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!