Thrown Off

Yesterday's half day threw me off! We were done with school at 11:30, so our morning was a little off. We did a half an hour of read to self so I could meet with students one on one. Then we had chapel, followed by the rest of the morning reading aloud. Lunch was at 11:05 and then we went home! 

Since the afternoon was free, I volunteered at the ReStore for the first time to earn hours towards my Habitat house. We also had an initial planning meeting with the construction manager to plan first steps towards drafting blueprints. Ahh! So exciting! Mike has to do some homework before we can pick a house style, and my homework is to drive around looking at houses to narrow down siding colors. They gave me a list of things I get to choose for my house and things provided by Habitat. 

Today was another thrown off day since it is my Friday. I'm actually taking a day off work tomorrow. Dad and I are headed to a cattle sale. Mrs. B will be my sub, so I met with her after school to go over the plan. My kids helped plan the plan too. They didn't want me to miss anything in our read-aloud (since I haven't read it before and since I do the voices), so they thought Mrs. B should read something else. Encyclopedia Brown? Yes. They also thought they should do circular stories with her. 

Normally Friday's science/social time is a random topic they want to learn more about. Tomorrow, Mrs. B is going to show them pictures from Guatemala. That will generate a lot of questions! It's a bit strange to be leaving them on their own, but I'm sure they'll be fine!

Oldy Moldy

No school yesterday for the end of the quarter. I didn't get my report cards done yesterday because it took too long to correct my papers! So many papers. They're all corrected now and entered in the gradebook. Report cards are printed off; all I have to do is write them in the official report card. 

It's going to be a short week... tomorrow we have a half a day of school, out at 11:30. I have a Habitat meeting and plan to work in the ReStore for the first time in the afternoon. I should be able to get a bunch of hours! Friday I'm taking the day off to go to a cattle sale with Dad. Mr. E had told the 7-8th graders I'd be gone, so one of them asked me (if I was comfortable sharing) what I would be doing. I told her. She deflated a bit. "Oh. No offense Miss H, but I thought you'd be doing something more exciting." 

The 7-8th slime mold turned moldy over the weekend. Last week we'd noticed little white hairs growing on some of them. Today the hairs turned into a forest with black spores on the tops of the stalks. Gross. Pretty much everyone's is like that. I wonder if we did something when we poured the agar in the plates. Or it could be that we didn't move the slime into a new petri dish. The instructions say to do that every five days or so, but it didn't say why, so I didn't have them do it. 

Books!!!

 I had a student ask me out of the blue this morning if I had any more books in our class library like The Great Treehouse War by Lisa Graff. Well, of course. He wanted to get a list of books he might like to read so he's not rereading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books over and over. So he and I went to the realistic fiction shelf to take a look. I started at the top, scanning books, pulling the ones off the shelf that had a similar vibe to the ones he's already read and loved. Soon we had about ten books for him to check out. And then I kept finding just one more to add to the pile... and one more... and one more. He spent one of his read-to-self rounds just reading the inside flaps to see if he actually wanted to read them.  

He was thrilled. Pretty much all of them were yeses! He made a list of the books in the order he wants to read them, starting with books with the fewest pages so he can read as many of them as he can before the year is up. Best part: "Miss H, I made a big mistake earlier this year. All those nights sitting in the tractor during harvest, waiting for my dad? I should've brought a book along." *cue the halleluiah chorus* 

His excitement over books caught up the other 6th grade boy, who poked through the pile of possibility books. That kid asked me to write down a few of the titles for him to read next. (I keep a post-it note for each student in my 'meeting' binder that has books I think each student would like). What a glorious morning!

Well, it was the end of the quarter too, so a lot of them were stressed out about getting everything finished and turned in. All the 5-6th graders did! Only two had to miss any part of recess to get their work done. Now I have a giant pile of papers to correct... 

The other cool thing we did today was three word debates. We got the idea from our last read-aloud, No Talking by Andrew Clements. Earlier this week they signed up for topics, and today they went head-to-head only able to argue in three-word sentences. They did super well! I was impressed! Categories: should every 10yr old have a phone?, cats vs. dogs, beach vs. mountain, and should we have tests in school. All of them said it was harder than they thought it would be. And all of them want to do it again! I said next time we'll do it in actual debate format with teams and intros and full sentences with no word restrictions. 

