except I forgot it's Thursday and I have spelling to correct...

Forts

 My classroom is being taken over by a large fort. One of the girls remembered to bring her building poles/balls to add to the set we already had. Her pieces were a different color, so it's easy to tell the two apart. The other girl forgot to bring her parts, but she's bringing them tomorrow and they're going to attempt a three story building. Right now it's two. Another kid brought more blankets from home to put over the top to make it more like a cave. It's big enough for two people to social distance inside. It sure takes up a lot of space though!

At first they had it shoved up against the closet.
"You don't need to get anything out of there, do you Miss H?"
Uhh, try again kiddos.
Then it was shoved too close to Joe's tank. 
I told them I needed a walkway all the way around the fort. I'm skinny but I'm not that skinny! 

They took off one block of their wall so the fort is a little smaller. It still looks pretty cool!

I Voted

I wore my "I Voted" sticker to school today. I voted absentee and was thrilled they included a sticker for me to wear on election day. 

My kids spent read aloud time building a fort out of poles and connector balls. They've explored them since last week, and almost every day the design changes. Two other students have similar poles/balls at home and are bringing them tomorrow so they can make a really big fort. They asked if they could take down the white folding table so there's more room to build. I have a few blankets in my room they've been draping over the top to make it more like a building. Now they want me to bring more blankets and pillows to make an even bigger fort. Eh, probably not. 

We had a staff meeting after school today... shortest one of the year! It was only about 45 minutes long. Yesterday Mrs. L and I met to go over the Christmas program and sort out parts, so we went over the basic plan at our meeting. Everyone seemed to think the plan sounds good. Now we just need to find someone to film it and link the videos together... 

My nano is going better than it was yesterday. I didn't write any more words yesterday, but this morning I wrote 300! Still lots more to go, but I should have more time after I get home tonight. My friend K and I are going out for supper. Every year in November the New Ulm legion gives teachers/school workers a free burger basket one Tuesday night. She works in the office at a school, so we both eat free! Woohoo!

NaNo

Yesterday was the first day of November and also the first day of NaNoWriMo... I didn't start mine yesterday. I was too busy! Only one of my students started his yesterday; he was the only one. And he only got 21 words, so we all have a long ways to go. A few of the 7-8th graders have a good start! My 5-6th graders spent a good chunk of the morning writing theirs. My plan is to catch up tonight... we'll see if that actually happens.

Our day flip-flopped a bit since we were doing a science lab. There isn't enough time in the afternoon during our normal science time to do a full lab, so the kids came up with a plan to get enough time; do Daily 5 rounds in the afternoon and science lab in the morning. We tried that today and it worked great! We cleaned up just in time for lunch! 

It was a fun lab... mixing liquids to see if there is a chemical reaction. At the end, they got to explore a bit and dump combinations of things together to see if that effected anything. They had a good time. :)

Kahoot

 The Kahoot went well today! I never quite know how it's going to go when I do it remotely with other people. Sometimes it's laggy, sometimes people talk to loud over video, sometimes I click through things too fast. Or at least I wonder if I do. We couldn't see or hear any other classroom in the zoom meeting. They could hear us! But they muted our classroom so they wouldn't hear anyone discussing answers. My class enjoyed it; they want to do one every major holiday now. I said we'll see...

Covid cases are up in Nicollet county. Not up enough to shut us down, but up enough to make the nurse and cautious parents nervous. Brown county cases are up, but not as bad as Nicollet. Everyone at our school has been healthy! We'll pray that continues.

Bathrooms

It was my turn to clean the bathrooms today. I wasn't dreading it, but I certainly wasn't looking forward to it. We chose days to clean based on whose turn it was for bus duty. As I waited for classes to get on the bus, the 8th grade girls trudged past and said, "We cleaned the bathrooms for you Miss H." What?! Mr. E confirmed their statement. He had them fill the soap, toilet paper, paper towels, and clean the sinks. All I had to do was clean the toilets, sweep the bathrooms, and wipe down the high-touch areas around school. Wonderful! 

He had to clean the bathrooms over the weekend and said it took so long, he couldn't handle making us teachers do it all by ourselves another week. So he had the 7-8th graders take care of some of the easy stuff. Man, that really sped things up. 

Also after school, we teachers practiced for the all-school fall Kahoot we're doing at the end of the day. Since we can't have a Fall Carnival, this is our substitution. The younger grades are going to share one device in the classroom and the 5-8th graders are going to each get their own. I'll run the game from my computer and share my screen with the other teachers in the Zoom meeting. We tried Microsoft Teams this afternoon but it was very slow and lagging, so I decided to do a Zoom meeting instead. Hopefully that makes it better!

Holes

Full disclosure, there are MAJOR spoilers for the book/movie Holes, so don't read this post if you haven't seen/read it but want to. 

We watched the movie Holes today. It was the most fun I've had watching the movie with a class. I think the movie is pretty close to the book (with the exception of how thin the movie Stanley is... in the book he's very fat. It's a plot point.). My kids thought the movie was totally different. I'm amazed how many little details from the book they are able to remember!!! 

We got to the part in the movie where *spoiler alert* Kissin' Kate dies and the yellow spotted lizard bites her on the arm instead of the ankle. Cries of outrage! When the boys are supposed to sneak back into camp in the dark and sleep in a hole until it gets a little light (book), the movie has lots of lights and the sky looks like dawn. More outraged students! And don't get me started on the scene where they uncover the treasure... My kids talked over the movie, listing all the ways the movie was inaccurate. 

