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!!!