Last Day

My kids were out of sorts today. It wasn't a horrible day, but they were hard to settle again and back to their old name-calling shenanigans. And complaining. Good thing it's the last day.

I ended up doing a balloon thing of sorts... Instead of writing our schedule on the board, I put our "last day of school to-dos" on slips of paper inside balloons with the amount of minutes they would take on the outside. Each kid popped one balloon.

Book Launch Party- 10min- They were excited to unwrap their NaNos. They loved the covers, but the back page... Complaints about the pictures I used as their author picture. One kid even threw his in the trash because he didn't want his picture on the back. We ended up putting a sticker over his face and then he was okay with keeping it. 

Daily 5 Rounds- 1h- I met with six students this morning to wrap up their reading. It went quick. They were pretty settled during that hour and quite a few read a bunch trying to finish reading their books before school got out. We had a class 'garage sale' where they could spend tokens they'd earned on prizes from the prize box. I got rid of quite a few items that way! And re-collected a bunch of tokens. I think a bunch went home in crates and backpacks... Their clean-up was not very clean. Lots of stuff shoved in wherever it would fit. Pretty typical of this class! 

Pinatas- 30min- Instead of hanging them by string that always breaks, we just hit them with baseball bats. 

Religion- 30min- We finished the bible but skimmed/summarized pretty much everything after Jesus rose from the dead. Bummer, because there's a lot of good stories in Acts.

Snack/Read Aloud- 30min- We didn't finish our read aloud, but no one cried about it. I had written that this had to be a morning activity on the outside of the balloon to ensure we'd have snack this morning, but they ended up popping it the half an hour before lunch. Oh well. 

Time Capsules- 10min- They loved looking through the things they put in there! Their pictures from the first day of school got a big reaction. Those were the pictures I used as their author pictures on their NaNos. The other big item was the string that was the height they were at the beginning of the year. A lot were surprised by how they grew! One girl must've held her string loose when she cut it because according to the string, she actually shrunk!

Lunch/Recess- 1h-ish- Indoors because it was cold. I had four kids staying in to study memory work. There was a shoe incident that involved a 4th and 6th grader throwing a 7th grader's shoes around the gym (before I got out to the gym of course). Sigh. They found one shoe, but not the other. She had to call her mom to bring an extra pair of shoes to wear home.

Science Lab- 30min- We made electromagnets! They wrapped wire around a giant nail, hooked the wire to a battery, and tested how many paper clips it could carry.

Clean Out Desks/Crates- 30min- This ended up being 10min because we went on a hunt for the missing shoe. No luck. We had to end early so we could get over to church by 1:30 for closing chapel.

Chapel ended at 2:10 and the kids who got their desks done already went to recess with the preschoolers. The others continued to clean. I had a few kids who used paint pens on their desks. That was a bugger to get off. The longer it had been on the desk, the harder it was to get off. I knew it would happen, but the kids didn't listen to me months ago when they decided to draw on their desks. A lot of elbow grease went in to scraping that stuff off.

After school, I spent my time entering grades, listening to memory work, and filling out report cards. I got them done with 10 minutes to spare! Then came the potluck (I brought a super juicy watermelon and cheerio bars). Then came the awards night. They honored me for my 11 years of teaching with a few pieces of chocolate cake, special cake from Lola's. They wanted to get a big cake, but two cake places said they didn't have time because of graduation cake, so PTL decided to go small and easy. After that came the carnival. I stood around talking to people awhile; it was nice to visit. Now it's time to pack up Joe and head home for a good night of sleep before our wedding celebration tomorrow!

Egg update: Nothing hatching in the incubator.

T Minus One

Caswell Softball Day= we took 3rd place! Total: we won three and lost two. I pitched all five games. 

My glove is the one my dad had when he was a kid, so it has lived a long life. Some of the strings holding it together are brittle, and today they finally bit the dust. A few of them broke, so the catching part of the glove began to split apart. I still pitched all my games with it! But I'd say it's time to retire. 

T Minus Two

Still no ducklings. There's still time though. We're giving up on the chicken eggs; I think I'll unplug the incubator before I go home tonight.