Before we started the movie, I had thought about making a chart on the board to list similarities and differences. I'm glad I didn't! They were much happier just spewing them out as we went along, and I got the same information about how much they remember from the book. Win win!

Basketball

My kids asked if I'd play basketball with them at noon recess today. So I did. I played in my flats since my tennis shoes weren't at school. Thankfully my feet held up better than I thought they would. I did okay! Most of my shots missed, but eh, such is life. I have a feeling they'll ask me to play again. Maybe I'll redeem myself!

One of their classmates had spent most of recess fixing a math assignment. Once she finished that, she wanted to play too. We had to pause and reconfigure the teams to make it fair... That took some doing since there are so few in our class. Me being on a team kind of messed things up. Eventually I said I just wouldn't play any more to make it easier. Then I played badminton with the one kid who doesn't like basketball.

For afternoon recess we had PE. We're doing dances for the foreseeable future. The boys were NOT happy about that. They kept asking if they had to participate, how long we were going to be dancing for PE, and if we could do it in the classroom so no one could see us. They didn't like my answers. Today we did the macarena and the cha cha slide. 

It went pretty good at first. The iPad plugged into the gym speakers to let the music fill the gym. That drew some curious students from other classrooms. We had gotten the basic moves for the macarena down when a small crowd of 3-4th graders formed at the edge of the gym close to their classroom door. They were on their way back from a bathroom break and paused to watch my class. Then Mr. D came in, saw us dancing, and decided to film us. Sigh. The boys definitely didn't like that one bit. One quit dancing and stood there. The other ran across the gym to hide in the shed. Grr... 

Eventually everyone left us in peace to finish PE. Thursday is our next PE day. My plan is to review the two dances we learned today and start learning the electric slide.

Cold

 I'm not ready for winter yet... it snowed a bunch this weekend, although there are only a few inches on the ground. My classroom felt cold all day even though the thermostat says it's 70 degrees in here! 

Our school day was pretty typical. My kids wheeled and dealed to get more read-aloud time (they traded a Daily 5 round in exchange for 15 more minutes of reading). I think we'll finish the book tomorrow. If that's the case, we might be able to watch the movie version on Wednesday. Holes the book and Holes the movie are pretty similar. My kids are currently under the impression they're very different, so it will be fun to watch the movie and compare and contrast the two. November (and NaNo!) are next week, and if we're going to do a class movie I want it to be in October so it won't take away writing time. 

We went super deep into 5-6th science today. Our topic was the kinds of chemical reactions that can happen, which tied into life science/7-8th grade science. They're always begging to be taught that stuff now instead of having to wait two years, so I figured, eh, why not? I pulled up one of the powerpoints on cellular respiration I taught the 7-8th graders two weeks ago (which explains why we need oxygen and glucose/sugar to function). Then we got into what our bodies do with the oxygen and sugar, and how the digestive system and circulatory system tie in... big stuff. 

Some of them got it, others were a bit overwhelmed. All of them wanted to have a day of the week just for learning life science! I said maybe we could make Fridays biology days. We'll see.

Computer Update

 Well, my computer is back in working order, although it did stress me out a bit this morning. 

The IT guys didn't come to school last night. Instead, they made Mr. E come over and they talked him through how to switch out the hard drive in my computer with the one in the office. Since it was switched out, it was like a brand new computer so even though all my files were there, none of the programs needed to open them were there. Not even Google Chrome. I tried downloading it, but it is blocked (the IT guys don't like Chrome). I could download Microsoft Teams, which ended up being good because I had a student learn virtually today. 

Thankfully the IT guys picked up when I called and they remotely took control of my computer to install the apps I needed to get through the day. End of story: we started school 10 minutes late while the computer got its updates.

The rest of our day was pretty typical. We are getting to the exciting part of our read-aloud book (when are we not??) and they wanted me to read more. But they also didn't want to give up their Adjective Game time, so we voted. It was a tie. We split the difference and read for 10 more minutes which still gave us time for a round of the Adjective Game before lunch. Their object to describe was a badminton racket. They're really getting the hang of describing things; one group had 24 adjectives! Only a few didn't actually work! The big argument was "is a badminton racket huggable or not?" 🤔

Computer Troubles

This morning the sky was all yellow for a few hours. Very strange. We looked it up and decided possible reasons are the fires in California or a lot of moisture in the air (sometimes the air turns yellow before a squall). It rained pretty much all day. 

Also, my computer died today... Yes, the new(ish) one the IT guys switched out for me earlier this school year. Halfway through the morning, the projector screen suddenly went blue, then black with all sorts of code written on it. My computer screen was completely dark. So I texted a picture of the gobbledygook to IT and restarted my computer, hoping that would reset it. Nope. Later, I called them and they walked me through a few things to try. Nope. It was a fix they’d have to do in person. Thankfully the rest of the day did not rely on the computer, so we were able to accomplish my todo list. They said they’d be out tonight to fix it, so hopefully they follow through!

After school, it was my day to clean the bathrooms/high contact areas. It wasn't as bad as I thought. The biggest thing was figuring out what I had to clean and where the supplies were. I finished in about an hour and a half. I guess it was a good thing my computer was dead; cleaning was about the only thing I could do!

