Lego Maze

Finally Friday. Whew. And only two days next week! 

We had some fun joint activities with other classrooms today. As usual, we did reading buddies with the 1-2nd graders. This afternoon we did STEM time with the kindergarteners. 

Their task was to build a maze for a marble out of Legos. Some groups got more into it than others, but everyone completed the challenge. I didn't have many Lego bases (flat for ease of building), so we had to get creative with the supplies we had. A few groups stuck smaller flat pieces together to make a bigger base. A few groups made double decker mazes or covered mazes. A bunch created towers in corners of their mazes. And a couple used arches to build tunnels for the marble to go through. The groups that finished early kept building and tweaking their mazes, or they gave up and made something else. They were all proud to show off their creations! 

Quick

My bell players are playing the endings of our songs quick. Too quick. I keep trying to slow them down, but they won't do it!

We had a highly productive morning in 5-6th grade. The boys have been making podcasts lately and go out to the coatroom to record so they don't pick up the rest of the class's noise. I'm skeptical of how much work is being done, so we had a meeting to talk about how to prove that things are accomplished. The plan is for them to make a podcast plan before getting to film each episode. 

The girls want to start a podcast too, so we had a meeting and talked about much the same. Their topic will be what's happening at school, what people are learning, favorite subjects, etc. Great plan! 

Softball

It was chilly today, but we went outside for both recesses, no fussing! Most of them are hopped up on the excitement of softball. I ate my salad at the picnic table outside next to the giant snow hill while wearing my mittens. If I hadn't left my mittens on, my hands would've frozen. 😉

Second recess I pitched wearing mittens. Well, one hand wore a mitten (the tossing hand). The other hand had a glove within a glove. I stayed decently warm that way. My pitches could've been better, but such is life. My kids were okay with me trying to stay warm. They knew I was their best option for consistent pitches, regardless of the mittens effecting pitching quality! 

The rest of the day was pretty good. No major meltdowns, no major fights. The boy who had been so rude yesterday apologized and had a quiet day. Most of the late homework kids got their names off the board... all but two. 

I sorted through a few shelves of my teacher bookshelf and have a big stack of things to go home (things I won't use anymore this year). After school I've gotten a bunch of computer things finished. Still a big pile of papers to correct... can't seem to get away from those. I get caught up and then there's a new batch of spelling to correct!

Tuesday Already?

No school yesterday because of the end of the quarter. I finished my report cards, ran errands in Mankato, and G and I spent time sorting through things in our Mankato house to prep for renovations. It was a good day off. 

My kids were back in full force today... lots of attitude, but no physical altercations thankfully.

I spent the day trying to track down their missing work. Ugh. 5th grade music. Our piano teacher teaches them and said some of them haven't handed in a single homework sheet all quarter. When I asked, all four had blank stares. "She never gave us anything!" Yes she did, I was in the room (I should've written a note to remind them to do it right away 🤦‍♀️). Two of them found their papers. The other two admitted to throwing them away last week. Ugh!!!

She reprinted them and I wouldn't let those two see their report cards until their homework was done. Now I gotta crack the whip on spelling... Their workbook page is normally due Monday, but with the day off, it was due today and they needed to do their test too. Most of them forgot to do it over the weekend and didn't have time to do both during their rounds. Sigh. And then the 5th graders forgot to do it during their math study hall time. Sigh again. 

Two highlights from today: noon recess outside. They fought me on going out until I pulled the "I'm the teacher and I decide where recess is and if you want to choose you become a teacher" card. One 8th grader asked why I wanted to go outside for recess when it was so cold, and I said, "Because it's sunny and I want fresh air." And he didn't argue! They ended up playing softball and having a blast. 

It's my day for latchkey after school, and the girl's are playing dance competition. They have music from my old purple iPad piped over the gym speakers and they're doing routines and taking turns judging each other. It's a pretty intricate game!

