Too Many Papers

Bleh, I have a huge pile to correct tonight and so many other things I'd rather be doing. Maybe I will compromise and intermix the homework subjects with the other things. 

The good news is I got everything done after school that I wanted/needed to do, and that was even with the volleyball girls hanging out in my room. 

My voice is tired from class with the 7-8th graders. They were so distracted today. And then we had bell practice, which is always loud. The 5-6th graders had art/Joe toy work time and convinced me to read-aloud while they worked. (It didn't take much convincing). Our book is getting tense! We're about halfway through and I can tell the author is slowly amping up the excitement...we'll be able to make lots of predictions in the next few days. 

Next week we go to Camp Omega. I can't believe that's already here. One more bake sale to go this Sunday!

Clay

We used up the last of the clay today. Very messy desks, but very happy creative minds. Man, they had fun building with that stuff! I couldn't let them have all the fun, so I made something too: a tree paintbrush holder. 

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons has taken the 5-8th graders by storm this past week. I overheard the 7-8th grade boys read (and sing) this book during study hall Monday. This morning a bunch of my kids read to someone and picked this book, including one boy who struggles with reading. I heard him reading with inflection, changing his reading speed/tone to fit the words, and then his partner joined in singing the song chorus that happens whenever Pete loses a button. Oh it made my teacher heart happy!

I forgot to post yesterday since I left school early for a walk/bible study. The big thing was the 5-6th graders presented their powerpoints on the big Native American tribes in the US. Overall they did really well! A few groups had uneven teamwork. One group had great teamwork making the powerpoint, but didn't share the presenting part as well. I forgot that I said I'd present the last tribe that didn't get covered. Oops! Guess I have to make a powerpoint after school!

Monday Monday

I must say, today was one of the best Mondays of the school year to date, and that's not just because I arrived at school with a box full of candy/snacks courtesy of my sister/brother-in-law (I helped them clean out their pantry before the baby comes and they gifted me with their castoffs). 

My kids know the story of the P family's baby gender reveal... "It's a... human baby!" They thought that was hilarious and a few of them took the joke further, "What?! I thought it would be a giraffe!" So now everyone either calls my niece/nephew human baby or giraffe baby. To play a trick on my class, I took a picture of my sister holding a baby giraffe stuffed animal in a baby outfit and I pretended she had the baby while I was there over the weekend. It was great! They totally believed she had the baby. Also, I had them show if they thought it'd be a boy or girl. Four think boy, three think girl. None thought giraffe. 

Other fun things today: surprisingly, 7-8th spelling! Most of the class advanced to the vocabulary books, which are more work, so we came up with a compromise that we do part of their assignment together orally. They LOVE it. They kind of get into it, especially today, which makes spelling fun. Strange I would ever say that. Best spelling lesson of the school year.

While I did spelling with the 5-6th graders, Joe wandered the classroom. He tried to eat the piece of metal on the sideways bulletin board again for about five minutes. It dawned on me he might be playing. That thought inspired the class to look up toys/brain stimulation for tortoises and now we're on a mission to enhance Joe's life with fun things. One kid is making a pool, another is making a Halloween costume for him (Joe-y Shark do-do-do-do, Joe-y Shark do-do-do-do), a few are looking up flowers/plants to grow in his tank that he can eat. This class likes to work on things they're excited about at home, so who knows what they'll come up with tonight!

Fantastic Friday

Mrs. L gave me a secret note today... and it was really good. She showed me the back of her fist that said, "Tap". So I tapped. She flipped her hand up to show me her knuckles, which said "open". And inside her fist was the note, written in a code. Before she left the classroom I figured it out and I will admit I screamed. And screamed again because it was such good news. One of my 6th graders was in the room when I got the note and she thought she figured it out. It drove her nuts that I wouldn't tell her. 

My neck is still not 100%, but it feels the best it's felt all week. My mood is by far improved. I've had much more pep in my step today and feel somewhat normal. This has definitely given me a lot more sympathy/empathy for people with chronic pain.

My class was on fire with predictions and inferences today. So many times they guessed and guessed right! Four of the seven aced their memory work, all handed in handwriting before lunch. The 7-8th graders had a good day too, very productive. 