Bloodthirsty

We've been doing NaNo prep this week. It's hard to believe November is only a few weeks away! One of our minilessons was to brainstorm story ideas. I have a Pinterest board of writing prompts, and since I didn't have any idea of what I wanted my story to be about, I scrolled through the board during our Writers Workshop worktime to see what inspiration struck. 

Three ideas jumped out at me, but one of those immediately grabbed my students' attention: at her grandma's funeral, a girl learns that her grandma was the Grim Reaper. In her will, the grandma left the job and all that comes with it to her. I combined it with the idea that she can see everyone's lifespan above their heads and spots someone with an infinity symbol. Then there was the sentence "The first time I met the Grim Reaper, she came for my hamster." 

My class unanimously voted that I tell that story. I was a little hesitant, "But think of how many people are going to die in my story!" Their eyes lit up, "But Miss H, killing off characters is so fun!" "Yeah, it's the best part!" "You told us yourself; you need to be mean to your characters!" ...I did tell them that... 

I tried one last time, "How am I going to come up with all those death ideas?" 
Their response, "We'll help you!" "Yeah!" ...Then a rousing chant, "Do it! Do it! Do it!" 
The bloodthirsty little savages... 😂 So that's the story I'll be doing. We had more work time today to come up with conflict for our stories. My idea is getting fleshed out more and more. I'm getting excited!

Quite a few 7-8th graders are going to try doing NaNo this year; I think we're up to five. I have a separate classroom for them, so during study hall I helped them join that NaNo group. It'll be cool to see how many of them make their word goals!

Snow, Insects, and Kahoot

There is currently about four inches of snow on the ground and it's not supposed to stop snowing until 7pm. I'm glad I wore my boots to school! It didn't start until about 10am this morning. I hadn't checked the weather lately, and I wouldn't have been prepared, but a friend called me on her way to work this morning and mentioned she had worn a 'snow themed' outfit hoping to scare the snow away. 

In other news, our class package to my marine friend finally arrived! He said the mug arrived unbroken and the gingersnaps were even better than the ones I sent in the last package. Good to know they don't go stale! He also commented that he loved the cards, but the handwriting was kind of hard to read on most of them. I passed on the message to my kids and they all looked a little chagrined. Maybe they'll write neater next time!

Now that my students have discovered the joys of Kahoot (an educational interactive quiz/gameshow website), they want to do one all the time. They convinced me we should do one this afternoon during our art time. So we did. We found one about the sleep cycle and learned while we played. They had so much fun they wanted to do a second one, so this time we found one about Fur Traders, which is what we've been learning in Minnesota history. They did great on that one! 

I should really use Kahoot more. It's engaging, they love it, and it can have a bunch of teachable moments if you pick the right one. Ooo... maybe I should make some music appreciation Kahoots! That's one subject that has fallen to the wayside so far this year...

Snow

 Yep. It snowed today: huge, fat flakes fluttering down most of the morning and half the afternoon. It turned into rain right before the buses came. Nothing stuck to the ground, but it still annoyed my class. Four of my five listed it as their low of the day. It sure made standing out at the buses yucky! I'm going to have to wear my boots to school from now on, just in case.

Our janitor is off this week due to a family emergency, so we're on our own for cleaning. My class volunteered to divvy up the cleaning duties. Two will empty and fill the sink jugs. Two will wipe down high touch areas and desks. Two will clean off flexible seating. Since we added jobs to the end of the day list, my science time got cut super short today. :( 

Last week I had told them of an experiment they could do with water and paperclips. Because of the shape of water molecules, it's possible to fit a lot of paperclips in a full cup of water without it spilling over. All of them had forgotten to do it over the weekend, and they wanted to do it in class. So we did. We fit 56 paperclips in the tiny cup of water. I hadn't stacked the paper clips very well, so we re-did the experiment to see if I could stack them in a way to fit more in. It worked! We fit 67 in the second time! And that was pretty much all the time we had for science since we had to end early. Chemical reactions will have to wait for another day!

Freedom!

Everybody's high of the day is that today is the last day of school for the week! We weren't exactly antsy today, but I'm definitely feeling ready to wrap things up and head to Fulda! No teachers conference this year, what with covid, so it's a nice long break.

Since today was our 'Friday', my kids convinced me we should play the Adjective Game. We had ten minutes before lunch, so we did two rounds: a sink drain stopper and a stretchy hook used to hang up the badminton net. The girls won this time. They used the boys' tricks against them!

My class is still loving badminton (they're calling it badminton now) and we played it for both recesses. This morning at my desk I noticed my shoulder muscles are sore. I couldn't remember doing anything super strenuous that would make them tired... during recess I realized, oh, badminton. Stretching up to whack the birdie across takes more muscles than you think! 

Today, the birdie got stuck in the rackets three times! Each time the kid would swing, then look up in the air expecting to see it flying high. Nope. Look on the floor all around in a circle... nothing. Someone would call out, "It's in your racket!" They'd look down and laugh. 

Remembering

I passed out midterms today. Not too many grades in the gradebook yet... midterms always seem to sneak up on us. At our last staff meeting we went through and marked all the midterms on the calendar. At least now I'll have a little more warning! 

My kids remembered to leave the laptops open so the IT guys could run updates on them. I'm so proud. I didn't even have to remind them (which is good because I totally forgot until one of them said something). 