Mapping It Out

I had more prep time today than usual, which was pretty nice. It was Mrs. R's turn to host reading buddies, so I had a little time off in the morning. Then Mrs. E hosted game time in the kindergarten room and I got a half an hour to work! I spent it mapping out the rest of the year for science and social studies. 

There really isn't all that much time left of school... one week left of March (and no school Monday because it's the end of the quarter). April has four days off for Easter break plus a BINGO field trip at the nursing home and a field trip to see the MLC play. Then we're in May with our many activities... Talent Show, Track and Field Day, Caswell Softball Day, and the trip to the farm/Jeffers Petroglyphs combo. And hopefully a canoe trip thrown in there as well. 

Even with all those extra activities, I'm sitting very good with getting all the topics covered I want to get covered. We might even be ahead a little in MN history! I have a project in mind to do to use our possible 'extra' time: let each kid pick an era of history they want to learn more about, then do a project on it. Can be whatever project they want it to be; they just need to present their information in some way/shape/form. I hope we have a chance to do it!

Egg Car Lab

Today was a pretty good day up until the end. 

We served 61 people last night and brought in over $400! That's a record for us! Lots of people came at the middle of the serving time, so I got pretty nervous at 5:50 when we were down to just one small corner of the roaster pan. Not too many came after that, so at 6:05 I let the kids eat. A lot of them took soup. Still, we had only about one pan of egg bake scraps left at the end. The rest of our groceries were pretty spot on too. Not too much milk leftover, just a few pieces of sweet bread, one 9x13 pan of fruit (oranges and a few grapes). My kids did a great job prepping, serving, and cleaning. Everyone pitched in and found things to do. They were all willing helpers!

My students ate off the leftover fruit from our Lenten meal for snack today and we had a nice morning working on our daily tasks. The boys are still on their podcast kick. Every day they make a new episode, most of the time featuring a taste test of sorts. Then they upload it and obsess over how many views and subscribers they have. Two and one. But that doesn't faze them!

Bell practice went fantastic. We ran through the three songs we have left and even without that much practice, they sound amazing. They are all victory lap songs with lots of running notes and cords and just a whole lot of joyful ringing. It's pretty great. We have one student out with a long-term illness and we're not sure when she'll be back, so I've found 'volunteers' to play her parts for these songs if she's not back to play them. No one has fussed too much about getting an extra part and they've picked up those notes pretty quickly.

My 5-6th graders ended the day with a physics/STEM challenge: build a car that can carry an egg down a ramp with a one meter high incline. If the egg breaks, you fail. They're all pretty excited about it. Making groups was the tough part. I had some eyes closed voting to see preferences and there was one student who didn't speak up when I misread her voting. The boys had some mixups in partners too, but they worked it out without any hard feelings (that I could detect). This girl though, she blew up at me and was quite rude while I tried to calmly talk through the situation with her. 

It's exhausting, dealing with situations like those, where you need to be the calm one and figure out what to say to help the student learn how to handle future situations better and at the same time fix the one you're currently in without breaking the relationship you do have all the while hoping that you're taking care of it in a way that doesn't involve the rest of the class who are no doubt listening in to see what you will do, even if you try to have the conversation in a private way. So. That's how my day ended. School day, anyway. 

After school G and I have a meeting with the Nicollet County foster care social worker to do a home inspection and talk about next steps in becoming foster respite care givers! The rest of the night is open after that. A minor miracle! I sent out our Marriagewarming party invitations yesterday/this morning, so I feel a huge weight off my chest. Maybe after correcting, I can actually read a book!

Lenten Meal

The 7-8th graders did a lab today. I'd say it was a fun lab, but I'm not sure how much fun they had. We made a model of a kidney filtering blood. Cups with beads and water poured into a bowl with a screen over the top. Then we used spoons to move beads back into the cups to show the blood components moving back into the blood stream. It was a lot of work to prep! But it got the point across.