I'm antsy to leave school today because I'm going to visit my sister/brother-in-law/human baby (as my students like to call him/her...or giraffe baby... don't ask). That's been my high of the day for quite a few days this week. Today it was even one of the 6th grader's highs! And a few kids' lows were that I won't be here to watch the after school soccer game. 

Boats

My kiddos started building their penny boats this afternoon. Their latest STEM project is to build a boat that can hold 25 pennies for 10s without sinking. While they did that, I got the testing tank ready. It's just an old fish tank I have in the closet. The big undertaking was finding space for it! We made room on the lab table, and miraculously, it fit close to the sink so we could swing the faucet around and fill it directly from the sink with minor modifications. We taped a funnel to the tank to direct the water in. It worked great! 

Second Wind

My chiropractor appointment popped me back into place, but it's taking a while for the muscles to catch up (the chiro said that would be the case). So most of the day was tough for me to get through physically. But after school I finally caved and took some pain meds and surprise, surprise, I am feeling better. Not 100%, but enough to actually accomplish the things I need to do after school. I even watched a webinar that's been on my radar since August... going gradeless in the classroom. Hmm, correct fewer papers? I'm all for that! 

One of the 8th graders thinks the alternator is going out in my car, or it just needs an oil change. Good thing I have an oil change tomorrow. He heard me drive away yesterday and said my car sounds weird. I've noticed that sound too, kind of a mild whine, but when I've asked my car fixit people about it, they didn't seem concerned. I'll mention the alternator to them tomorrow. 

One of the 5th graders is positive his plants grew while he was at school. I suggested sticking a ruler next to the plant in the dirt so he can actually tell. He is gungho about plants and started up the mini-hydroponics thing we have. He plucked a germinated pea from his garden and transplanted it to the hydroponic planter. 

Some of the other kids like to pluck their seeds out to see how big the root is. A 6th grader took one out and wrapped it in a wet paper towel, then got excited because the paper towel was sucked close to the root showing that the root was absorbing water. Nice. They're learning so much!

Joe

Joe hasn't had much of an appetite this week, but today we noticed him doing something odd when he was on his walkabout... He tried to eat the metal holder on the bulletin board leaned against the wall. Humongous bite and everything. It didn't work. Just in case he tried to eat anything else, we put him back in his tank and gave him a big pile of lettuce.

A pretty typical day otherwise. In bells, we highlighted parts for the bell songs we'll play from October though January. That's eight songs! Some kids are much faster at highlighting than others and are finished already. I was worried my 6th graders would be overwhelmed, so I had them start this morning during read-aloud time (ps- only 25 pages to go! We'll probably finish tomorrow!). They did really well keeping everything organized.

Neck update: not much better. It hurts to even turn my eyes to the right, so I caved and took some medicine, then made a chiropractor appointment for this afternoon. God was good; there was an opening for 5pm tonight. Perfect timing!

Bake Sale

Singing and ringing went all right on Sunday. One kid lost his place and didn't play for most of the song and two had their bells in the wrong hands, so it sounded a little weird, but most people couldn't tell. You could at least hear the melody. 

The bake sale and snacks went much better. We raised over $200 for our class trip to Camp Omega! That's over halfway to our goal and we still have some snacks leftover. I put them in the freezer for us to either serve at a home soccer/volleyball game, or save for the next bake sale in a few weeks.

School was fine today. My neck is out of whack and I've had to spend a lot of time on the computer, so I've fought off a headache all day. Blech. On a positive note, one of my students brought me a white orchid. So sweet. I put it close to my desk so I can see it often. 

House update: floor joists are going in! I swung by on Friday after school and they had the basement walls up and half the floor joists in. Today rained on and off, so I'm guessing they didn't make any progress. 

Cirque Italia Friday night was fun. It was geared towards families with kids, so sometimes the in-between acts were cheesy, but I enjoyed the artists. The coolest act by far was the contortionist who shot a balloon via bow and arrow with her toes over her back! 

Cake

A church lady dropped off a leftover cake from the Ice Cream Social for the teachers. It was a whole cake, and I knew we wouldn't eat all of it, so I shared it with my class at the end of the day. Why the end of the day? Well, mostly because I kept forgetting about it earlier in the day. My class very much enjoyed it. 