They've been asking for beanbags to be brought back into the classroom for a while now, and this morning I finally brought a bunch of them in. My class is responsible enough to handle them. Plus, there are so few that each one could pick a personal beanbag if they're worried about spreading germs. I think we'll be fine. But now that we have beanbags in the classroom, someone has to pick them up each day. One of the boys came up with the idea we should bring back classroom jobs. He said two people could do lunch set up (wipe off the desks before lunch), two can do takedown (wipe desks after lunch), and two can put beanbags away. What a great idea! So today was our first day of that. 

Now that I think of it, I'm not sure if the takedown people wiped off people's desks after lunch... hmm... I'll have to watch tomorrow. Guess what! Tomorrow is the last day of school this week! We're off Thursday and Friday for MEA. And this year there's no teacher conference, so I can be in Fulda for the whole weekend... woohoo!

Brainiacs

Man, my kids were on their game today! We're still studying atoms in science and everything I said made sense to them! We talked about bonds and sharing vs giving electrons and how that effects molecules. Then we moved on to the Law of Conservation of Mass (although I didn't call it that) and discussed how no matter is created or destroyed (since Genesis of course), thus what happened to all the molecules of the dinosaurs and plants etc. after the flood. And THEN we looked at how molecules are like legos and can be mixed and matched to make different things... 

Example: Plants take sun (energy) + water + CO2 to make sugars and oxygen. Then humans take sugars (from food) + oxygen to make water and energy. One 5th grader saw the connection right away, "Miss H! They're opposites!!!" Such a good learning day.

The 7-8th graders were on their game too. We did a few mini experiments (that may or may not work... time will tell). One is putting a grape in sugar water, a grape in regular water, and a grape in salt water to see what happens. Diffusion is supposed to happen since there is an area of high concentration of water and an area of low concentration. We'll see if it actually works. 

Then, there's the iodine/corn starch lab. My iodine might be worn out. It doesn't look right in the container. Normally it's a lot darker, like a deep brown. The stuff in my spray bottle is like a dark yellow or light orange. Hmm... I tested it on straight corn starch and it turned the corn starch purple, however, it might not be strong enough to go through a ziplock bag. Corn starch and water are mixed together in a ziplock bag, then placed in a container with water/iodine. The iodine is supposed to diffuse through the bag and turn the corn starch purple or black. I checked on it after school and my test corn starch is now an orangey color. Strange. I might need to toss this iodine and buy new stuff. I wonder if it got too cold or hot in the shed (where I had it stored) and that cut down on the potency. 

No See-ums

Oh man the bugs were HORRIBLE this afternoon. There was a high today of 87 degrees and the skies were hazy with smoke from the California fires. Maybe that's what put them in the biting mood...

Afternoon recess was so bad I sprayed myself with bug spray I keep in my car. I just couldn't stand it anymore! The bus was even worse! My class was out right on time, maybe even a minute or two early, so I had to stand out there even longer... the no see-ums coated my shirt, arms, and neck. Even with the bug spray on!!! After the bus left, all the teachers and the kids who hadn't been picked up yet scurried into school, brushing off the bugs as we went.

I had thought I'd try kayaking again tonight since it's so nice out. Not anymore! I don't want to get bit up!

Our Friday English game was "The Blue Folder Game" aka- calendar writing. Each student gets a folder with a scenic landscape in it (from an old calendar). Keeping it a secret from classmates, they have five minutes to be as descriptive as possible to get their classmates to pick it out of a scenic landscape lineup. They did pretty good for their first try! I threw in some extra pictures to make it more challenging. Plus, all the pictures were fall landscapes, frequently with mountains and/or rivers. 

One student has been learning from home this week, but I found a way she could participate. I sent her a picture of her landscape to describe, then set it aside in a folder to hang up with the rest of the class/extras once we were done writing. After we hung up the landscapes, I sent her close-up pictures of those so she could guess too. My students were shocked it worked so well. Earlier, they had tried to convince me we should play the adjective game again because 'it's the only one [the student] can actually play with us from home!' Ha! Challenge accepted and completed.

Good News Bad News

The good news is that next week is a short week because of MEA. The even better news is that I have 95% of my lesson plans ready to go for next week so I won't have too much to do this weekend. The bad news is that we now have to dismiss class at 2:35 to let the buses get where they need to go in time. My science/social studies time is slowly being chipped away! Now we have to end class at 2:30 so they can get packed up and pray. That's only 20 minutes of class! :( Oh well. Hopefully it won't be for the whole year. 

Bad news: covid cases are up in both Nicollet and Brown counties, but, good news: they are still below the virtual learning threshold, so we can continue to have in-person school! Also, everyone in our school continues to be healthy.

This week the school board and church council decided to cancel the Christmas program, pending any further developments in covid cases. We had a staff meeting today and discussed ways to still have the kids do something to share the Christmas story. Right now our best idea is for each class to record themselves reciting their parts (or the nativity story) and singing a carol in their own classrooms, then splicing them together into one video to show at church/put online for people to watch instead. The 3-4th graders could even dress up in their nativity costumes and act it out! Time will tell if that's the way we'll actually do it. If cases go down and restrictions lift by November 13th, we can reassess and plan an in-person gathering, but for now all the higher-ups are saying no. 

Batteries

Well, last night was an adventure! After supper, Mrs. L and I went kayaking for an hour at the Courtland pond. It would've been nice to be out longer, but it gets dark so fast these days! We got everything loaded back in my car and she took off. I tried to do the same, but my car wouldn't start. Great. By now it was dark outside. I called Pastor, but he was in a school board meeting. So I called school to see if I could catch any of the people at the meeting. No answer. So I called Mr. E figuring if he were in a meeting, he'd still answer my call. He answered! The meeting had just finished and he would come jump my car for me.

