Neglect

I have been neglecting my library books... a huge stack is waiting in my apartment for me tonight.  And I have to stop at the library to pick up a few more that I ordered and haven't yet picked up.  Oops.  So I'll keep this brief since they close at five.


Volleyball practice went well again today.  It seemed harder to find drills for them to do.  Granted, I was the only coach there for the first half an hour.  Two of the others showed up later right when we started working on serves.  We have three games next week and no practices!


School was the same-old-same-old.  Kids tattling on each other to get back at them for tattling the day before, then waiting to watch me nail them/punish them/chew them out.  Sigh.  It's exhausting.  And then I got an email from a parent accusing me of not doing anything at school to handle it.  Sigh.  More stress.  So prayers for wisdom would be appreciated!  We'll get it all straightened out; it just takes time.  But it is disheartening to have to deal with it on the seventh day of school!


So this weekend it's my goal to hunker down and regroup... read books, get some fresh air, hang out with friends... and lesson plan and correct papers of course.  I can't totally forget about school! :)

One Practice, One Game

Well... our first volleyball game was today.  It just got over, in fact.  We didn't do half bad! The Immanuel Mankato team was super tall (and full of 7th and 8th graders), but they hadn't been playing volleyball many years, so our team stood a chance!  We lost the first game by only about 10 and won the second game.  Our third game was neck and neck and we only lost by three.  The girls played super well and most of them got their serves over!  All in all, I was quite impressed.


The soccer game also went well.  I worked on school-work for most of the game and saw the last half-hour.  We ended up winning 5-4.  It's really nice having most of my kids playing; then I always have someone to cheer for!


Another fairly normal school day again.  We had some great writing going on during Writer's Workshop, though they were a bit hard to focus during Daily 5.  Everyone handed in their spelling on time! ... but that means I have to correct it all.  And only two of the class haven't said their memory.  Hopefully we can keep it up!


I thought the Bookmobile was going to make its first appearance today, and although we waited and waited and waited, it never showed up.  That's actually okay for me... I have a ton of library books sitting on my shelf that I haven't had time to read yet.  My students were pretty disappointed though.  There's always next week!

Ice Cream Social

Today was our second day of Writers' Workshop.  The first day didn't go as well as I hoped, so I was a bit discouraged and hesitant about how day two would go.  But it actually went really well! My students found interesting things to write about and they were sad to be done writing.  Even the kid who didn't write a single word yesterday wrote 3/4ths of a page! Amazing! I hope we can keep this energy up.  They also got really excited about sharing their writing.  I started a story about my family's trip to the Black Hills and already I can see about a million ways to use it in "how to fix your writing and make it better".  It could definitely use some editing/more powerful words. 


After school we had our first volleyball practice of the year.  It also went better than expected.  I think a lot of the younger girls have been practicing with their moms/sisters so they've had a little bit of experience.  I think we'll do okay at our first game tomorrow.  Yep, we already have a game.  No time to pass out uniforms today, so that will also be a task for tomorrow.


Following volleyball all the teachers went over to church's ice cream social, which may sound like just a bunch of people getting together to eat ice cream.  Not so.  It's basically a full meal (free will donation) with a little ice cream on the side.  I actually didn't eat any ice cream there!  I had a gigantic piece of French silk pie instead.  It was so big I almost couldn't finish it!  And now I'm ready to go home and digest.  Thankfully this is the last thing I need to do to finish up and then I can head for home.


Joe is all settled into his usual spot.  The fifth grade girls always pop over and see what he's up to, and then they say good-bye before leaving the room for the day.  One of the 7th graders put his apple experiment in Joe's tank under the heat lamp to see what it would do to the apples.  So far Joe has only pushed it around a little bit.  All my students want Joe to bury it.

Whew!

Just got done with our first PTL meeting of the year.  Before that was our first faculty meeting of the school year.  And before that I was seeing off my students... one of the 3rd graders was sneaky and told her 5th grade brother that their mom was picking them up from school today.  Nope.  She thought they were riding the bus.  When no one showed up after 20 minutes, the 5th grader finally called and surprise, surprise, the mom wasn't on her way.  Thankfully they don't live far from school, so she came shortly after, but that didn't leave me anytime between school and our faculty meeting.