I wore my Th In K tshirt (the letters are the elements from the periodic table), and as the class did their highs and lows, one 6th grader stared in my direction, concentrating very hard. I could see her doing some mental math with her finger in the air. Finally she said, "Miss H, if you add up the atomic numbers of those elements, you get... 158!" 

Today was a day of wrapping up a lot of things. Spelling tests and handwriting. The Bouncy Ball STEM lab from earlier in the week. We tidied our plant area and now there's a little space on the lab table. We cleaned the rest of the classroom too. Pastor had asked my class to put an object in a mini-suitcase for him to base chapel next week. After much voting, my class decided on a flag. We also wrote a question we were curious about: when did the Jewish people stop offering sacrifices (lambs, cows, etc)?

Now my classroom is wrapped up for another week, the first full week of school. I'm off to see the progress on my house, followed by an evening at the water circus. From what I can tell, it's a bit like cirque du soleil, but with water... lots of acrobatics and trapezes. 

Doesn't Match

Today was so nice out we had extra recess at the end of the day, so we overlapped with the preschoolers a little. One little girl chatted with me for a while. She's a little hard to understand, but we talked about clothes and shoes and the colors we were wearing. After commenting on the bright colors of my shoes and shirt, she pointed to my black pants, shook her head and said, "doesn't match." 

The rest of the day was pretty normal. Forgot to finish our standardized tests we started yesterday... we'll do them tomorrow, no big deal. Had a great read-aloud session with minimal cliff-hangers. Talked about plagiarism and looked at examples. Read a TON of our read-to-self books. Checked on the plants, watered them (probably too much, man they love spraying them), let Joe walk around, set up a mini-greenhouse for more plants to go once the dirt we ordered arrives. 

We had one last bell practice at church before we play Sunday. Part of that was practicing setting up when it's our turn to play in the service. So I had them all sit out in the pews, then come up when I stood up by the music stand. They loved practicing that... they came from all over the church, stood in their spots, set up their music, put on their gloves and put their hands on their bells. But don't pick them up! They are supposed to look at me and wait for me to give the signal so we raise them all at the same time. 

That ends up taking time because just when you have alllllmost everyone, that one last person looks, but two more look away. Or the person who's been ready from the beginning zones out and forgets to raise her bells. So we put them down and try again. I mentioned smiles would be nice, so some did the cheesy grin, others were obnoxiously ridiculous, still others tried glaring (but you could see them struggling not to smile). Really, they're a good looking group when it comes down to it. Let's hope they play just as well as they look! ;)

House update: the basement is poured and some wooden studs are going up!

Redoing Fine Arts Fair

Staff meeting after school today with some hot ticket agenda items... lunch schedule (poor 7-8th graders are missing all their noon recess, plus three of us teachers are getting gipped on class time because lunch is always ready sooner than expected), the Lutheran Educators Conference in October, and a report from Mr. E from his principal's meeting about a potential revamping of the Fine Arts Fair in March. 

The LEC is set up different than usual this year (thanks again, covid): no breakout sessions since it's hard to find speakers to commit, so we're having one speaker doing two sessions with a possible breakout at the end. The thing is, the speaker did a zoom session for us in the Minnesota South District last spring about taking time to rest, and it appears the conference will be the same presentation. So. Is it the same spiel? If so, do we need to go again if we've already heard it? TBD. If we don't have to go, man, I could take a vacation or something... we have a half day of school Wednesday and no school Thursday or Friday... hmm.... I better slow down my brain until we get more details.

The Fine Arts Fair drama started because MLHS has a new choir director (who teamed up with the insanely talented music director at Fairmont) to rev up the FAF. The only thing is, he wants the event to be like a high school solos and ensembles day or an "all state" type of gathering. His proposal is to start at 8:30 in the morning with individual events, a two hour break over noon followed by two hours of mass choir rehearsal, a supper break for the choir, art exhibit open to the public at 6pm, then the traditional hand bell/choir concert at 7pm. Except the only people involved in that concert are 5-8th graders. So, we probably would have to leave for the day at 7am and get home around 9pm or so. What a day. 

They also want to make the event happen on a Friday during the school day. Well that's a better option, you might be thinking, however, if we'd take a bus down to Northrop, parents wouldn't take off work and we teachers would be supervising all our kiddos... while we're supposed to be helping judge/run papers/accompany our solos and ensemble groups. Plus, what do kids do in all that downtime? There isn't a good place for people to hang out in between things. 