Sigh. My car battery is not in a great spot for jumping. It's tucked up under the hood so you can barely get one of the cables to attach to an end. Mr. E had his own cables (mine were buried under my kayak and I didn't want to dig them out unless I had to), but they didn't reach very far. My car wouldn't start and wouldn't start, even when he revved his engine. So I dug out my cables (which stretch further) and attached the ground to the engine block. After that it worked! Whew! Thinking about my battery, I realized it's about seven years old... I've had my vehicle for five years and I've never changed it. So it's about time for a new one.

Mr. E wanted to make sure my car would be good and charged (so hopefully it would turn on in the morning for school), so he had me drive out to school, turn my car off, then start it up again. It started just fine! I parked outside my apartment, just in case the battery would be dead in the morning. It wasn't! God was good and my vehicle started right away. I still made an appointment to get the battery changed after school today. 

My kids were in a goofy mood today. I wonder if the weather is changing; it was super windy all afternoon. They wanted to play badminton at recess (which they all call 'Birdie'), but it was so windy the birdies blew all over the place. We took the net down and are going to try to find a way to put it up in the gym so we can play with no wind.

Asian Beetles

Asian Beetles have taken over the school. Or at least the playground. They were everywhere today!!! And they bite! I told the kids they had to do a beetle check before they came into the classroom so we wouldn't have too many flying around bothering us. I thought I was good when I came in, but there were three that had crawled up my sweater and were in my sleeves! Gross!

Today was an interesting day in other ways too... Yesterday, my projector screen showed up purple and green and fuzzy so you couldn't recognize anything on it. After a call to IT and troubleshooting the usual ways (nothing fixed it), we cobbled our way through the rest of the day. I asked IT if he'd be able to switch my broken projector with a working one after school and IT said he should be able to do it. 

Imagine my disappointment when I turned on the projector this morning and it was even worse! So I texted and said such. Then, I asked if he'd be able to come out to school during the day and switch it... he wouldn't bother my class! No response. So we made due. It wasn't too critical to my plans until the afternoon. Just annoying.

Then, my kids thought we should do read-aloud all morning since the projector wasn't working. We were at the most exciting part of the book, so it wasn't too hard to twist my arm. Man, their predictions were spot on!!! Annnd, we wrapped up the morning with just one chapter left of the book. Another cliff-hanger ending! We'll finish tomorrow and also start a new book. I picked out three more options I think they'll like.

The best part of the day was after teaching the 7-8th graders. Mr. E came back to his classroom and announced, "Miss H, there's a man in your room." Whaaat? I racked my brain trying to figure out who it could be. And who would Mr. E allow into the school during covid... The 7-8th graders were intrigued of course. Then it clicked. "Is it the IT guys?" 

It was! He came to school to trade out my broken projector for a working one. Just in time for my social studies lesson! Praise the Lord! The color is so much brighter and clearer and it has a remote too. I don't know if this is temporary or just a stand-in, but I'm happy to have it.

Tortoise Mom

There were a few random moments of funniness today...

You know how some people call themselves 'dog moms' when they don't have any children but their dogs are practically children to them? One of my students said to me out of the blue, "You know what I just realized Miss H? You're a tortoise mom!" 🤔🤣

At afternoon recess, the boys pretended to be kung fu masters when they served the ball in 4-square. Lots of "hiyah!" and karate chopping the ball.

Other than that, not too much out of the ordinary today! In science we practiced finding the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons in elements and put electrons into orbitals. We ran out of time and my kids all freaked out, "What?! We're done already! But I haven't finished yet!" I couldn't tell if they were shocked it was time to go home or if they were freaking out that they'd have homework... We're saving the rest of the project for another day, so, no homework.

Package

I FINALLY have the package ready to go for my marine friend. Everything is labeled and taped up. I hope it will get to the right place... the address doesn't have Japan anywhere in it. Still, it's the address he gave me. Maybe military bases have their own post office. It's too bad our post offices close so early. I'm heading to Fulda this weekend, but both the Courtland and Fulda post offices are closed already. So, I'll need to make a special trip in tomorrow. I don't want the cookies getting too stale before they arrive in Japan!

School today was pretty typical. One girl stayed home today and tuned in remotely. We were going to do calendar page writing for English, but my kids suggested the adjective game again because then she could participate with us easier. It was another great matchup! The boys won this time. We only had time for two rounds: a chocolate covered almond and a metal slinky. They came up with great words!

For recess we played 4-square and bombardment (our version is a little more similar to the game Trench). They painted their bible covers, we gave Joe a bath and let him wander the room, did our rounds, ate lunch, did Spanish Tap Game (colors), and did a bit of Minnesota history to end the day. 

I'm glad it's the end of the week. I can tell some of my kiddos are feeling extra tired! One boy cried during afternoon 4-square because a classmate 'targeted' him and got him out. A little while later, this kid 'got revenge' and made his classmate get out. He kept saying, "Revenge is so sweet!" I told him, "Vengence is mine saith the Lord!" (something my mom would say to us girls practically every day growing up) "Now, you can't complain about [the student] targeting you, because you just did the exact same thing back to him!" He didn't say another word about targeting the rest of recess.