Today was another mostly okay day. We had read-aloud all morning, but they got a little antsy after a while. I gave them brain breaks and we did some chunks outside, but man, they were hard to focus outside. I ended up bring them in early. Still, they were mostly productive this morning. All the piñatas are finished! A few got math or handwriting finished. A few worked on crossword puzzles or drew pictures. 

We started a new book, The Unteachables by Gordon Korman. One kid complained that we only read Gordon Korman books and he wanted something different. Actually, we've read 12 books this year not counting this one, and of those, only four are by Gordon Korman. But they have been back to back. I don't think we'll finish this book by the last day of school. I tried to skip over irrelevant sentences to make it read faster, but there's only so much I can do. We made it about a third of the way through reading all morning. 

The kindergarten class had their celebration (aka graduation) over at church this afternoon. Mr. D went over to help, so I was going to supervise his class at recess. Mr. E normally does PE for K-3 at that time while his kids do art, but their art teacher (Mrs. E) was running the graduation! We had a lot of kids and not many teachers to supervise. I suggested we have a massive game of kickball. And so we did!

It was really fun. Mr. E made teams, dividing kids by grades. I was all time pitcher and Mr. E all time ump. One of the parents arranged for an ice cream truck to come at the end of the day, so when it was time for that, Mr. E sent them over by grades while the rest of us kept playing. The teams stayed even! After everyone had gone through the line, we did all-school recess until the end of the day. 

Tomorrow is Caswell softball day. The weather is a little iffy over the noon hour, but hopefully we can get a few games in beforehand. Maybe it will pass quickly and we can play afterwards. Time will tell!

T Minus Three

We actually had a decent day today. I would even call it pleasant. Of course I had to deal with a few situations and general buckiness about late work and memory work, but they were minor and right away in the morning. 

They were probably tired from track and field. Or my schedule flopping worked. 

The half an hour after PE is often a battle, so I moved history to the morning, and let them pick what they wanted to do after PE. I wrote a list of what we needed to do on the board and then we voted what to do first. MN history won out ("Let's get the worst stuff over with!")

After that we did rounds and then pinata time. Ugh. Two groups were out of glue because of poor management of their resources. One group forgot to put the lid on and it dried up. The other group mixed food coloring in their glue, which made it runny and not sticky. Their consequence: do a job to get more glue. The kid who forgot to do the lid did a job right away. The kid who put the food coloring in refused to do a job saying he did a job already. Yeah, he 'wiped' the lab table off, but it's still dirty. I told him he had to do it again to earn more glue. So he said he would leave the pinata as is, only half done, even though it would be a bad grade. His poor partner eventually did a job to get more glue, while the first kid tried to use the food colored glue on the pinata anyway. 🙄 Sigh. 

T Minus Four- Track and Field

It was such a lovely day for Track and Field. Sunny, 71, with a slight breeze every now and then. 

As usual, I helped run the long jump pit. No hop step jump again this year. Man, that makes the day go much smoother and faster. We finished around 11:30 and had plenty of time for lunch. 

After that was the running events and relays. I usually help with the lining up or timing, but they had plenty of high school volunteers, so I mostly stood around and watched. 

We wrapped up the day by 1:45! I was in Mankato around 2:30 and started doing wedding errands. Still lots to be done before our party Saturday! 

T Minus Five

Boy, today was a tough day, but actually better than I expected. Rain was in the forecast for today. Not good for Track and Field Day in Fairmont. If it got cancelled, the rain date would be Monday and we'd have to go to school today. I got the message this morning that it was postponed due to rain. 

Fantastic. 

I had a room full of kids cranky about having to come to school. Some hadn't said their memory work yesterday and now needed to say it before they could go to recess. Others didn't do their math because they wouldn't have math until Monday. So. The start of school was rough. 

One kid got kicked out to work in the 1-2nd grade room for a half an hour because he was so disrespectful. He wouldn't leave the classroom, so I called for backup (his mom). I hated doing it, but our morning would've been so much worse had he stayed. Another student was on the edge of her worst behavior, so I had a chat with her before school started. Lots of attitude, but she turned it around and she had a good morning. Once the other student came back, he had a good morning too. 

The rest of the day had ups and downs. But I made it. They made it. We made it. Only five more days to go! And two of those are not in the classroom. We can do it! But keep the prayers coming.