At the end of the day, we looked at things through microscopes. I got all the old microscopes to work! We have two new ones purchased by our school/me a few years ago and four hand-me-downs from the public school (also from years ago). Of course the 5-6th graders had a blast and wanted to know if they can look through them again next week. Absolutely!

Dancing

We were supposed to have our last day of dancing PE today, but they made me a deal. We should play hockey today, then do dance next week: 10 minutes of dance Tuesday and 10 minutes on Thursday, then 10 minutes of other stuff both days. Their reasoning was that if we split the time today, there would be such a long break between dance days they wouldn't remember it as much. So that's what we did. As far as PE goes, if they're being active and burning off energy, I'm happy. After all, isn't that the point of PE? That and exposing them to active things they might otherwise not try? 

When Mr. E and I switched back after math/geography, he commented on dance for PE. He said my class was all up in arms about having to do dance and how they'd rather have Mr. E as their PE teacher. Hey, no offense taken; PE is not my forte! 

A few days ago my kids had asked me if I always teach my students dance and I had said, "No, I've never had to teach PE before, so you guys are the first." They didn't think it was fair.

So I told that story to Mr. E, and the girls wanted to know what dances we're learning (just to see if they're boring and worth my class being upset over). All the girls in his class said, "Ooo, those sound like fun! How come we can't do dance? Yeah, we should do dance." 

The three boys looked skeptical. So I said, "It's a good skill to have! Someday, you'll be at a dance and you'll want to impress some girls..."

Mr. E added, "And then boys, you will think back and thank Miss H, when you're trying to pick up chicks."

That perked up one of the 7th grade boys. The other two still had no comment. 

The conversation ended with the idea that one day Mr. E could teach my kids PE in the gym (probably basketball) while I teach the 7-8th graders dance in their classroom. Win, win! Well, maybe not for those 7th grade boys... 😏

Beautiful

Today was the complete opposite of the weather yesterday... sunny, warm, and calm. It got up to 37 degrees today! 

With that in mind, I gave my kids extra recess. Although technically, one could argue that we had STEM time outside. (I even put on my snowpants to help build). All but two of my students spent the majority of the time building a snow sea creature about to eat a snowman (the snowman has a bite out of it). They named the serpent Suliman. After that, they were going to build a donut, and one girl started, but we ran out of time. 

If you look carefully, you can see the other snowmen we built last week at the top left of the picture. 

This morning the 5-6th graders and I started a new read-aloud book... Smart Cookie by Elly Swartz. One of the 5th graders brought it from home and wanted us to read it together. It's on my to-read list but I haven't read it yet! It's been fun to make predictions with them and model 'good brainwork' while reading. They convinced me to read extra by making the deal to skip English today but do double English tomorrow. I wrote the deal on the board so I wouldn't forget! And I put a date on it too, just so they won't try to weasel out of it. Then they patted themselves on the back at how good they are at convincing me to do stuff they want to do. I asked if they ever considered that I'm so easy to convince because these things are what I want to do and they're more educational than they think. Huh. That hadn't occurred to them. So we talked about the good things their brains are doing when we read-aloud and make connections and predictions, etc.

Over lunch, they wanted to watch the Presidential Inauguration, so I put the livestream on. We missed the actual swearing in, but I found a video of Biden reciting the oath, so we watched that and they agreed that was good enough for them. Thankfully, it was a peaceful transition of power.

The 7-8th grade slime is continuing to grow. Some are really taking off and others are not doing anything. Left- the original slime is spreading out. Center- Helga is conquering the world! Right- Zippy is branching out.

Our original slime is growing so much (and a few were growing so little), I let the kids whose mold isn't growing take a chunk from our original just to see if it will grow in their plates. I left the lid of the original off and set another petri dish next to it to in the bag to see if it will grow into that plate and eat those oatmeal pieces. We'll see!

It's Alive!

The little slimes are growing! Well, a few of them have grown tendrils. A few just have a halo of yellow around the sclerotium. The one girl who was so gung ho about growing them unfortunately had one of the halo ones. She was so disappointed hers wasn't taking off fast!

