The loudness of it all
On this, the second day of inside recess/lunch this week, the volume has been turned up considerably. Yesterday was quiet game day; today is inside soccer day. And apparently when the 6th graders play rock/paper/scissors there must be hand-slapping and yelling involved. Sigh. The joys of teaching grammar school. They are rather fun, though, on inside days. The main problem is that by lunch I'm already exhausted. And I have basketball practice tonight! So I'll either be gruff and untalkative or so hyperactive that my sister will pretend she doesn't know me. :)
At any rate, I think I'm doing pretty well with the hands-on projects and student-led research. The 5th grade did some presentations on Paul Revere, the Boston Massacre and the battles of Lexington and Concord. The 6th grade wrote 1st person monologues about the War Between the States, and this week they are doing research and presenting the lives of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It's fun. But a little difficult to handle for me--I guess I'm a little obsessive about whether or not they're getting everything they need. But it seems to be going okay.
We made gunpowder a couple of weeks ago (I may have mentioned it before). That was exciting. It was really interesting and now we all know how to, should it be necessary. Or something like that. :) [had to go fix the psycho printer that was jamming and error-ing and *argharghargh*. it's fixed now.]
So the upper school kids really crack me up. They have a long-running gag going in my class. A couple of months ago I walked in to all the desks facing the back of the room. Then, a month later, I walked in to a single student. The rest of them had gone out the back door and were hiding. So I locked them out for a few minutes. Foolishly, I fell into the trap when last week I entertained conversation about what would happen if we mirrored the room. Today I walked into a reversed and mirrored room. Goofballs. It does make me laugh.