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.