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.