My kids are adamant that the chicken eggs are still growing. I wanted to empty out that incubator, but they insisted that the eggs are alive and we should keep them in. So, they candled them all and picked out the ones they didn't think were growing. They took out four. We're going to crack them open to see what we can see. Our duck and goose eggs should hatch Sunday! I hope we have better luck with them.

Last night's talent show was a success. You can watch it here. Or you can just watch our teacher skit, which was the best act for sure. 😉 My kids did okay on their Amazing Caterpillar Show. 7-8th bells sounded good. Serving root beer floats went well too. We had a lot of ice cream leftover and a bunch of pop (we'll serve it at the spring carnival next Friday) and raised about $200 towards Camp Omega next year!

Hair Genius and Worm Rescuer

I have an 8th grade boy who loves his hair. This kid has what I like to call "flippy hair." His long bangs are 'just so'. He kind of makes fun of himself for them and his classmates tease him about it, but all good-natured. Today, he said to his male classmate, "Do a side part. It's easy."

His classmate, "No."

Him: "Come on. Just try it! It'll go back in place easy." 

The other boy was not convinced, "Why should I listen to you?" 

He said, "Cuz I'm a hair genius." 

The other funny thing from today was at noon recess. It rained a lot, so the worms were out. (I picked a few off my driveway before leaving for school). One 5th grader made it his personal mission to rescue all the worms on the ball field. He'd catch a ball, throw it to me (the pitcher), look down and notice a few worms, grab them, then throw them off the field. 😲 All recess. 😂 

No Chicks

I brought back a heat lamp, waterer, and feed so we'd be prepared, fully expecting to see a few yellow fluffs wandering around the incubator when I got to school on Tuesday. Nope. Nothing. And today, still no chicks... 

I read online that they can sometimes hatch up to 26 days after incubation, which would be Friday. I'm worried our extreme temperature variations at the beginning (and that one time someone left the thermometer outside the incubator) have just been too much for our eggs. That would be a major bummer. The ducks/geese are slated to hatch this coming Sunday. Hopefully we have better luck with those.

We're down to only seven days left of school and just five academic days. I'm working on my last week of lesson plans. Weird. And a little sad. But there's too much other stuff going on to dwell on that for long! 

Friday!

A pretty good day today. My kids got crazy the last half an hour, but there were no major meltdowns or blowups today! 

We had our last time reading with the 1-2nd graders, everyone turned in handwriting on time, and had piñata worktime. LOTS of kids weren't ready to say memory today. Ugh. Four have pieces to say next week. And next week has a long memory chunk plus we don't have school Friday (it's Track and Field Day). So I'm nervous it will happen again. 

I tidied the classroom for Monday's sub. I have Mrs. L in the morning and Mrs. B in the afternoon. I'm glad they were able to tag-team for me, otherwise my kids would've been in Mr. E's room all day. Not the best. This way, they can still do the lessons I had originally planned. It should be a good day. They're particularly excited for Mrs. L. "She's fun!" was their reaction. Most don't know Mrs. B very well, so they didn't have much of a comment for her. That's okay! I hope they'll behave well for both of them. 

I've been plowing ahead on Talent Show stuff. The program is made, the projector slides are made, and there's a plan in place for filming the teacher skit! Whew! Now I can go rest in peace for the rest of the weekend... after I correct my papers...

Class Potluck

It was an awful morning. Everyone was out of sorts, even my most even-tempered kids. I'm guessing they're all tired, but that doesn't excuse the behavior. I had to call one 6th grader back to the room twice because he didn't do everything I had asked him to do before going to math (wipe the table from lunch, clean off his desk). Thankfully, the class turned it around in the afternoon. 

My last guest speakers of the year presented to the 7-8th graders on living in Ethiopia. They are two girls who attend Bethany to get their nursing degree. They were very polite, good with the students, and talked super fast. I had planned on them being here until 1:30 and told their ride accordingly. They wrapped up their presentation at 12:50. Thankfully, they had a slide on how to write your name in the alphabet of their language, so we took turns writing students' names. Some of the 5-6th graders came down around 1pm, right as everything wrapped up, so the girls just re-presented everything. They were good sports about it, and it was interesting to hear everything a second time! 