Anyway, long story just a little longer, the plan didn't go over well at our staff meeting and it sounds like it didn't go over well at the principal's meeting. At this point in time, the plan from the music director is just a proposed change and not set in stone. The two directors are looking for input from the other lutheran schools. My suggestion was that the new director should see how the FAF is run this year, just to see how it goes, and then make changes for next year if he still wants to. That might give him an idea of all the moving pieces that effect everything that happens for all the schools involved, especially those from far away that join in.

Vacuum

Last night one of my 6th graders forgot to put her crate up after I specifically reminded everyone to make sure his/her area was clean. Normally, not too big a deal, but this student had stuff everywhere... not easy to pick up/put on top of her desk. The janitor was going to vacuum, and she's the kind of person who would pick up the mess just because, but I saw this as a perfect natural consequence opportunity. 

So, the janitor did not vacuum our room last night. When our janitor finished vacuuming the rest of the school, I had her leave the vacuum next to this student's desk. The student could vacuum the room since she was the reason we didn't get vacuumed. It worked. This kid didn't complain about having to do it, but she was the first person to put her crate up at the end of the day!

Growing

We have sprouts! Some kids' garden plots have really taken off. We don't have any grow lights on them, so they are showing a lot of phototropism, something I'll teach them about in a while. 

We had a great science class about plant circulatory systems... Xylem and phloem. Which led to a connection to the human body system (and some 7-8th grade stuff), which led to a connection to the chemistry we learned last year involving oxygen use in the body and chemical equations/building blocks in the cells. One of last year's 6th graders had a humongous aha moment when it all clicked. She jumped up out of her desk and waved her arms around when she was explaining...she couldn't even talk, she was so excited. 

That is why I became a teacher, to experience moments like that with my learners. ❤️

Magic Scrap

 Holy cow, I had no idea how crazy my class would get at the end of the day when I said the words, "Let's... do magic scrap."

It's a game I learned from Mrs. L to clean up the scraps of paper on the floor. Everyone picks up schniblets and whoever picks up the one you decided ahead of time (keeping it a secret in your head) gets a prize, in my case, a token. The trick is, everyone keeps picking up scraps until the floor is clean and then you announce the winner. 

I've never seen my floor get picked up so fast. As soon as the words left my mouth, immediate frantic scurrying. We might need to make that game a weekly occurrence...

Even though it wasn't a normal bell day, the 6-8th graders practiced. It went much better and we could all hear the melody most of the time. I decided to scrap the hard song and only focus on the easy one. 

Our first Friday of Reading Buddies was today. It was a hit with both the 1-2nd graders and my class. The littles go to recess right afterwards, and as they got in line to leave, I heard some of them say, "That was the best thing ever! It was so fun! Do we get to do this again?" Woohoo! Some years, reading buddies hasn't gone over well, but this year's class loved it when they were in 1-2nd and I know they were looking forward to being the 'big kid' buddies. A positive attitude goes a long way! Plus this class generally likes to read, especially picture books. 

Bells

Gah, it's only the first day practicing handbells and I already want to pull my hair out. Part of the problem is that I didn't pay close enough attention to the time signature of the second song, and it's in 3/2 time... that means six beats per measure. Normally we'd figure that out with limited problems, buuuut, two of the 6th graders didn't do much music last year and the other two had NO music last year and have never played bells before. Sigh. Trying to bridge the gap in skill levels was pretty tricky. 

Practice is always loud and chaotic. I don't know how to make it better. But this class did really well with the 'no dinging the bells when we're not playing' rule and the 'stop playing when Miss H directs you to' rule. The 6th graders wanted to practice with just them, so we did music instead of STEM time this afternoon. That meant the 5th graders had to join in... the two who play piano caught on quick. The one who doesn't was in tears because she didn't get what was going on. But the 6th grader with the most music experience (bells and violin) took her under her wing and showed her what to do. It went okay. We have a lot of work to do before the 19th. Mrs. L suggested cancelling the strange time signature song, and that's not a bad idea. We'll get the other song prepped well and if we have time, then work on the 3/2 song.

To end on a high note, today was a GREAT book day. I did book commercials of the new additions to our library and my students took pretty much all of them to read. They got super excited about most of them. Sometimes three of the seven wanted to read the same book! So they all have plans for who gets to read the book next. I have no clue how they'll remember...

