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...