Venturing Out

Yesterday after school I ran errands in New Ulm. Normally, this isn't something I think twice about, but these days of coronavirus give every task outside the home a heavier weight. I went to Walmart and found everything on my list. The food selection for Joe wasn't that great, so I waited to get him more lettuce. No toilet paper here either (I'm still well stocked in that department) but the rest of their shelves were full. There was quite the selection of produce, aside from lettuce. I had to refrain from buying all the fresh veggies that caught my eye; there's no way I'd be able to eat through all of that before it went bad. Things to save for another time!

I needed to get gas too and I had a Kwik Trip gift card. As I filled up I got a hankering for their donuts. So I treated myself to a box plus got bananas. Breakfast!

After I got home I wiped down my house and car door handles/steering wheel/water jug handles just to be safe. There haven't been many cases in New Ulm that I've heard of, but it's still good to get in the habit. It's only going to get germier.

It's another nice day outside. I am definitely going to be taking a walk when I get home. From the sounds of the forecast, it's going to be rainy the rest of the week. Sigh. I better pull out my dehumidifier; my bedroom is starting to smell musty again and I want to stay ahead of the moisture.

School went well today. I finally connected with the girl who's been avoiding doing her joke video. She figured out which joke she's doing, but now she can't log on to the website we're using! If it's not one thing, it's another. I got tired of waiting for her to do her video, so I mailed the card to C without hers. He is going to send us a shell casing of one of the rounds his crew shot off. He said after each launch mission they save half of the shell and each crew member signs it; it's a big honor to keep it. He was able to snag one and it will hopefully get to us next week!

I corrected a few of my giant stack of papers this morning and I corrected all of the English assignments waiting for me virtually on Writing City. I thought I'd have time to scan some of the shelves in our class library, but correcting Writing City took most of the morning. Maybe I'll do a little before I go home. It's pretty quiet around here!

Situated

I took the weekend off from school stuff. Instead I made dried apples and almond bark pretzels (both things I've been meaning to do since Christmas), vacuumed and swept, tidied up my living room/bedroom, adjusted my plants (some I plan to move outside once the weather gets nicer), went for a long walk, took garbage out, and rearranged my craft room so I will hopefully do more art. I also scanned/cataloged my at-home books into a new library app that's supposed to make keeping track of books you own simpler. So far, so good! I have a little over 400 books at home. Next I need to tackle my school library... which is over 2,000. That's going to take a while!

School today went pretty well. We did highs and lows and prayer requests. I set up new writing assignments through the Writing City website. Spelling groups met, I did a few calls with students separately, recorded a few grades, let a couple delivery people into school (there's a setting through our desk phones that lets me open the door with a few clicks of a button). One of the guys was here to fix my classroom heater. He tinkered with it for a while and left, but it's not fixed yet. I wonder if he'll be back today while I'm still at school, otherwise I'm not sure if he'll be able to get back in!

What a day

Oh boy... my kids were struuuuuggling this morning! Our religion lesson had us looking up a lot of bible verses. I've been drawing sticks for which kid gets to read them, since I can't see their raised hands over the computer. Normally they're pretty good about following along. Not today. Gah, it was like pulling teeth to get them to the right passage in their bibles! We made it all the way through the religion lesson though.

The jokes have been slowly trickling in. I still need three more. One forgot about it, one is having trouble logging on, and the third's microphone/camera on her device isn't working. I'm hoping our card will be ready to mail today. Man, those videos they uploaded are great. Some of my favorite jokes so far: "I was working at a calendar company. I got fired. I think it was because I took a day off..." and "Today at the bank, a lady told me to check her balance. So I pushed her over. It didn't go well." "Why did the bike fall over? It was two tired." So great. (If you want to see their videos, email me and I'll send you the link!)

Another thing that cracked me up today is this one kid who keeps finding excuses to call me via Teams. I think he's bored or wanting more company than his two brothers. Every time he's on screen he has another tool in his hands he's flipping around in front of the camera. Yesterday it was two different pocket knives, today it was two yard sticks, later on it was a pliers. Who knows what tomorrow will bring!

My prep for Drop Day is going well. Just down to figuring out what art projects they should do... Then I need to organize their packets and put them down on the pick-up end. I might do a quick grocery run today, depending how soon I leave school. But then again, everyone else might have the same idea and the store might be crazy. Maybe I should wait until next week...

Leavin' It!