Even though our speakers were great, the best part of the day was the 5-6th grade potluck. One of the 5th graders had the idea to do it as a class bonding experience. Everyone would bring an item that was dairy/gluten free to accommodate allergies. I brought extra items thinking some of them would forget. Nope. Everyone followed the instructions! And some brought extras! We had a whole table full! 

Items: Tang, homemade strawberry lemonade, Bubbly (a kind of sparkling water?), cookie dough ice cream, strawberry shortcake with frosting and strawberries, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, two kinds of chocolate, brownies, cakebatter dip and vanilla wafers, animal crackers, pickles, green/black olives... I think that's it. 

One boy forgot to bring something and he refused to eat anything. At first he said he wasn't hungry, but I could tell that wasn't why he wasn't eating. Eventually, he said he felt bad eating because he didn't bring anything. His classmates and I reassured him we wanted to share what we brought with him. He shook his head no. Later, he asked to go to the bathroom. When he didn't come back for a long time, I figured he was 'hiding' in the gym. Yep. He was on the front step of the bleachers. We had a heart to heart talk and in the end he participated in the eating of the potluck. 

Amazing Caterpillar Show

Our first day of talent show practice did not go fantastic. It wasn't horrible either, but there was too much complaining for my taste. I wish I had a 'bad attitude' button that could banish a bad attitude with a single click. Sigh. Dream on. In other news, I found out one of the 8th graders is missing the talent show for a softball game. Sigh. Now we have to change parts around again and it's a bare-bones crew to begin with. 

So many moving parts in this month of the school year. Tonight was my last PTL meeting of the year. Our central topics were summer fun activities, the end of the year carnival/potluck, and the talent show. My class serves root beer floats at the the talent show, so I need to buy those groceries next week. I also make the bulletin and the powerpoint of acts for the screen. That part won't take long, but it will take some time. 

I'm still working on finding a sub for me on Monday. My top two choices are busy. My third choice has to find childcare, but she thought she could do half the day. Thankfully I found someone who can do the other half, so now we wait to see if childcare can be found. 

The eggs are doing well. The chickens are set to hatch this Sunday. I'm bummed I'll miss the first day of hatching. I will probably make the rule that no one can go in the incubators on Monday. I read somewhere the chicks can survive for three days in the incubator without food or water, living on the last of the yolk. We'll have to get a box for them to live in after that.

All right, I've been at school long enough for today. Time to go home!

Jeffers and the Farm

The field trip today was fantastic. My kids were respectful and engaged in what we were doing. There was only one minor pushing incident as we walked along the path at the petroglyphs, otherwise everyone kept their hands and feet to themselves. 

The petroglyphs were surprisingly fun. New leaders have vamped up the field trip activities! Instead of watching a (semi-boring) video upon arrival, we had a two minute orientation, then went straight out to the rocks to see petroglyphs. 

Holy cow was it windy. It was so breezy we couldn't hear our guide if we weren't in the right spot; the wind took his words. We almost blew over a few times too. Most of my kids did not come prepared. A few only had sweatshirts. A couple had light jackets. Two kids (brother and sister) had heavier coats, hats, and gloves. Way to go Mom! They were kind enough to share with their chillier classmates. One lent his hat and his coat to two of the boys, the other lent her jacket to one of the sweatshirt girls. It really warmed my heart.

After that station, we took a long walk around the property and came to some taller rocks that bison used to rub against. You can tell because the rocks are worn smooth. This is the newest change. The archeologist on site spent all winter creating this activity. He had a bunch of clipboards with tasks for the students to break into small groups to do. Some involved analyzing maps, others measured trees, most had to read and answer questions. They all had something to do with the life of a bison in southwest Minnesota. My big takeaway was that bison quit being around this area about 57 years ago. They rub against trees if they're able, but that kills the trees. The trees at the petroglyphs are not very big around, and if you calculate it, they're about 57 years old! (Although, now that I think about it, does that timeline make sense? One of my students calculated that number, but the guide said it was right...maybe it's 157 years ago).