My students were crabby today. I tried not to join them. 

Now they're bouncing off the walls in the classroom waiting for me to finish enough stuff for tomorrow so they can go in the gym for a while. We're serving the Lenten meal tonight and spent the first 45min after school prepping things at church. 

I left two boys over there to watch the last three egg bakes in the oven (with my cell number and a lot of instructions), and the rest of us have been at school. I had to abandon them for 10 minutes halfway through when the egg bake boys had a question if the pans were cooked. Yes, they were. 

Everything looks and smells delicious! Hopefully we have a good turnout!

Late Night

Yesterday was a full day. School was pretty good, and so was after school. It just felt long. 

Tuesday is my day for afterschool care, and nine squirrely preK-2nd graders hung out in my classroom and the gym until 5pm. Lots of "Mrs. H, look!" I did get all my papers corrected though, so that's a plus. 

After that, I got some things done in my classroom and then zipped over to church in time for the PTL meeting. Normally we meet at school, but this time we sat around tables at church and Pastor did a hymn study. It was very nice to meet like that. Everyone was calm and cheerful. The meeting was long, but we accomplished a lot. Many of the tasks were prepping for next year and picking out people to take over the things I've been doing for the past 11 years. Another bittersweet moment. Our meeting ended around 7:35, but I had a few people to talk to afterwards, so I made it home a little before 8pm. And completely forgot about writing my blog for the day. 😅

Egg Bakes

My class serves the Lenten meal on Wednesday. In an effor to keep it simple, we're keeping the menu roughly the same as last year: egg bakes, fruit, breakfast breads, corn (leftover from a PTL meal). And chicken noodle soup if you don't like egg bakes. 

As per usual, my class stayed after school today to do the baking. Man, we had a blast. It was loud and crazy, but everyone had something to do. They all chipped in and were willing helpers. Many of them were proud to be trusted with chopping vegetables, measuring ingredients, browning hamburger, and cracking eggs. It was awesome. It took about fifteen minutes to get started. We finished mixing things up in about a half an hour. Then with clean-up, we wrapped up about 3:50pm. I had told parents to pick them up around 4pm. 

We had a bunch of leftover peppers, onions, mushrooms, cheese, and hashbrowns. I had the sudden lightbulb we should mix them all together into a hash as a snack. Not an original idea, I'm afraid. I've been reading a book called Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms and one of the stories the author tells is an observation he made of a home ec classroom in Finland. The teacher reserves time at the end for the students to enjoy the fruits of their labors; they work hard together and then relax together. So, that scene popped into my head as we discovered all our extra ingredients.

One of the 6th graders volunteered to cook it. One 5th grader volunteered to cook the mushrooms separately since not everyone likes mushrooms. Later he said, "I don't like mushrooms, but I think I'll actually try these." He said they tasted mushroomy. We also left the butter and cheese out until the very end so our dairy-free classmate could have some. 

Another student prepped plates and forks. Finally, time to eat! My kids gushed over it. "We had all these random ingredients left, and we threw them all together, and they tasted great!" We all sat together at one of the tables in the church fellowship hall and enjoyed our afternoon accomplishments. Sigh. It's moments like these that make all the tough days worth it.

Cowboy vs. Alien Day

I was going to be an alien today and wear all green (in light of St. Patrick's Day), but I couldn't figure out how to make alien eyeballs super fast, so I went with the good ol' cowgirl standby: jeans, plaid button up shirt, two braids (with green ponytail holders), boots, and a green bandana. School also had a ton of cowboys and girls. There were a few aliens though! 

We had a two hour late start today, just for New Ulm though, so it was a pretty lazy day. I had to be to school at the normal time to meet the Nicollet bus kids. I had exactly half my class at 8am. In preparation for them, I'd made a big list on the board of things they could do. They were pretty good about quietly working on stuff. I got a bunch of things done myself. A few kids figured out how to use their library cards to check out audiobooks, then listened while doing art. 