My 5-6th graders tried to make a bunch of deals with me (especially after math), but I wasn't feeling it today. First, they wanted extra read-aloud time (when do they not???), but that didn't work because we finished our current book and picked out a new one for tomorrow. 

They were going to try making a deal for English, but didn't because we were trying out an activity from the read-aloud book... telling a story in three word sentences. That was pretty hard for them, so we switched to saying just one word at a time. That was still tricky, until one had the idea that I should type what they were saying on the board so they could read what else was in the story. Eh, they did okay after that. The sentences made sense, but the sentences strung together were a little strange... 

After math they wanted to make a deal to do spanish vocab instead of art. Nope. Then they wanted to make a deal about recess instead of doing dance for PE. Nope. We gotta do dance. Sigh. They weren't too happy about that. I told them they only have two more days of dance PE. One of the boys said, "Well, we may as well do them. Otherwise if we keep putting it off we'll just have to do it in the spring when it's nice outside!" They'd much rather have Mr. E teach them hockey or basketball. Too bad; they just have Miss H. We reviewed the electric slide and cotton eyed Joe. They remembered more than I thought they would. It's hard to tell if some of them just don't care enough to do it right or if they're just not gifted with rhythm. 

A Day of (minor) Disappointments

Sigh. I was supposed to have a meeting with Habitat after school today to start working on plans for my house. The building contractor wasn't feeling well, so in this day and age, we cancelled the meeting and will reschedule TBD depending on how his symptoms develop. Bummer.

I was also supposed to get a new SIM card for my phone to (hopefully) fix the issues I've been having with my voicemail and texting. Except... Verizon forgot to put my apartment number on my address, so the package couldn't be delivered. They had the package locked down so no one could change the shipping information, so I had to call Verizon again to get them to change the address. It ended up being easier for them to ship me a different one, but now I have to wait another 3-5 business days to get my phone fixed. Bummer.

School today was not a disappointment thankfully. For MLK Jr. Day, the 5-6th graders and I watched the movie Ruby Bridges. It's a great one, and they asked thoughtful questions throughout the movie when they didn't understand what was going on. While we watched, I entered grades in the gradebook and perused an online auction of a school 'going out of business' sale. A public school somewhat near us closed and is auctioning off all their bigger school items. I found a bunch of bookshelves I could use! And maybe an art table... I'm just not sure if it will fit through the door.

The 7-8th graders "made" their slime molds today. The agar plates are done, so the next step was to put a drop of sterilized water on the plate, then put a piece of sclerotium upside down in the water on their plate. After that, drop 10ish pieces of oatmeal on the plate for the mold to eat when it rehydrates. We had to sterilize tweezers and a scissors to do this, and they had a great time lighting matches to kill all the germs the rubbing alcohol didn't. The final step was to put it in a bag and name it. Well, they made up that last part. We ended up with names like: Nova, Fluffy, Helga, Kevin, huba babua zig manus, and Mom. That last student said his siblings want to name their new dog Mom, but they ended up voting for a different name, so now he can name his slime mold Mom. That got a lot of good jokes... "Hey, where do you want to put Mom? Your desk or this plastic tub?" "Oh, Mom can go in the tub! I'll check on her tomorrow."

Here's the slime mold (live culture) when I got it last Wednesday:

Here it is this afternoon:

And here are the 7-8th graders' bags of slime waiting for rehydration:

Here's my slime I'm trying to rehydrate without the filter paper on the back... It should still work, but we'll see!

(that little orange dot is the slime mold) 

The 7-8th graders who made this plate had trouble with the agar being chunky (probably got too cold when they were pouring), so I took the chunky plate and let them have the smooth ones.

Snow Day! ...I mean, Virtual Learning Day!

School got cancelled today due to potential blizzard-like conditions. So far it doesn't look too bad outside, but the blizzard warning goes until 6pm tonight. We were only supposed to have a half day of school anyway, but with us being so tech-savvy now and being able to learn from home, we wouldn't have to take a snow day ever again. That made everyone (including us teachers) sad. So all of us teachers convinced Mr. E we could make arrangements with our class to do what we needed to get done today.

