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!