We tucked reading buddies into our worktime, and once the rest of the school arrived, we did devotions in Mr. E's room. After that my class had read-aloud (they fussed because I didn't give them snack time... guys, lunch is in 40min!) and two Daily 5 rounds (more fussing because my two Friday students didn't want to meet with me... "Can't we just meet on Monday?"). Lunch, recess, math, a little extra recess, then BINGO! 

That was a blast. We used leftover candy from basketball concessions and let there be 5-7 winners per card. I think everyone won at least one time. Granted, towards the end only raisins and cheetos were left. The last few kids rushed down to the prize table, went to snatch a prize, realized it was a box of raisins, and then drew their hands back wondering if they actually wanted to take them. 

We gave away the last prize just in time to send them all home on the bus. Whew! What a whirlwind week, complete with whirling winds! The wind is still howling outside. G and I are heading to Fulda later this afternoon. The roads look pretty good up to St. James; after that looks more snow covered. Pray for safe travels for us!

Duct Tape Day

I made my outfit for the day at school. Three colors of duct tape in my desk (leftover from bottle rockets at Camp Omega), three lines of tape on each leg. Perfect. Others definitely went more all out... we had full on duct tape shirts, skirts, hats, shoes, stripes on pants... Mrs. R made a duct tape tie for Mr. E. We were a stylish bunch!

Our festivities got cut short today. New Ulm called off school early because of the storm, so they went home at 12:45. Nicollet never did call school off, so the rest of us stayed til the end of the day. Some trickled home little by little as parents picked them up throughout the afternoon. It's a bummer because I had a guest speaker lined up. This one is a 28 year old student in his first semester at MLC on the pastor track. He had previously been in the air force for six years and spent time in Saudi Arabia as a translator (he's fluent in Arabic). The kids who heard him enjoyed his presentation!

The rest of the afternoon was pretty low key. Our all-school activity was a puzzle contest. Mrs. R got multiple copies of the same puzzle and divided whoever was left into groups. We had five groups of four participating plus some preschoolers working on their own easier puzzles. One group only had three, so I joined them after a while. Normally I'm not a puzzler, but I actually had a lot of fun! My group got third place and finished just in time for the bus. 

The Nicollet bus driver must've been in a hurry to get on the road, because she left before all the kids were outside! Three students didn't make it out before she drove off. One of my students began to bawl. Not that many people were on the bus, so we didn't even have anyone on the bus with a phone to call besides the driver. Mr. E tried calling her, but she didn't answer. Thankfully, either someone told her she was missing kids or she realized it; she came back and got our leftovers. Whew! 

Now it's time for me to make my way home... I've been putting it off. It's gross out there and I don't think it's going to get worse, so I might as well stay put and get things done in my room. There are lulls every once in a while; I might leave during one of them. Or right after the plow goes by. 

In the meantime, I cleaned out one of the baskets on my desk, kind of a catchall for loose papers, notes with ideas for later, things I want to look up, teaching hints. I've accumulated a lot of thoughts after 10.5 years. It's bittersweet looking through them; I've put a lot of time and effort into my profession. Some notes are ideas I never pursued and don't care to anymore; those are easy to discard. Some are things I'm still curious about. I have to decide if they are things future 5-6th grade teachers will find valuable and if so, where to put them so they are easy to find and use. But those are thoughts for another time. Time for me to go home!

Class Color Day

My outfit definitely matched my class colors, but it won't win any fashion awards... Camo skinny jeans borrowed from a sister and a red tunic with holes cut out of the sleeves. 

I did some announcing at Family Day and I wonder if I should've made an announcement about our strange attire. 😅 

Family Day was a smashing success. We had over 160 people for the day. Our guest pastor smashed chapel out of the ball park. He was funny, charismatic, and engaging. He had some audience members act out a bible story pretending they were flannel graph characters. Pastor B was David, our tallest student was King Saul, and three other kids were David's mighty warriors. It was the story of David and his men hiding in the cave while Saul, ahem, took care of business. 