My class's instructions were to take their spelling test (via a voice recording of me saying the words, which we do every week anyway), read for 20min, and meet with me to say memory. 

Some kids got on right away at 7:30am and asked to say memory at 8am. Others picked a later time, like 10:50 or 11:15. One kid didn't schedule a time, and I just about messaged him about it, but thought I should let him be responsible. He finally asked if we could meet, but when he said his memory work, I could see his eyes going back and forth like he was reading it. 😦 

I didn't want to jump to conclusions or accuse him of cheating flat out, so after he finished reciting, I asked if he would say the first part again, but do it with his eyes closed. He said he would try, and covered his eyes with his hands. He took a deep breath like he was going to speak... and then it whooshed out with a sigh. 

"You caught me Miss H. I spent all morning on my spelling; I wanted to do really good this week. So I didn't do my memory work at all."

Sigh. 

I thanked him for being honest and asked what our next step was. The poor kid was almost in tears; he asked if he could say his memory work on Monday before school started. Works for me. I saw he just messaged and asked how long I'm staying at school today... I wonder if he'll try to say it today still.

Slime Mold Prep Day

 The 7-8th graders have been learning about the six kingdoms in science (archaebacteria, eubacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and now today animals). Back when we learned about protists, the 7-8th graders were fascinated by slime molds... they're kind of like a fungi, but now they're classified as a protist. They can move, eat, think (kind of), react to change, 'remember' where they've been... they're pretty neat things. Of course they wanted to get one as a pet. So I looked up how much it cost: $50 for a starter kit ($15 if you already have petri dishes, agar, etc.). I said if they wanted to chip in some money, we could get one! So about half the class brought money in. Mr. E gave me a prepaid card to cover the rest of the cost. Awesome!

It arrived special delivery Wednesday at noon. It had all sorts of fancy labels because it's a live product and considered hazardous (even though it's not dangerous to humans). Even this morning I could tell the active culture slime mold has grown! We also have inactive slime mold (in endospore form aka sclerotia). They wanted to grow their own right away, but first we had to prepare the plates...

Agar had to be melted and poured into petri dishes. I was going to do it after school, but some of the 7-8th graders were super gung ho about it, so I let them do it. I had a portable burner in my room, so I brought that down. They got a glass bowl from the cook and filled it with water (the agar melts in a kind of double boiler thing). It took all class period with them for it to melt, but before I left, they had done about five plates. They had to put the agar back in the water to melt again since it got a little chunky. I left them to their own devices (with the instruction sheet) and only checked on them after school. They turned out great! 

There was just a little bit of agar left in the two bottles, so I melted them in the microwave and poured the leftovers in the chunky dish. Now we're all set to rehydrate the sclerotia on Monday! Some of the kids decided they're going to name their slime... Monster, Luna, Nova, and (wait for it)... Mom. 

Tomorrow is supposed to be a half a day of school, out at 11:30, but there's a blizzard warning starting tonight, so chances are we'll be learning from home tomorrow. All my kids need to do is say memory work, do their spelling tests, and read for 20 min, so it should be a pretty short day! I might get all my papers corrected or get some reading in! (Or if the weather clears up, leave for Fulda early!)

Mad Masks

The school nurse came to school today like she normally does on Wednesdays. Except she hasn't been to our school in a while since we had Christmas break and virtual learning for a half a semester prior to that. It turns out, we are supposed to be wearing masks when we're in the gym. :/ None of our classrooms have been doing that, but we started today. My kids were not happy. None of them want to play hockey wearing masks; they said they wouldn't be able to breathe. They didn't want to try hockey outside since the pavement was wet, so we tried bombardment in the gym with masks on. That worked okay. 

I'm going to have to do research to find other games socially distanced and not requiring a lot of physical activity. I know my kids are going to get bored doing the same thing over and over. As fun as sledding is, I can tell they're getting tired of that too. I offered them extra recess outside today since it's so nice (38!), and they said, 'nah, we'd rather play Psychiatrist.' More on that in a bit...