Our big topic during this morning's Morning Meeting was, are we still going to be able to have our field trips in May. They're mostly thinking about the Heintz farms tour that's been on the calendar since the first day of school. I told them we would hopefully still go, but if we are in virtual school in May, I would take them on a virtual tour of the farm. One of the other boys (who also lives on a farm) said, "Hey, I could do a virtual tour of my farm and then we could compare them!" Thus was born the idea of Field Trip Fridays. A girl's DNR officer dad volunteered to take us on a virtual tour of the prairie. Another girl lives near a motorcycle club and volunteered to see if she could take us on a virtual tour of it. There are four school Fridays in April and four that want to do virtual tours. Perfect. I figure I'll save my farm tour for May just in case we can still go in person.

Tomorrow is our last Drop Day before the 'shelter at home' mandate starts. It lasts for two weeks, but since we know school won't be in session until (at the earliest), May 4th, we want to send home papers/worksheets for the whole month of April, just in case. That's a lot of planning to do!

The 7-8th graders were supposed to have class at 1:00 today, but they messaged me in the morning and asked if we could move our class to sometime in the morning (so they could be finished with school before lunch). Sure! So I got all my virtual teaching finished in the morning. Then, as I started planning for the upcoming month, I got sucked in to teacher resources to share with students...

Eventually I pulled myself away from the distractions, and mapped everything out (solidly for April, roughly through May/the end of the year). The 5-6th grade lesson topics are planned; I need to figure out what I should print off to go home. I'm saving that for tomorrow. Everything is printed off and ready to go for the 7-8th graders except one assignment about explorers. I have to save that for tomorrow too. I've hit my breaking point; it's late and I should go home and be done with school for the day. Parents can come to school from 4-6pm tomorrow, so I will have a little time after my virtual classes to get things ready.

I'm leaving everything at school: my planner, my grading/lesson plan clipboard, my flashdrive of lessons, my papers to correct... everything will keep until tomorrow.

Virtual Bible Study

Tonight was our first try with Virtual Ladies Bible Study. It went surprisingly well! We did it through Zoom and everyone was able to 'tune in' without many issues. We scheduled another meeting for next Thursday night so even more of our usual ladies can join us.

School has been going fine. A few kids didn't show up for our science meeting, so we recorded it. Hopefully they watch the video so they catch up on what they missed.

My kids are yearning for in-person school. That was a topic of conversation in our morning meeting. Many of them really want to be back in school. I think the novelty of virtual school has officially worn off. Bad news for those kids... The governor's announcement today was that school can maybe resume May 4th. So it's a whole nother month of this. At least I can start planning for that. I've been hesitating to plan too far ahead of time just because things have been changing on a daily basis.

Jokes

I had THE best idea today. 

Here's the backstory: The last time I talked to my marine friend C, he thought he'd be able to visit his family the last week of April before they ship him off to Japan in May. I haven't heard from him in a while, but I'm guessing with the coronavirus going around, the military isn't going to let him go home on leave. Bummer. How to cheer him up...

April is fast approaching, along with April Fool's Day. How about sending him a card full of jokes? Normally I'd have my students help me out, and with a little creative thinking, I figured out a way for them to do that from a distance! 

First, I used a program called "Flipgrid" to make an assignment: send me your best joke. They can record themselves saying the joke and the website will gather the responses in one place. I will write their jokes on a card and mail it to C. 

But... after poking around on Flipgrid more, I found a feature that lets the owner (me) share an assignment (the jokes) with a guest (C) so he can see the videos right from the students! So... my current plan is to write the link to the assignment in the card so he can look it up when he gets the card (more of a surprise that way). But, I may change my mind and message him the link after he would've gotten the card. 

We talked about jokes in today's morning meeting, but no one besides me has uploaded a joke video. The one I picked was one of my brother's favorite jokes: Knock knock! Who's there? Panther. Panther who? ...Panther no pants, I'm going swimming! 😁

Memory Work

I think today has been the least stressful day I've ever had of kids saying memory work. During our morning meeting, I asked for volunteers to go for memory and I made a list. After our meeting, I called them in order, moving on to the next one on the list if they didn't answer. It took each one about two minutes to say their memory. Then I asked if they needed anything from school or if they had any questions about school. Easy peasy!

Tonight is our first Drop Day at school. There will be a table for parents to drop off papers for each teacher and pick up more things to do at home. I have a few requests from students, so we arranged a code word to have written on the bag. Manna, banana, and marshmallow are the ones I have so far. Hopefully their spelling tests at home go well! I have the tests recorded and uploaded. All they have to do is listen to the recording and do their test like normal.