The Nicollet Chamber of Commerce (I think?) always hosts a thank-you/welcome back dinner for the teachers, so there was pizza and cookies and chips waiting for me inside school.  It was nice to have something for supper!


Our school day was not one of the best we've had.  One of the 6th graders decided he just didn't want to participate in anything today.  Not even recess.  I almost had to physically pick him up and chuck him out the door for afternoon recess.  When he saw I wasn't joking around, then he finally trudged outside, but it was this close!!!  Hopefully tomorrow is better. 


Anyway, I am heading home for the night!  Tomorrow is going to be another big day... first volleyball practice and the ILC Ice Cream Social, plus normal lesson planning, etc.

Relays

Not super hot today but super humid which makes it feel even hotter.  My classroom's AC couldn't keep up so we were at a toasty 78 for most of the day.  They were still ready to learn though! I'm having so much fun with them; I can tell it's going to be a good year. 


Mr. E wanted to start soccer practice during noon recess, so he volunteered to watch them outside.  That meant I got to stay inside in the cool and work on my to do list.  Yes!


We ended the day with all-school relays in the gym (since it was so gross outside).  All of us teachers came up with an idea, but we ran out of time so we only did three of the relays.  Mr. E's was to get a bucket of popcorn transferred to the other end of the gym with little cups.  Miss N's was to hold hands and transfer a hula hoop from one end of the people line to the other without letting go of hands.  Mr. D's was to crawl from one end of the gym to the cones, find your pair of shoes, put them on, then run back to the starting line.  Then we had popsicles and signed yearbooks.  A lot of kids forgot them (even with the reminder note I sent yesterday).  Oh well.  Such is life.


Now I'm just finishing up a few things in my room and I'm taking off for Fulda!  No school tomorrow!  My brother Ethan has a football game tonight (pushed back to 8:00 to hopefully cool down some) and his 18th birthday is tomorrow.  It'll be nice to have a good long weekend to recuperate from this short week of school... and of course do more planning.

Tire Troubles

Oh don't worry! It wasn't my tires that had the trouble today.  I got a call at 6:10 this morning from Mr. D saying that his car had a completely flat tire and he didn't want to mess with it this morning and would I please be willing to give him a ride to school? So I got ready for school, picked him up, and we were to school before 7:30 (my usual arrival time).  Pastor gave him a ride home after school and I just got word that together they got the tire repaired/changed and Mr. D is good to go for tomorrow.


We had another day packed with activity.  The 7th graders liked the apple experiment... they got a little more creative on where they put their jars.  Since we don't have science every day, they'll only record notes every other day.  One kid put his jar in between the window glass and the screen.  I'm curious to see how that one turns out!  There are only 5 seventh graders this year, most of them are very scholarly.  It was nice to not see rolling eyes and hear grumbling when we started class today!  They took notes and everything.  And afterwards we did spelling and started a read-aloud book.  This is the first time I've done read aloud with Mr. E's class, but this class enjoyed it so much last year I figured this would be the perfect time to reinstate it.  So far, so good!


Our afternoon recess was a little tetchy.  First, it was super hot out.  Second, one of the loud 6th grade boys wanted free time and I wanted to play a game as a class.  Third, we played a somewhat complicated game (Wizards, Giants, Elves... kind of like giant rock paper scissors but with teams).  We ended up switching to giant Rock, Paper, Scissors, which worked a little better.  And by that time recess was half over and I let them switch to free time.  The boys all went to play football while the girls went to the 4-square courts... but we couldn't find the ball.  They looked high and low and in between.  Nothing.  Every classroom... nothing.  Finally one of the 2nd graders squealed on the 4th grader who kicked it into the woods.  Well, we looked and looked but still couldn't find it.  And by that point it was time to go in.  Bummer.  What a wasted recess.  The good news is that Mr. E ordered six new bouncy balls, one for each classroom, that will hopefully arrive tomorrow! Probably not in time for noon recess though.


The most annoying thing of the day... one of the 6th graders left school at 1:00 to go to a movie with his cousin.  And had no qualms about telling the whole class.  His cousin is on leave from the navy (he's deployed in Africa) and that was the only time the movie they wanted to see was playing... hence the early departure from school.  Erg! Still. It makes me irritated.  And that he wasn't keeping it quiet either!  Of course the class looks at me like, "wait, how does he get to go home early? to see a movie? how come we can't do that?!"