Painting

 As much as I'm annoyed that we have to eat lunch at our desks (to social distance), not needing the white table every day has been super handy! Right now painting supplies are scattered all over the surface... 

A few years ago, someone gave me a bunch of cloth bible covers. My classes have been too big to have enough to paint them for an art project (or I forgot I had them), but this year's class is just right. Tuesday we planned what design we wanted on the covers. Today we began painting. 

Mrs. E lent us the bin of acrylic paint from her 7-8th grade stash. Lots of neat colors to choose from! We barely got started when it was time for PE. I had enough big plastic ziplocks we could save the paint for tomorrow. A few kids kept the paint in their desks, but a lot left the paint trays and the drying bible covers on the table. Like I said, it's handy to be able to leave things out overnight.

For PE we played bombardment. We were going to do badminton, but it's windy and cold outside and it would be somewhat complicated to set up the nets in the gym for a game. But... we had to make teams. Ugh, making teams is so hard when you only have six students. I am horrible at making fair teams. A few weeks ago I made a list of all the ways we could divide the six into two teams to try to make it easier in the moment. Most of them are unfair. Still, depending on the activity, some might be okay. 

I wanted one of the kids to pick which teams we'd use, but none of them wanted the pressure. But then after I announced the teams, they hollered the teams were unfair. Ha! Guess what. You should've picked which teams you wanted when I gave you the chance. The unfair teams made the game go fast and we switched it up for the next round. Every time I announced the new teams, they'd yell, "We already did those teams last time!" meaning the other days we've had PE. I was skeptical. We haven't had that many PE classes! So, today I marked which teams we've tried so they can't tell me, "We did those teams already!" There was one grouping they all thought seemed fair, so I put an F by that row. Hopefully that will make PE go a slight bit better from now on.

Short and Sweet

 We had another early out today, planned by the public school. It sure is nice to get out a few hours early! I mapped out my lessons for next week and tidied a few things around my desk area. I had hoped to get more done, but I need to run errands and I'm making baked alaska with a student at 4:30, so I need to wrap things up here.

It was another great day. We've only been reading our latest read-aloud book Restart, by Gordon Korman, for two days and we're already 1/3 through it. They are hooked!!! I love it. The basic premise is a big-time bully falls off the roof of his house and ends up with amnesia. Now he's actually nice and doesn't remember all the bad things he did. Is this nice person who he actually is? Or will he go back to bullying? They are making sooo many predictions; it's amazing. They're also putting themselves into the story, trying to decide if they would act/feel the same way if they were the characters telling the story (it's told from a few points of view, sometimes the former bully, sometimes the kids bullied by him, sometimes his friends).

I let my class talk me into reading 'extra' today; really, we accomplished everything I wanted to in the morning. I'm just so sneaky they think they're getting away with not doing their work! Man, they must think I'm a complete pushover! They tried to convince me to read the whole morning but I put my foot down so we could do our Daily 5 rounds.

They made a goal to beat the record of fastest finishing of a read-aloud book. So far, my record is reading Prisoner B-3087 in two weeks with a class about six years ago. I think their goal is to finish this book next week sometime. We have the date we started the book on the board so we know for sure how many days it takes us. 

These kids! I wish I could read aloud to them all day every day. It's so fun when their eyes light up and they start spinning what they think will happen in the pages ahead... I'm already trying to think ahead to the next book I can read with them.

Badminton and Boxes

 For PE today we played badminton. Well, we paired up and hit birdies back and forth. Thursday we'll probably try a game. They did all right for their first time! A few kids struggled to hit the birdie, but overall, they were able to get a few volleys going. We didn't have as much time for PE as we normally do because... my box from Australia arrived!!!

For those of you who don't remember (or need a refresher), last year I stumbled upon a TED talk about teaching atomic theory to 5-6th graders. The man speaking invented teaching tools to help them visualize it better, but when I looked into ordering them, they didn't ship to the US. This fall I re-found my note about StickyAtoms and poked around the internet again. This time I found the inventor's website and he said he just got a patent in the US. He could ship them to us! So I ordered six sets. He didn't have an official invoice, just told me to send the money through PayPal. Then he said he was going on vacation for two weeks to the Outback and if I sent him my address he'd ship them before he left. I was a little skeptical, but I sent him my address and he sent me a number of emails with pictures of the box of science supplies, videos to use with my class, and a tracking number.

I checked the tracking number that day, but it only showed the number had been created. A few days ago I checked again and the box was in the US! Then today it arrived! The postman gave it to Mrs. L, who brought it down to my room while Mr. E was in there teaching math, so I got it when I came back from class with the 7-8th graders. I was so excited I decided to do an unboxing right then and there... art projects could wait! 

The kids were super excited when I showed them what the atoms could do. They wanted to have science instead of social studies so they could test them out, but we're still down one student and I knew he'd want to play around with them, so we're waiting until Thursday. Yay science!!!

Back at It

One student was home sick with cold symptoms. Another student had an afternoon appointment, so we were down to just four students this afternoon. Even so, today felt much more like a typical school day than our days last week. 

We had religion, went over spelling for the week, started our new read-aloud book, did writers' workshop and Daily 5 minilessons, and had recess. Recess was in the gym since it rained on and off all day. I made a tape four-square area so we could play. I made the squares smaller since the ones outside are so huge. This size is much more like the usual four-square 'court.' 

