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. ❤️