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.

First Day of Year 10!

Can you believe this is my 10th year teaching? Neither can I. 

Today was a fabulous first day. My kiddos were great; it hardly felt like teaching. I have a feeling we're going to learn a ton this year. 

One student was particularly nervous about starting school this year. She hasn't been in school since third grade (medical reasons and homeschooling from covid), so it's understandable. She and I came up with a way for her to take a break if she needs to (setting a special pen on top of her desk, and adding a popsicle stick if I need to check on her/she wants to call her mom). But she fit right back in today, no problems. I didn't notice any anxious behavior from her at all throughout the day and the pen stayed in the desk. Woohoo! Hopefully that trend continues. 

My kids got most excited over plants. I bought a kiddie pool from Walmart for $3.50 to fill with potting soil. First we went on a rock finding mission to put in the bottom of the pool to create space for the water/roots of the plants. My idea was that we'd split the pool into sections, one for each student to grow whatever he/she wants to grow. They loved that idea and began coming up with things they want to grow. Two kids decided to join forces and combine plots; they're going to grow potatoes. 

I had other containers/dirt in the storage shed, so we took a field trip to bring back more supplies. We found a mushroom growing on the bag of potting soil...

I brought it back to the classroom for further inspection. "Don't touch it Miss H! What if it's poisonous! ...You better wash your hands, just in case." This prompted a 20 minute exploration of mushrooms and whether or not they can kill you just by touching. We learned that only 1% of mushrooms are fatal, and only one of the poisonous mushrooms kills you via skin contact (it grows in Australia... Poison Fire Coral Mushroom), plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Now one kid wants to attempt growing mushrooms. Their homework tonight was to look through their cupboards at home for things we could grow at school (sprouting onions or potatoes, carrots, etc.) or do research about what it takes to germinate other seeds. We'll see what they find out!