We're at the part in our read-aloud book where the teachers experience the 'unshushables' being quiet for the first time in their school careers. Some teachers get frustrated by their short and slow answers, others try to solve the mystery and then take advantage of the game to get them to try new things with language. The teachers trying to solve the mystery reminded me of a game I learned when I was in middle school. It's called Psychiatrist and it's basically a game of 'guess who'. Everyone in the group (except one) has a problem and it's the psychiatrist's job to figure out what it is. The group pretends to be someone else, such as a specific person in the room, George Washington, a palm tree, the person to their left, etc. The psychiatrist leaves the room while they're deciding that and then asks yes or no questions of the players to figure out what their problem is. Of course my kids wanted to play. Since it's Wednesday, our typical read longer day, I said we could play. They did pretty good! 

We played again after math during our flex time before recess. I was the first psychiatrist that time and they got me pretty good! They were the lettuce in Joe's tank. 

We also did a science lab in about 15min. I was impressed! It was a simple lab testing which foods have starch (using iodine to show starch). I forgot to bring bread and a potato, so we'll do those two foods tomorrow.

Recess was wet but fun. We made gigantic snowmen. Or tried to anyway. The balls they rolled got too big to roll anymore, but they wanted the snowmen to be one big family. I was impressed when they tried to put the ball on a sled and drag it over. It didn't work; the snow was too heavy. They came in from recess excited to go back out tomorrow to add on. I didn't tell them it would be much colder and snowier tomorrow... 

No Talking

Yesterday, we started a new read-aloud book, No Talking by Andrew Clements. I've read it to past classes, and every year I have, my students have begged to try the no talking challenge that takes place in the book. This year's class was no different. 

So we tried it today. Rules: no talking unless a teacher calls on you, then you can only say three word answers. Any words you say over three count against your team. Boys vs. Girls. Who can say the fewest words? 

This year's answer: boys 17, girls 21. I only have six students, three boys and three girls, but the girls kept forgetting about the contest!!! They'd blurt out a whole sentence before one of the others would hiss and the boys would silently fist-pump the air. They voted to keep going over lunch, to stop at recess, and they could also talk regular at math. After math we kind of forgot about it. 

One thing that impressed me about the girls in this group is they made 'talking boards' out of post-it notes and stuck them to their desk. It said things like: yes, no, how, where, when, what?, and "noah stop that". I wonder if they got that idea from our first read-aloud book. The main character can't speak and has a board of words and pictures she points to to communicate. Either way, I was impressed they thought of it!

Sledding

This weekend I bought a couple sleds for my class to use at recess so we'd have some specific 5-6th sleds. The weather was perfect today... 37 degrees and sunny! We had a blast! They took turns using the sleds and found fancy ways to go down the hill. And of course they had a competition to see who could go the farthest. 

The kids behind on homework turned a bunch of papers in today. Not nearly as many as are still out, but a decent chunk got wiped off the board. One girl stayed after school and finished one assignment for me. She forgot her finished papers at home. 

I spent most of my after-school time on the phone with various phone companies. My phone does this strange thing with certain people who try to call me. When I answer, there's no sound; I can't hear them, they can't hear me. If I hang up and call them back, they sound like a chipmunk speaking gibberish when they talk and they still can't hear me. 

Final results: Verizon can't do anything about it, call the manufacturer. Nokia said if their fix doesn't work, I can send the phone to Texas for their tech team to examine. I'd probably have to pay for hardware repairs and since the phone is over a year old, it's not under warranty. 

It didn't work. Currently, there are about five people I can't talk to (but it works if I talk to them through my car's bluetooth). Is it better to buy a new phone? Or just leave it until more people get added to the list? If I buy a new phone, should I get the same kind? Do research to get a better phone? Sigh... that's the last thing I want to do in my spare time. :p

Epiphany Party

We FINALLY got to open our presents from before Christmas. The kids all told each other who they had, so that part wasn't a surprise. Some of them told each other what their letter initials meant, but a few kept it a secret. One girl wanted "painting things" and got purple things instead. One girl wanted GS (she couldn't remember what her letters stood for) and got "girl stuff." Four students got exactly what they wanted: Two guys got nerf guns. Another got tractor toys. One girl got a fuzzy blanket. 