The smaller size squares threw them off a little, but they had so much fun! I love hearing their giggles when they get a good volley going. Two of them had a contest to see who could get the other out more times. It ended in a tie. Rematch tomorrow! 

When we did science class, the student who was out sick tuned in to have class live with us using his Microsoft Teams account, just like we did last year during virtual learning. It was nice to have that as an option! Not quite the same as being in person, but he could at least be part of the class for part of the day. We made plans that if he's home sick again tomorrow, he'll tune in sooner for religion class.

Friday! (I mean, Thursday)

Guess what, no school tomorrow! I'm so excited! My sister and I are going to visit our other sister/brother-in-law for the weekend. The weather is going to be GORGEOUS. 

Today was beautiful too. The day started with a thunderstorm, but by 10am the sun was back and the day was cooler than it's been the rest of the week. We took advantage with some extra recess; four square was the game of the day. 

We ended up finishing our read-aloud today. I only cried a little! The kids guessed what was going to happen before I read it (we've been working on predictions this week). Next week we'll start Restart by Gordon Korman. 

All right, that's about all I can concentrate on. I'm too excited! Talk to you next week!

Cliff-hanger

 Oh how I love the cliff-hanger! (Not when I'm reading, but when I read aloud to my kids. Unfair, I know.)

My kids 'convinced' me to read aloud all morning, so we made a lot of progress on our read-aloud book Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper. An awesome book, I've read it many times. I bet we'll finish the book tomorrow. 

We got to a super good part in the book; the big climax (or the first big climax, there are actually two). On the first day of school I told them this book always makes me cry, so they know that part has GOT to be coming up soon because we only have 30ish pages left. They're not sure if it's happy tears or sad tears... 

I stopped right before lunch, right after a major plot point happened. They were like, "NO. MISS H! You CAN'T STOP THERE! It's too much of a cliff-hanger!!!" But, little do they know, if we were to read just a little further, there would be an EVEN BIGGER cliffhanger! So, for their own good, I stopped. And I told them there would be a bad one coming if we read more. But they didn't care, "We read all morning just for this? That's not why we read all morning! We have to find out what happened! Bring it on! We'll take a bigger cliff-hanger!"  But I was mean and wouldn't read any more today. Wahahaha!

Outside

 We had MN history outside this afternoon. Everyone was too hot and sweaty from playing kickball at PE to be inside. They were huffing and puffing so much they couldn't breathe with their masks on, so someone suggested we have class in the shade outside. The only downside was the bugs! The asian beetles were out in full force today, along with mosquitoes and gnats. 

It's so hard to make fair teams for, well, anything with only six students. There is an uneven number of athletic kids, so no matter the arrangement, it's unfair. I made the mistake of not confirming the rules before we played... This class takes kickball seriously and there were a few rules they play by that were not the same as I played by in grade school. Then one kid stubbed her toe kicking the ball, another one on the same team had an asthma flare up, so that left only one kid to finish the inning (we had three minutes of recess left). It seemed like most of them were frustrated by the end of PE. Sigh. We're doing kickball again on Thursday; I hope it will go better.

Class with the 7-8th graders was also frustrating. The IT guys came last night and fixed the projector, except it only worked for me for 15 minutes before turning from my powerpoint to a black screen. So I tried the tricks that I knew. Nothing worked. Great. Time to call the IT guys. Thankfully they answered and gave me a few more things to try. Fifteen minutes later, we were still facing a black screen. The IT guy was stumped, so I did one of the earlier tricks (windows key + P, then change the projection option) and it worked! It brought the screen back! So I was able to finish class as intended. Tomorrow is the scheduled day for the IT guys to come out to school. I really hope they follow through! I have a long post-it list of things for them to check into...

Tired

We were all a little droopy today.  Everyone was tired from the weekend. One good thing about the masks is that no one can see your yawns! 

Another thing adding to the droopiness was the FAST standardized tests. We do them on the computer three times a year to see where the students are (and if they're learning). Last spring we skipped them due to covid. My poor kids get so worked about about these things. I kept stressing that it's just a snapshot of one day; it doesn't go in the gradebook. The test is more for me than it is for them... But it doesn't sink in for some of them. 

We did one test today and will do one tomorrow (it's only reading and math; I let them pick which one they did today). Afterwards I let them take a brain break: run laps, color, stretch. They seemed pretty zonked, even with the brain break. 

Afternoon recess was GaGa Ball today. We did 4-square at noon recess. Non-PE days seem to have this rotation. I still can't believe how well these kiddos get along. They were taking turns winning at GaGa Ball, some of them specifically getting themselves out so the less athletic kids could win. And giving them pointers to play better too! 

I've been playing the games with them since we have so few people (and the games are fun), but by the afternoon I've been standing all day and my feet are tired, so I'm more likely to sit out for a while before playing. I sat on the edge of the GaGa Ball pit doing just that when one of the 5th graders asked me, "Are you going to play with us Miss H? I mean, your feet must be tired from standing all day, so maybe you can play after you take a break." Such a sweet kid! 

The weather was gorgeous today and should be all week. Even better, we don't have school Friday as a teacher 'work' day. And by 'work' day, it means the teachers choose if they go in to work at school at all. As for me, I'm going to take a mental health day and go visit my sisters!

Adjective Game

Today, the 5-6th graders had the most rousing match of the Adjective Game I can ever remember. 