After chapel we had time for a few Fine Arts Fair presenters before lunch. Then after lunch we had the RAD zoo talk, which is a reptile discovery zoo type thing. The guy didn't want to use a mic, so it was a little hard to hear him. He showed kids a gecko, bearded dragon, corn snake, another kind of snake, boa constrictor, a couple varieties of tortoises, and a small alligator. Once the snakes came out our 1-2nd grade teacher went to 'help' in the kitchen. She's terrified of snakes. A few of the kids got scared too, especially when the alligator came out. 

He went long, and we still had over half the Fine Arts Fair kids to go, so we didn't wrap up until about 1:40. Oof. There went my afternoon plans... oh well. To be expected. We spent the rest of the school day taking down tables and chairs and then went outside for recess. 

Holy cow, yesterday's outdoor recess did wonders for my class, either that or this is the calm before the storm (we're supposed to get another snowstorm with high winds tomorrow, unless it all comes as rain). They were so much calmer today! We had a super productive, quiet morning up until chapel. I couldn't believe it. Thank you God for answering prayers! 

Tropical Tuesday

I wore a dollar bag day find to school today, a bright orange floral accordion-style shirt made in Hawaii (I originally thought it was a skirt). Pretty basic compared to others. I should've added my floppy sun hat and/or some flower leis. Oh well. Basic is okay. 

Some kids wore swimsuits or swimsuit coverups over their clothes. A few others were in tank tops, shorts, and flip flops. My class of complainers commented we picked the worst day ever to have all-school outdoor recess/snow sculpture making. Well, they were warned to bring winter gear. 

My second day of super keen observance went pretty well again. Things were a little less tense, except for the group playing basketball at recess. Ugh. They love to shove each other. The hard part is I can't tell if it's an accident or on purpose. So a few kids had to run laps. But probably more should've. 

Mr. E and I met with a set of parents after school to talk about Friday's incident. It went well. It was nice to have had two good days at school to report about. We left the meeting feeling positive about our plan moving forward. 

The big drama of the day was in setting up the gym for family day tomorrow. We have over 160 visitors joining us for chapel, lunch, and entertainment. Lots of tables to set up! Mr. E thought a parent was coming at 1pm with a pickup to truck tables and chairs over from church. So I switched my whole class schedule with the 7-8th graders around so we would be free to help. And we cancelled PE. She didn't show up until 2pm, right when we were supposed to have outdoor recess. Great. Up until that point we made good progress setting up the tables and chairs we did have at school. But they were all ready for recess at 2:00.

So they got bucky when we made them help unload. "I already helped enough. Make someone else do it!" If they would all chip in and do it without complaining, they'd be done in no time! One 8th grader flat out refused to help anymore, both to me and to Mr. E. Whew, rarely have I seen Mr. E that mad. His parents got a call after school. 

Spring fever is definitely going around. Let's pray the weather gets nicer so we can go outside more often!

Crackdown (and I am a C Day)

I was a woman with a new mission today... don't give my kids any unsupervised time AT ALL all day. I got to school early, did my errands before any kids were around, stayed in the classroom before school, went with them for their brain break in the gym, walked with them down to lunch, we all went out to recess at the same time. Any shoving resulted in running a lap. I did slip off to go to the bathroom twice. But we didn't have any blowups or dustups or any other kind of ups. Whew. I'm exhausted from being on guard all day; I hope I can maintain this level of attentiveness.

To end on a happier note, today was day one of Lutheran Schools Week. We started with "I am a C Day" where you dress up as anything starting with the letter C. We had lots of cats and chefs. I dressed as a Croatian cook and wore my soccer jersey and an apron. There were a few clowns, a coach, a champion, lots of christians, one cupcake and a captain. 

