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.