The next station was the same as it's been in past years: atlatl throwing. They updated the throwing apparatus to make it easier to keep the spear on and to throw. The wind really made it tricky to aim, but quite a few of my class improved enough to almost hit the bison!

Our last station was about gardening techniques used by Native Americans in the area. Four sandboxes were set up for groups to hoe mounds of sand together to plant seeds. My kids actually used hoes made of shoulder bones, sticks, and rawhide! And there was enough for each of them. They were beyond thrilled. This group of natives made their mounds in rows. One row would be seven corn seeds planted with one seed in the center and the others on the sides of the mound. The next row would be six bean seeds planted in two clusters, three in each, one cluster on each side of the mound. The squash would be planted on the edges of the field or wherever there was room because it spreads everywhere. They wanted it to cover the most ground to keep weeds from growing. Pretty neat. They got this information from an old lady named Buffalo Bird Woman. Back in the late 1800s, an anthropologist interviewed her and put everything into a book. Guess what. It's still in print today. Add it to my to-read list!

My kids were happy to get out of the wind to eat their lunch. They were less than happy they still had to eat outside, but the picnic shelter is pretty sheltered and it wasn't that cold out. 

The farm came next. Of course they had a great time up in the haymow swinging on the rope. There were actually bales up there this year. One of the 6th graders who'd been here last year said, "Oh, now I see what you meant. I tried to picture it with bales last time and I couldn't." 

My niece (1.5 years old) came along for the farm tour. My students were impressed with how many words she knows. She was pretty quiet to start with, but a few minutes in (once we saw the cows), she opened up and started talking. I got her to say almost everyone's name! Most of the time she could only kind of pronounce them, but it was super cute. 

My kids brought boots along, just in case it was muddy. Overall, the farm was pretty dry. Dad said there was only one place with mud. My kids found it. Even the ones without boots tromped through it. They had to wash their feet off before getting into the cars. Thankfully, I remembered past years and brought plastic grocery bags along. 

We also brought along ingredients to make elephant toothpaste. You start with super strong hydrogen peroxide and dish soap. Add a bit of warm water with yeast and... presto! A beaker oozing hot foam. We also added food coloring to make it even more exciting. The student propelling this idea brought most of the supplies. He had read you can try the experiment with potassium iodide. We didn't have any iodide, but we did have iodine. That didn't work as well as the yeast. Well, maybe it did, but it didn't go very fast. We ended up doing it again with yeast. He had brought two kinds of yeast to test. We didn't notice a difference between the two yeasts. Dad brought out gloves for the kids to wear. They ended up playing in the foam (safely of course). Very fun experiment. 

After that, we did one more round of bale tag while I cleaned up. Then snacks on the go, then one more round of swinging in the haymow. And then petting a baby calf (which we forgot to do earlier in the tour). And then going to see the fresh baby calf who was just born when we started our science experiment. We left later than I had planned, but we still made it back around the time I had given parents, just the later time I had said. Thankfully we have an app that makes it easy to send updates. Most parents showed up a few minutes after we did, so no one had to wait long.

Overall, a very good 'last' field trip to the farm. Now we're only 13 days 'til school's out. Crunch time!

Busy Week

The wind howled outside, but inside, my kids were actually somewhat calm today! We had a great day, can you believe it? A few minor mishaps, but we talked through those.

Everyone is excited for our field trip tomorrow. We leave at 8:30 for the Jeffers Petroglyphs then head to the farm after lunch. One of the boys has a plan to make 'elephant's toothpaste' while we're there with Dad's extra strength hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and iodide. We don't have iodide, so we're going to try it with iodine and yeast to see if they make a difference. 

The 7-8th graders are on their class trip today and tomorrow. That gave us extra class time today. We did science and social studies today, plus had time to work on Mother's Day projects. I dug out all the art supplies from the closet and turned them loose. Some planted sunflower seeds in decorated pots, some glued things onto a picture frame, others are making cards. One is making a Coraline doll. Very creative, these kids are!

We also began brainstorming for our Talent Show act, "The Amazing Caterpillar Show". No one fought over who got which part. A miracle. 

We need to do our state mandated standardized testing this week too. I gave them the option to start today, but only one kid actually did. It's easy to think there's plenty of time when it's only Monday...