Fluffy Snow

 As nice as it was to have Friday off, it was good to be back. However, my morning started a little frantically... I reset my alarm for its usual time of 5:50, except I actually set it for 6:50 and woke up at 7am! Oops! So I scurried around and still made it to school by 7:35. Not bad. The frantic energy carried on until school started though.

My kids had lots to catch me up on from their day Friday. The big question was if they had finished reading John Blair and the Great Hinkley Fire, a book about the real-life fire in Hinkley, MN back in 1894. It ties in really well with our current topic in MN history. Turns out, they only read half of it. We were going to finish it today during reading, but somehow they convinced me to read more of our read-aloud book instead. "We didn't get to read it Friday! We'll do double English tomorrow! We'll..." 

We still did English, but I made them a deal for 10 more minutes of reading if they would work on their Invention reports during their work on writing round instead of games. They thought about giving up a read to self round, but today is the first day of February so it's "I Love to Read" month and they want to read all the pages they can. 

Noon recess we were in the gym. Most of the class played pass the volleyball, but one kid stalwartly built a tower out of plastic interlocking blocks. Last Thursday he tried to use all the blocks to make a tower that reached the basketball hoop, but he wasn't tall enough. Instead of giving up, he kept trying different things. Recess ended before he got it. He said he didn't get it on Friday either. He got it today though! Once the tower was made, he and the other 5th grader shot baskets and watched the ball go down through the block tunnel. At the bottom, they peeled one block back to make a door to get the ball out. I was so proud of them for problem solving and making it work!

Afternoon recess was outside. The snow was so fluffy they didn't want to sled (they said it was no fun in fluff). Instead they ran around in it, made snow angels, and buried each other. Crazy kids! But they're my kids and I love 'em.