Smores

Today was a much calmer day, student attitude-wise. Before school was a little crunched writing up missing assignments for the 7-8th graders, listening to memory work, tuning in our Friday homeschoolers for religion, and getting 5-6th graders working on spelling fixes. Still, we fit everything in!

After religion we made microwave smores as our school prize for meeting our page goal for I Love to Read Month! We read over 33,000 pages (our goal was 30,000). Stay tuned for more stats on which classroom read the most. A microwave and the smore supplies were on a cart that we wheeled to each class at their designated time. My class was the first, so when they saw the piles of chocolate and marshmallows, they immediately thought they'd get to eat a whole bunch. Nope, just one. 

We found that 3 squares of chocolate, one marshmallow, and 15 seconds was the perfect amount of time to zap them. So good. I've made many a microwave smore in my day, but some kids tried them for the first time today. One girl was so sold on them she said, "This summer, when my family is making smores around the campfire, I'm gonna say 'see ya!' and go in the house and make mine in the microwave. They're so much better this way!" 

I tend to agree. The chocolate is melty, the marshmallow melted all the way through. Perfection. 

We only got a little sticky... My chocolate squirted out the sides and accidentally dripped a bit on my mask (dangling from one ear) and the floor (I cleaned it up!). Still, definitely a high point of the day! Other classes agreed. The preschoolers dubbed today "the best day of school ever!" and making smores was the funnest thing they've ever done. 

Our read-aloud book is chugging along. We're at that horrible part in a book where we're getting close to the climax, the book is too good to stop reading, but there's no way we can finish it in a day. My class crammed in as much time as we could (politely planning this time instead of demanding), and we ended in a place satisfactory for all. 

We read one of the tear-jerker sections. I held it together pretty well, just had to wipe my eyes a few times... My kids said, "You know it's a good book when it makes Miss H cry." They wanted to know if we were past all the sad parts of the book or if I'll cry again. They try to make predictions about what's going to happen after knowing if I'll cry. I'm pretty sure I'm going to bawl on Monday. I told them I'm probably going to cry again, so they immediately jumped to the conclusion that someone dies or gets hurt. 

"Something bad has to happen. Like really bad. It has to be sad, otherwise why would Miss H cry?"
"But what if Miss H was just emotional crying? And not sad crying?"

"What? Miss H never emotional cries."

"Are you kidding?! That's why she was crying ten minutes ago!"

I jumped in at this point, "Oh I'm definitely an emotional crier. I'm just a biiiig bunch of emotions!"

Their predictions went off the rails at that point, and I had to reign them in so we could keep reading before time ran out.

Well, my teacher bags are packed, my car is packed, and soon I'm off to the ReStore in Mankato for a shift towards my sweat equity hours followed by a drive down to Fulda for the weekend!