Wildfires

Today was the first day of 5-6th PE with Mr. E and 7-8 dance with Miss H. Dance went pretty well with their class. They were super chatty today and two of the seven didn't want to participate (one boy and one girl), so that was the hardest part. We covered a lot of dances! Cha cha slide, cupid shuffle, macarena, salsa, cha cha, electric slide, and random dance moves. My 5-6th graders were impressed we covered so many dances (and that most of the class had fun), but then one of my 6th graders pointed out PE was a half an hour this time instead of the usual 20min. It was less impressive after that!

Mr. E ran the 5-6th graders so much, partly because they wanted a tough practice and partly to show them what it would be like if we had basketball practice with masks on. I got back to the classroom and found all of them sitting on the floor, pooped. They asked if they could open the outside door to get more cool air in. Nope. How about sit on the floor during MN history? Sure. So they did. 

We had a great class. We finally finished learning about the forestry industry in Minnesota and moved on to the mining industry. A lot of them are doing their projects on mining, so they've been itching to talk about it and see pictures. At lunch I worried I didn't have enough pictures of mining towns to satisfy them, and in my search for pictures, I stumbled on a slide show about MN mining. I learned a bunch of stuff and put some of the facts/photos in my powerpoint. Did you know the largest open pit mine in the world is in MN? 

Forest fires were also discussed. Two boys made connections to the California and Colorado wildfires from last year, so we did research to see how many acres were effected. Answer: total land from all the CA fires is over 4 million acres, Colorado is about a half a million. We also found a map of the wildfires going on right now in the US (and the world). Super neat.