Our all school activity was to decorate bags for Meals on Wheels recipients. They had more fun than I thought they would! Some brought computers or bibles to the gym to look up encouraging passages. Some drew tractors or flowers or rainbows or just abstract patterns. We probably decorated over 60 bags! 

Testing Boundaries

Ugh... this day did not start out well. My errands before school were going to be short until Mr. E pulled me into the office to talk about Fine Arts Fair. Turns out MLHS was thinking about cancelling the event because of the possible weather Saturday morning. They were going to decide by 6pm tonight. So, I had to think about what to do about bells. Bring them home with me in case we had the fair? Or leave them at church so they're ready to go Sunday morning? Decisions, decisions. Either way, the bells had to be in my car, so I had my kids load them up. They don't fit in a little red car as well as they fit in my Escape. 

When I finally got back to the classroom, a 5th grade boy was on his way out, face red and puffy from tears. Oh boy, now what? Long story short, every single boy in my classroom was involved in the incident. The crying kid had started it with inappropriate jokes/teasing, a classmate decided not to put up with it and shoved him. The two 6th grade boys grabbed PVC pipes they had been using in STEM and wacked him with them to get him to stop. The other 5th grade boy grabbed a sweatshirt out of crying boy's crate and wouldn't give it back. The girls sat and watched it all. 

All this I figured out in bits and pieces by pulling each boy out into the coat room one at a time, sometimes more than once, trying to get to the bottom of it. UGH! The truth came out slowly. Consequences were each of them had to write an apology note to the appropriate person, I checked it, then they read it out loud in front of the class. They all missed recess and had to spend it in Mr. E's room. He had a chat with them too. Their homework is to tell their parents about it and I'm going to check in with parents Saturday morning. Sigh. What a day. 

We all needed a reset after that. So we put our heads down for 30 seconds and then began our day a half an hour later than expected. 

The rest of the day went much better. At lunch the boys talked again and agreed their tempers had gotten the better of them and they overreacted to the morning's situation. They had all been joking around and really the PVC hitters had only been tapping, not full on hitting. Still not okay. Mr. E, Mrs. R, and I came up with a community service idea if it happens again. Next time, the perpetrator will do lunch dishes or mop the gym or clean the bleachers. Hopefully it won't come to that. 

In the afternoon, we all gathered for Fine Arts Fair dress rehearsal. The kids did great introducing themselves, playing piano/singing/reading their dramatic readings. We talked about the plan for Saturday and Sunday (we also sing and play bells for church Sunday) and had a little time for recess afterwards. As the kids went to recess, Mr. E caught me. The principals down by Northrop decided to cancel the Fine Arts Fair. Man! It was a high and low for many of my students today. Our piano teacher came up with the idea to have kids do their pieces next Wednesday on Family Day for the guests in between chapel and our meal. What a great idea! At least then they'd be able to perform for some sort of audience and all their hard work won't go to waste. 

Update

I feel very drained today. Even though I didn't do much yesterday, I think the residual stress is lingering. Hopefully a peaceful night at home will help. 

K sent me the link to a baby cam Rochester has for parents with babies in the NICU. Log in and see the baby any time! Seems like both mom and baby are doing well. 

One night off of school work and I'm feeling super behind. Midterms, Fine Arts Fair, correcting papers, Lutheran Schools Week next week... Pray for recovery for K's family and productivity for me!

Baseball and Baby

Thursday was actually a pretty good day at school. My kids were fairly calm all day and we ended with a fun game of baseball in the gym. I pitched. One kid fussed about everything, but a classmate (one of his friends) told him to knock it off because it was slowing down the game. So eventually he quit. 

G and I were going to go to St. Mark for church, but our plans got derailed... He's fighting off a bad cold, so he dropped food off for others to serve (he was one of the council members in charge of the dinner this Wednesday) and went home to rest. I got a call from my friend K, a college friend with a baby due mid-May. She was in the hospital fully dilated, baby was coming breech, husband was piloting somewhere, and she was going in for emergency c-section. Could I come to the hospital? 