We also tried the last of the Japanese candy. Boy that was a mixed bag! Some tasted pretty good, others were quite strange. There was enough left over for the 7-8th graders to try it too. They liked the flavored pretzi sticks better than the 5-6th did: lemon, apple, matcha, steak, wasabi, butter, salmon, and two others we couldn't identify.

I cried twice today. Not from anything real! The ending of our read-aloud book was sad. We split it up into two parts so we could finish our Daily 5 rounds in the morning and read the last part at the end of the day. Our projector screen went funky this morning again, so I didn't know if we'd be able to use it. I checked the projector after school and it worked fine now (of course), but it was fine that we took it easy today. My kids have missed out on a lot of fun stuff this year; taking one day to have a little class party isn't the end of the world. 😊

Wheeling and Dealing

Boy my kids were on a roll today... We are getting closer and closer to the end of our read-aloud book. Plus they remembered that this book makes me cry. There are varying predictions over which character is going to die. 

I told them straight off the bat before they could ask for a deal that we were not going to finish the book today. That helped them not fuss too much when I put the bookmark in. We read a little extra, but still had enough time for English and our Reading mini-lessons. 

After math, we did art and read-aloud again. Their projects are getting to the point where the art part is finished and they only have the brochure to make. Not something I can help them with while I'm reading aloud. I made plans to do that as an English lesson on Monday. 

We got to a good stopping point, and I should've just stopped there. But a few of them wanted to keep reading. Plus, it was PE instead of recess (dancing again). I wondered if they'd rather read and miss recess or do dancing. 

Yeah, they tried to make a deal where they didn't have to do any dancing. We went back and forth a few times before I finally told them that for sure 10 minutes of our 20min PE were going to be spent dancing. Any other deals were off the table. They finally said 3 minutes of reading and five minutes of recess, then 10min of dancing. When I said deal, the boys shot out of their seats and headed to the door... "Hang on guys, dancing first, recess second." They sat back down. Then I set the timer for three minutes so I'd know when to stop reading. Except they thought the deal they made was the three minutes we spent bartering for the deal were the reading minutes. One of the girls said, "You should've worded your deal more carefully!" That is a good point.

We only have 50pgs of the book left. I'm pretty confident we'll finish tomorrow; it's a fast read. We're also FINALLY opening our Christmas presents and trying the rest of the Japanese treats from our marine friend. A parent is sending either hot chocolate or juice boxes to school so we can have an extra special morning, plus she sent a few sleds to school so my class has something to do during outside recess. Woohoo!

Epiphany

Today is one of my favorite holidays in the church year, Epiphany, when the wise men came to visit Jesus. I don't do much to celebrate, so it's a bit odd that it's my favorite. Maybe because it happens after the stress and chaos of Christmas. Maybe because it's underrated. ...Or maybe it's because when I was growing up my mom would surprise each of us kids with an Epiphany present. I remember being so excited to get a present out of the blue! 

As an Epiphany present to my kids, we read aloud for a long time this morning. I have a feeling they'll get me to finish the book tomorrow or Friday. We're getting to the really good part. Things are amping up in the story! This one has a tear-jerker ending, so I need to prepare myself for crying while reading. 

My kids brought their Sodbuster projects to school today and worked on them the whole time we read aloud. They have to make a map of an area in Minnesota to convince settlers to come to the area. They'll make a brochure touting all the reasons to come to their town including natural resources, railroads, jobs, etc. Reading while they worked helped them to keep trucking on the project. They wanted to keep reading, so we made a deal to work on the project after math for 20min if I read to them while they did it. We would've just practiced spanish vocabulary, so it wasn't a hard deal to make.

Unfortunately, I cut into their recess a little bit so we'd end in a good place. They only got 15min outside instead of the covid-usual 20min. They claimed it was only a five minute recess. It did feel really short, especially with the time it takes to put on winter gear. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can keep going outside for afternoon recess.

Dancing By Ourselves

I played hockey again at noon recess. It's certainly true that exercise gives you endorphins! I have a lot more energy than I did yesterday. I also did better playing hockey than yesterday. Too bad we're not having the floor hockey tournament this year! With all this practice, maybe I'd be able to help the teachers beat the 7-8th graders! 