The second most annoying thing is that I'm supposed to be having a volleyball coaches meeting right now... but none of the other coaches are here.  It was supposed to start at 5 and it's now 5:15.  So how long do I wait???  Probably til at least 5:30.  Sigh.  I'm ready to go home. 


But to end on a positive note! My flowers still look lovely and I almost have my plan for next week finished.  And tomorrow is the last day of school this week. :)

Digging into 5th and 6th Grade

Quite the first day in our 5th and 6th classroom!  All but three of my students were in the room by 8:10 and quickly finished the to do list on the board.  By the time the bell rang, we were already working on putting our desks into our new seating chart.  Boy did that take some finagling! Some of the 6th grade boys took it upon themselves to help the smaller girls get their desks where they needed to go... even lifting the desks over the other ones.  They were all super polite and nice about it, even when people were blocking the way. 


We had just enough time to do our hymnsing before chapel.  They actually put some thought into which songs they picked from the hymnal.  And we got to all the songs!  Last year we'd have to skip one or two.  Chapel was in the gym today since our road has been getting heavier traffic from the various detours on the way to Mankato.  Huge semi trucks book it past school, not slowing down, so the powers that be decided we should have chapel at school until further notice.  Kind of a bummer since it was so nice out this morning.  And our gym's sound system was making weird noises.  Pastor ended up just talking loud and not using it at all.


This morning went by pretty fast, learning our procedures and starting Daily 5, but not as fast as the afternoon!  We learned our Spanish colors right before lunch (and the 5th graders were practicing them the rest of the day! yay!) and had a picnic outside.  We did the Adams Family prayer for lunch... last year when we'd say this prayer it would be kind of confusing since I learned it differently than my students did, so we'd each say it the way we learned it.  Well, one of my 6th graders was ready to shout the prayer at the top of his lungs... but he sang the "days of the week" song instead!  "There's Monday and there's Tuesday, there's Wednesday and there's Thursday..." It was about that time I realized he wasn't saying the prayer, and the rest of the class was just singing along with him!  So we started over and prayed the actual prayer.


Recess was a good time too.  Two former students came over to play football with the boys and those that didn't want to play football played 4-square.  I even got in on the action.  Last year one kid always scratched his head when he was cheating or about to cheat (smacking the ball in the corner so you can't hit it and you get out) and he was right back at it again.  Scratchy-head Syndrome I think.  Another boy picked it up too! And yes, he was trying to cheat too. But eventually they got out.


This afternoon we did a "guess who?" game. They wrote down three interesting things about themselves and we had to guess who wrote what... they are super good guessers! They guessed all but one right away.  I stumped them for a couple seconds when I read my three interesting things... I can't stick out my tongue, I'm the oldest on both sides of my family, and I spent a week digging holes this summer.  It was the holes that gave me away.  Of course then I had to demonstrate my lack of skill.


The coolest thing we did today was an experiment with apples.  I've been saving glass jars all summer and had enough for each student.  Mrs. B let me pick apples from her tree yesterday and today my kids put an apple in a jar and wrote a hypothesis on what they think will happen.  They made observations and wrote them in an official science notebook! And they'll keep making observations each day for as long as we want it to go.  Maybe until the end of the year! Who knows! Some smashed their apple through the opening.  Some used a hammer to get it in. Some cut it into pieces. And some had a big enough jar it went in without a bruise.  Some shook their apple around so it got all mushy.  Some had worms or earwigs in them.  Some put their containers by a window or in the closet or in a desk or by the AC.  I'm very much looking forward to seeing the results!


We ended the day with school rules and three minutes of recess.  For some it was hard to believe it was the end of the day already!  As for me, I was ready to sit down and rest my voice!  I'm going to need some cough drops by the time this week is through.  My voice isn't used to talking so much.


My other favorite part of the day (besides the experiment) was this morning... one of my students' moms came in with a jar of flowers I'm guessing she'd picked from her garden.  They're so pretty! Reds and yellows and some dark purple leaf-ish kind of things.  I'm debating whether I should bring them home or not so I can keep on enjoying them.  But I spend so much time at school I think I'd better leave them here...


And now since I have the whole week planned, I think I'm going to head out "early".  My goal this year is to leave school before 5:30 (at least on the nights I don't have volleyball practice/games).  Let's see how long I can keep it up!