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.