So I dropped everything and zoomed to Mankato. The Mankato hospital is a maze, but I found my way up to her room and suited up in a blue hairnet and disposable scrubs. The nurses were prepping her for surgery and took her to the operating room shortly after I arrived. Before she left, she asked me to be godmother. Of course! I was put in charge of updating husband and family until her anesthesia finalized and then I could go in the room. 

Mostly, I stayed behind the curtain at K's head and talked to her/held her arm/prayed. Every once in a while I'd pop up to see beyond the curtain how things were going. In a few short minutes, baby Ella was born! Nurses whisked her off for check-up since she's two months premature. K got sewn back up no problems, and baby is doing fine too. The main problem at two months early is there's no surfactant being produced in the lungs. Surfactant is what lets the surfaces slip and slide past each other without sticking. So baby can breath, it's just really difficult until she can produce surfactant on her own. They hooked her up to a breathing tube right away and said she was doing really well with oxygen levels. 

Mankato isn't staffed for an intensive NICU; they only keep babies over 34 weeks. Anything under gets sent to Rochester. So little Ella got prepped for transport that night. K decided to baptize in the hospital before she left. No pastor's answered her call, so I was on deck for doing the baptism. Thankfully, the pastor who married her texted that he had literally just arrived in Mankato (back from CA) and could be over in 10 minutes. Right after that we got word the baby was coming down to K's room to say goodbye before leaving. We asked if they could stall ten minutes. The staff was hesitant, but they had to go over paperwork, which wrapped up right as the pastor came to the door. Whew! God's timing is perfect! 

He did the baptism, said a prayer, and did a devotion for us after baby left. (K's sister-in-law had also come down from the Cities to be with us). G came back to town to clean up the lenten meal and brought me some supper. I ended up leaving the hospital around 8pm after visiting hours ended. K was doing well, her husband would arrive sometime around 11pm. 

What a day! 

YWAC

Young Writers and Artists Conference was today, finally. Students signed up for individual classes mid-January and have waited until now to attend them. It's one of our favorite field trips... kids pick from a list which three classes to attend, all focusing on various art, theater, and writing topics. The day of the trip they get to walk around Bethany's campus, attending their classes just like real college students. They have to figure out which room and building to go to and find their way back to the gym for lunch. 

We always have plenty of chaperones attending. Today's all clumped together for the main speaker. Normally not too much of a problem, but this year's kiddos tend to react when in small spaces. And all the instigators clumped together. I should've sorted them out as soon as I noticed, but I'm all about giving people second chances. How else can they rise to the occasion? Unfortunately, they did not do well together. 

Short version: an 8th grader leaned against a 6th grader. He couldn't move his feet and one of them poked a 6th grade girl in the back. She asked him to move but he didn't tell her he wasn't able to, so she turned around and jabbed his feet with a pen. The other 6th grade boy kicked her in the back to get her to stop. Then she stood up and yelled to me (in the middle of the presentation) to get him to stop/move/etc. Sigh. The only positive thing is that all the other schools' students were being loud at that point, so I don't think anyone noticed. Or very few did. 

So I called the 6th grader to come down by me. He didn't move. We had a staredown for at least a minute, maybe two. Finally, after I made the 8th grader scoot over to make room, this 6th grader joined me on my bench, complaining all the while. Ugh. He wanted to argue right away but I told him we would talk after the main speaker. And that's when we got to the bottom of all of this.

Thankfully, the rest of the day went much smoother. All the kids found their classes. They enjoyed the topics for the most part. I helped a bunch of kids with their embroidery in one of the sessions. Two 7th graders from our school were in the class, but they pretty much had it figured out. I ended up working with four kids from another school. It was fun. I had a lot of flashbacks to when my mom taught my sisters and me how to sew. 