House Update

School was pretty typical today. The 5-6th graders had a great time planting their seeds (some of them germinated, others haven't but the kids didn't care and planted them anyway) and building their paper towers for STEM. The 3-5th graders had their first day of tone chimes and loved it (so did Mrs. L). 

After school I tackled my gigantic pile of papers and books. Now, my desk is mostly picked up and there are only two piles of books instead of three super tall towers. All in all, a successful day.

Today, Habitat is supposed to break ground on my house! After months of no word about the status, I thought they'd never start it. But the Gopher State people marked lines on Wednesday, and the dirt workers were scheduled to start today. I haven't driven past yet, but that's what Habitat told me. There will be an official 'groundbreaking ceremony' with me/my family/Pastor in a few weeks. Normally they do that the day they start, but no one wanted to hold up my house any more. Woohoo! Progress! Let's pray for a dry fall so they can get a lot done before the snow flies...

NaNos

Covid really threw my NaNo publishing plan for a loop. But FINALLY! I gave my students their NaNos from the past two years. I ordered them last May hoping they'd arrive before the end of school. They came two days too late. So I just hung onto them over the summer.

They loved their book covers, which was a relief because there were a few I wasn't sure about. 

The author of The Farmer wished I had found a picture with a green tractor instead of a red one. I pointed out that the red tractor in the picture was broken, so doesn't that make it okay? He said it did.

Emotional

Oh boy, today was full of emotions... mostly frustration. A student had to quarantine today because a family member had covid. I sent her supplies for the day home prior to school starting so she could tune in via Teams, but then found out her username and password didn't work even though the IT guys reset it yesterday. 

After calling and texting them, the IT guys told me a different password to try. Didn't work. Again, a long response time (meanwhile I'm trying to teach the rest of the class). IT guys finally got back to me with a temporary fix. Thankfully that worked. However, three of my seven students don't have computer access due to faulty passwords. Gah! Why can't everything just work!

My students were frustrated for other reasons. Two were in tears today: one couldn't find 1 John during religion class, the other didn't like the nicknames his classmates called him on the playground. 

Sigh. I'm ready for the weekend. Thankfully, this was our last day of school this week! 

Spending Money

Our school had $3400 to spend on science/music/social emotional supplemental materials (from Title IV money from the past three years). The catch is, it has to be ordered through the public school and the money has to be spent before Sept. 30th. At least, that's what I thought. Yesterday I found out we had to turn our ideas in by today, Sept. 1st. Thankfully, I'm a quick thinker. 😉

Yesterday I went through Nasco's science website and saved a bunch of kits, earth science kits, and physical science kits, plus a few science models that would be nice to have but aren't necessary (hence why I haven't bought them yet). I thought that would get us pretty close to the $3000 mark, but I only spent $1000. So this afternoon while my kids worked on art, I searched for STEM building things: Legos, Zoob, Kiva structures, magnatiles, magnetic building sets, ball and stick building sets. So many cool things. 

I turned it in to Mr. E at the end of the day and... he said we were already at $3000 before I sent the new stuff! I estimated the new things would be around $500-1000, so not enough money for everything. But now I was excited about the new building things I discovered. So I quick went over my list from yesterday and cut out things I was kind of 'meh' about or things that wouldn't get used much. I think I got it down to budget. When I typed the list, I put them in high-low priority and grouped them by website to help calculate shipping. 

The other drama of the day is volleyball. We have few girls in 5-8th grade. If they all played, we'd have enough for a team plus a sub. However, one girl is playing volleyball at Nicollet and one of my 5th graders decided not to play. Cue everyone trying to convince her to join. Sigh. Mr. E said we weren't going to have a team if there weren't six players. Sigh. Even more pressure on this girl. She's pretty stubborn though; even so, I didn't want her to feel bad. I told the class I'd convince Mr. E that we could have a team even with five players and we shouldn't force this girl to play when she definitely doesn't want to. I think the problem is solved now. Our coach (a parent) is fine with only having five players and in the past we've played teams with few players, so it should work out okay. They had their first practice today and judging by the sounds from the gym, it was a success! It's a good thing I keep an extra pair of socks and kneepads at school... two girls forgot volleyball stuff at home.