For afternoon recess we had PE. They were excited we'd get to go in the gym until they learned we were doing dances again. Groan. They didn't want to get filmed by the 3-4th grade teacher again, so we tried having PE in the classroom. It worked pretty well and we were all able to stay six feet away from each other. 

They remembered quite a bit from November! We did the macarena, cha cha slide, cupid shuffle, and electric slide. Next time we're going to learn Cotton Eyed Joe. I'm not sure what other dances I should teach them. Since I know we can do it in my classroom, I suppose I could show them a youtube video tutorial of some of the dances I don't know, like Footloose, or Come on Ride the Train. (I remember learning the train one in 5-6th grade back when I was in school).

My favorite part of the day was a magic trick one of the 5th graders showed me. Her sister taught it to her last night. "Miss H, you should film me and send it to [our marine friend] because I think he'd like it too." She had a cup of milk from lunch on her desk, then draped a towel over it. "I can drink this milk without moving the towel." She bent and slurped over the cup. Afterwards, she said, "Hey, can someone move this towel?" A classmate whisked it away to reveal... the milk in the cup. She grabbed the cup, chugged the milk, and said, "Tada!" So clever! I love it.

First Day

It was our first day of in-person school after a month and a half of virtual learning. It was good to be back! Some things felt like we never left, others took a bit of remembering. But overall it was a good day.

Last night after I got back to Courtland, I swung by school to drop off Joe so I wouldn't have to lug him into my apartment then back out to the car in the cold morning. I also dropped off all my teaching books and put them back in my podium. I left my printing and things for my to-do list this morning. 

I ran into Mr. E while I was at school and we chatted about the two students who moved away over break. They returned all their things over break, one of which was a brand new chapter book I had lent one of them earlier this year. It was so new I hadn't even read it yet. Now, the book is warped and wavy from water damage. It's so bad the book won't even close all the way. Oh man! I emailed their mom to see if they would pay for a replacement copy. 

One of my students is still learning from home. She seemed sad and quiet today when I met with her on Teams. I'm guessing she misses being back with everyone. 

Being one student down, there's an odd number of classmates so they want me to play with them at recess. That's good because I could use the exercise! We went in the gym for noon recess and we all played hockey. Afternoon recess was outside because it was so nice out. Most of the class was not terribly enthused about that. It was too cold and windy. Really, it got up to 37 today. There's a huge snow outside, so we enjoyed climbing it and sort of sledding down. Only one out of five brought snow gear, but the rest tried to enjoy it even without boots.

My class decided to open Christmas presents on Friday. I gave them the choice of Tuesday or Friday and they unanimously picked Friday. Then they wanted to know when we'd be opening presents. They wanted to change their minds about that when I said we would skip English and do it during that time on Friday. Normally they'd be happy to skip English, but on Friday we play an English game as a class. Their exact words: "No! Miss H! We don't want to skip our English game!" We compromised and agreed that we could open presents in the morning and then play an English game in the afternoon when we'd normally be doing art or spanish.

We're also going to try the rest of the Japanese candy my marine friend mailed us last month. I need to put some of it in a bag for my virtual student. Her gift exchange partner didn't bring her present in yet, so when that arrives at school I'll have to drop it off at her house. She doesn't live too far from me, so it won't be a big deal to swing by after school one day. 

My class tried to make a deal with me to read our read-aloud book longer today. I countered with, "What do you have to offer?" Uhhh... they couldn't think of anything. They'd brought their books back to school, but not a lot of their assignments/papers. Hopefully they'll bring those things tomorrow. Then they'd have more to barter with! We started a project where they have to draw a map of a fictional town and create a brochure to entice settlers to come to their land. If they had their papers at school, they could've said they'd work on them while I read. Oh well, too bad! 

We're starting a new unit in English involving informative writing. Today our focus lesson was on the three purposes of writing: Persuasive, Informative, Entertainment. To me, it seems like we've done way more entertainment/narrative writing this year, but when I asked them for examples of what we've done, we came up with all sorts of assignments/writing they've done that fits in each category. Ha! Nice job, Miss H. 

Well, I think I have everything ready for school tomorrow. Now I'm off for home to hopefully get to bed early for a good night's sleep!