In case you don't remember the rules... Each team gets an object they have to describe in as many words as possible in three minutes. A person from one team reads their adjectives. If the other team has the same word, both teams cross off the word and neither team gets the point. You earn a point for each unique word. 

We did boys vs. girls. One of the boys was not pleased with those teams since the girls know a lot of good words, but they were more evenly matched than he thought. We hadn't played the game much last year, so the first round was kind of a trial run (we still counted points though). The boys caught up more the second round, but the girls had such a big lead that they pulled out a win in the third round. The boys wanted a rematch, so we started points over for the fourth round and did a fifth one to end it. The boys won that match.

Here are the objects they had to describe: a tube from the thing used to blow up an exercise ball, a square piece of cling wrap, corn starch in a cup, a penny, and a twisty tie. They had some awesome words!!! I was super impressed. There was also quite a bit of strategy going on and GREAT discussion about whether the words they suggested actually described the object. For example, is the twisty tie big or little? It depends on what you compare it to! Can an object be loud AND quiet? Strong and flexible? Is it sparkly, reflective, or just glossy? We covered all these things and more! 

I can't wait to play it again. :)

Off on a Tangent

 Man, we covered a lot of topics today! We didn't get through as much material as I thought we would, but our discussions were fantastic! They have questions (and opinions) about so many things; they truly are a joy to teach. And I'm always up for a sidetrack as long as it's educational and somewhat related to the topic. 😄

We had art today and our project of the week is to make cards for our marine and the nursing home residents. A few have picked out microwave recipes to send along. One wanted to know if hot cocoa mix was okay to send. I looked it up and found a whole list of restricted items (or items that might be restricted). Did you know shipping a washer or dryer to Japan might be restricted? There were a bunch of other strange things on the list too. There was a side note to the website that said 'your package might not be shipped if it contains...', so maybe there's a chance it could still be shipped? I need to do more research.

Joe was pretty restless today, so we let him loose for his 'daily walk'. One of the fifth graders has decided to adopt Joe as his personal responsibility and makes sure we give him exercise every day. He's so small it's easy to lose track of him. For a while, Joe hid under my desk. We wrote a note on the board as a reminder that he was loose and told everyone to keep the door closed. 

At lunchtime, one of the girls found him in the coatroom! He must've crawled under the printer and somehow wedged himself past the garbage can and out the door. The sneaky sneaker. Thankfully we realized he was out there before he made it to the gym (although everyone went outside for recess today, so at least he wouldn't have to worry about stomping feet).

Early Out

 Since Nicollet gets out at 1:00pm every Wednesday (and half our students ride the Nicollet bus), our school is taking every other Wednesday off (that way it's fair to the New Ulm bus riders). It certainly made for a short day! We went home after noon recess. Still, our day was good and full of learning. 

I couldn't ask for a better class. These kids are so willing to help and be of service to me and their classmates. They are curious and have great ideas. They are kind and remember the things I tell them to! 

Earlier in the school year we did an experiment: how many drops of water can a penny hold. They each got a pipette and dropped as many drops as they could on the surface. Coins hold more than you think! One boy took it a step further yesterday and left a dime out with water on it. He wanted to see how long it would stay. This morning it was completely dry when he checked it! We couldn't figure out if it had evaporated that fast or just spilled. So we tried the experiment again, this time he recorded when he put the drops on and we checked it throughout the day. At 3:00pm it looks like there is half the water on top that there had been. I'm guessing it will be dry by morning. Our air conditioner is very good at sucking water out of the air, so that's probably our culprit of the fast evaporation. I want to challenge him to see if we can get it to evaporate before the end of the school day (probably need to adjust the number of drops put on). We'll see what other ideas for experiments he has!

Ship and Sink

I have a friend in the marines stationed in Okinawa, Japan. Last year when he was in training, my class 'adopted' him and sent cards for holidays and such. It was a hit! This year we're doing the same thing except our mail has to travel further.

Yesterday I brainstormed with my kiddos to see what we should put in our care package to him. One girl suggested jam. 

"Like, in a jar?" 

"Yep! Or wait... that might be kind of heavy."

Another boy chimed in, "How about cupcakes?!"

His classmate shot that down right away, "No way, it'd be rotten by the time it got there!"

"Ooo! We could send him the recipe and he could make them himself!" another girl put in.

"What if he doesn't have the ingredients?" 

"I know, we can send him the ingredients! It's just like, flour and sugar and..." 

"Well, they probably have those things there."

"Oh, yeah, you're right.

Meanwhile, I'm trying not to laugh picturing marines in a barracks trying to bake cupcakes. Also, I'm pretty sure they don't have a kitchen. 

We decided we should sleep on it, but for sure we could send him some cards or pictures or bible verses. After school, I messaged my friend to see if he had any requests (and to tell him about their big recipe idea 😆). He said the closest thing to a kitchen he has is a microwave that works only some of the time and his main requests were things that won't spoil and messages/jokes from the kiddos. So, now we're going to send him those things, along with some microwave cooking recipes! 😏

The other big thing from today was that I FINALLY got a sink in my classroom after waiting nine years! Our school purchased small, portable ones for each classroom with money from a covid grant. They arrived today, were put together (thanks Mr. E!), and I got the first one in my room! It has enough water in a container for about 40 hand washes, an automatic sensor to release the water, and is plugged in for hot/cold water. The best part is that the cord is long enough so it can be at the end of the lab table, right where I always pictured a sink! Hooray!