We ended our day with recess in the gym to burn off our energy. Not a bad way for me to come back from vacation!

Arizona was lovely. It was a little chilly Saturday, but Sunday and Monday were sunny and balmy. G and I had some nice family time with his siblings and parents. We went on a few hikes, one for a sunrise view and the other around the town's fountain park and a ridge overlook. Our flight home landed a bit earlier than expected. We braved the MN cold and made it home around 12:15am. Short night of sleep! Hopefully we can recuperate a little more this week before another busy weekend... Fine Arts Festival is coming...

Movie and Pie

I escaped pie in the face! I'm extra thankful this year since I'm heading to the airport after school today... G's family is all down in Arizona and I'm off to join them for the weekend. I took Monday off school to make the flight more worthwhile and G will fly back with me. He went down a week earlier to spend time with his aunt and help her move to a different condo. 

My kids were crazy this morning because of all the fun stuff we had planned for the afternoon. Since we met our reading goal, we got to watch a movie in the afternoon. The 1-2nd graders did a basketball shootout vs. the teachers for five minutes. We had to stand at the freethrow line, but they could move up. They also had the choice of using a shorter basket. We were neck and neck for the first two minutes, then the 1-2nd graders pulled ahead. They beat us by six baskets! I made three and almost made a ton more. One basket swooped down into the rim and rolled out! Ugh! So close! Mr. E said if we had had one more minute we could've had them!

Halfway through the movie, we paused for an intermission to announce the winners of the pledge drive and our top readers. The top two readers read over 4000 minutes! Two of the top three chose to pie Mrs. R, who wore a special shirt decorated to say "Bring it On" in anticipation of getting pied. The top reader, a 7th grader, chose to pie Mr. E. She pied him last year too. He was not happy about it, but he did it anyway, and then went straight home to clean up. 

We finished the afternoon with popcorn and the last half of the movie, Now You See Him Now You Don't. I got all my correcting finished and even some grades entered! With the snow days last week, we missed sending out midterms. Oops. Better get them out next week. 

Now I have everything set and ready to go for Mrs. O on Monday, the classroom is fairly tidy, and things are reset for next week. Woohoo! And I'm off!

Long Day

Boy, lots of stuff going on after school today. 

First, I was in charge of latchkey until the high school worker could get here. While I did that, Mr. D and I mapped out car seats for Tuesday's field trip (since I won't be at school Monday). Afterwards, the Immanuelites and Men's Club served us supper before our staff meeting. And finally after that I could get my normal school work done and prep for being gone on Monday.

This time of year is always crazy... lots of moving parts to make sure work together... Fine Arts Fair is next Saturday, but the art projects have to get dropped off on Tuesday. Since I'm gone Monday, I want all my class's art to be ready to go by the end of Friday so my sub doesn't have to mess with it. Unfortunately, I have a few pokey puppies who will be wrapping their art up on Monday. Or maybe even Tuesday morning. 

The week after Fine Arts Fair is when we're celebrating Lutheran School's Week. Even more moving parts for that! Throw in a church youth group activity for good measure. Then, the week after that my class serves the Lenten meal. Whew. Can I keep my head on straight?

GOOOOAL!

We met our reading goal! Woohoo! We read almost double our school goal for the month of February! Goal was 29,000, actual total was 50,000 plus a few minutes. Wowza. 

So, that means we get to watch a movie on Friday afternoon. The class that read the most minutes per student gets to do a basketball shootout vs. the teachers. (I can't say which class that was because we haven't announced the winners yet). The top five readers get a book gift certificate and the top three readers get to pie a teacher. 

It's incredible how much reading our kiddos have done. We had eight people read over 2000 minutes in February! The top two readers were in the 4000 minute range. Only a few teachers turned in minutes, but I know we were all reading. It's been a fun month, but I will say, I am glad we don't need to log our time anymore...