End of March

Whew!  I'm just *not* getting to the blog as often as I used to!  Maybe that will change come summertime.  In the meantime...

I got out and took a bike ride.  Not terribly long, but it felt good to be outdoors.  I stopped at one of the two Little Free Libraries in our neighborhood.  

Why is there a frog on the front of the biography bookcase?

Well you see, I did my first story walk.  Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?  

I did it with the preschoolers and kindergarten class.  

They had a blast chanting along with me and finding the next creature.

So, when this book came across my desk, I gave it the side eye while processing.  And sure enough, after moving the 590s to the little bookcase, this book was more visible, allowing the middle schoolers (and the 5th graders) to discover it.  And they acted like middle schoolers.  Which was not unexpected.  What was unexpected was when the younger elementary kids spied a biography of our president and started saying, "Let's go, Brandon!"  Wow.  Not at all what I expected from my 3rd & 4th graders.  Maybe I was "sheltered" but as a kid, I had no idea who my parents voted for.  I was taught to respect the office of president.  The middle schoolers also made derogatory comments about the biography, and an older sib in the high school plopped it on my desk, saying, "My dad wants me to check this out."  I'm half expecting to need a Book Challenge form.  Le sigh.  

Adoptive family virtual paint night?  That sounds fun.  So I signed us up, they sent us the materials, and I promptly forgot all about it on the actual Zoom meeting night.  Another sigh.  

I'll have to pull up a YouTube painting tutorial for the girls to do instead.  (At some point.  After the box of supplies has sat in a corner and mocked my parenting skills for a good long while.)

Grumman is still a beautiful cat (with a weird shoe fetish).

Tuzi bunny makes a rare blog appearance, chilling on my lap.  He's shedding like mad right now.  

After missing his first shoot of the season due to illness, Jack was thrilled to be out competing again.

My current car book and his latest shoot pin.  

So this is the project I wanted to do with my students.  I even painted up an example.  

We did it over 2 sessions.  Day one, they painted the black circles, using disposable toddler bowls.  I'll have to share some of the "part 2" pictures next time.

I crikey-ed up some bunnies to trace for a project.  I also don't seem to have an "after" picture for that one today.  Hmm.  

My If You Give a Mouse a Cookie dress.  

The K & 1st grade classes painted paper plate cookies in the library that day.  

Theirs were a lot more chocolatey than my example cookie.  

Whew!  I think we've more or less covered March now.  

More of March

Another theme day during Spirit Week was Hobby Day.  Blarg.  I had a hard time coming up with a hobby, but finally decided to do "volunteering."  I wore my Sac Zoo shirt and my giraffe ossicones.  I shared my giraffe facts with the kids, from back when I worked a booth at World Giraffe Day, pre-pandemic.  

And I got a chuckle out of my shadow when I went outside.  

Jack was learning some basic first aid in his health course.  Paul and Hannah helped with his homework.

Ta da!  A splint.  

How are we liking these fuel prices??  Yikes.  

"Never be the cause of anyone's pain, and if you have the ability to ease their suffering, then do so quickly."  The author gave the best line of the book to a B-list character.  I'm 23 books into my Goodreads challenge for this year.  Hoping to hit 80.  I'm giving myself a little grace this year.  I've been counting youth and kids' books that I read for the first time, as well as mature & dignified books.  I mean, not like Rainbow Fish or Berenstain Bears, but usually nonfiction.  

You know how outdoor cats bring their people gifts of dead things?  Grumman brings me socks.  I guess the smell is close enough?  

Speaking of the Grum, "Whatcha got in there?  Books to sniff?" 

So many books.  Hannah reads a ton, and every time I think of something to add for her, I find a few things I'd like to read myself...

Speaking of Hannah, she played piano in church for Special Music during the offering.

I know, the Keebler dude is an elf, not a leprechaun.  But I told the girls we're pretending these are leprechaun cupcakes.  Because I tried.  

More books.  A few of these are to give me ideas for school.  Not having a curriculum to work from is a lot of freedom.  A l-o-t of freedom.  It means I have to put on my thinking cap every week and come up with Something Interesting/Educational/Creative/Entertaining/Etc. on my own.  For every class.  We're 2 months from the end of the year, and I'm needing inspiration.  

So, Paul and Jack and I watched The Winds of War, and now we're plowing through War & Remembrance.  Paul and I watched them ages ago.  Jack enjoyed Band of Brothers, so I thought he might enjoy these, too.  If you know of other WW2 miniseries, I'd love a recommendation.  

Despite Grumman's negative opinion of my letters, I ended up winning.  Against a person, not the cat.  

Hey look!  There's Jack.  He usually sticks his hand in front of his face when I point the camera at him.  

There's Katie, too.  

Some of the shamrocks here are from their time in the library.  The kids often like to color while I read aloud.  

Technically, these aren't shamrocks.  But this was my green for St. Patrick's week.  We read a Voice of the Martyrs book about him.  

Another mixed media project.  Watercolors for the background, and marker on graph paper for the cityscape.  

This student decided to use black construction paper for her cityscape.

This project, overall, was not as well received as some of my other recent ones.

But I did have a good laugh when the second graders came in and one said, "We're painting?!  Whatever she's wearing is what we end up doing."  My Ms. Frizzle reputation precedes me.  

I'm getting creative with space these days.  I moved the 590s into their own bookcase to free up some space on the back wall.  I don't really want to embrace genrefication whole heartedly, but I do understand the upsides to the concept.  Right now, it's just Fiction, Biography, Graphic Novels, and Animals that fall outside the Dewey way in our little library.  I need to put some googley eyes on this bulletin board.  

Okay, we've reached another good stopping point.  More later.  

It's My Birthday Month

Maybe instead of aiming for weekly posts, I should try for a monthly recap instead.  I don't seem to be hitting Our Week every week any more.  

Trap shooting season has started.  Rear view mirror picture from dropping Jack off at practice.  

Bri sent a box of goodies to the kids.  There were Legos,

and a cookbook, which we've already tried a recipe from,

and a bag of treats.

I fired up the sewing machine for Spirit Week.  One of those ridiculous things that makes me miss homeschooling.  Like science fair, my nemesis.  

Katie's Paris skirt for Europe Day.  (Europe day?  What the actual heck?) 

Hannah's Europe Day skirt

I switched from the sewing machine to Crikey for Jack's Europe t-shirt.

On Europe Day.  Jack loves his tactical kilt, and has been wearing it at home ever since.  You do you, boo.  

I have no room to talk about odd fashion choices.  Guess what I wore to school on the day I read the kids Rainbow Fish?  A few people blink at me when I show up in a wild dress, but at this point, they're pretty much getting used to it.  

We even did a Rainbow Fish craft after our story.  This went well with the kindergarteners, first, and second graders.  Sometimes it's a better fit for one end of the age group or the other, so it was nice to have something everybody enjoyed.  

I had a birthday.  There was a cake at work.

And flowers from some of my favorite people.

Lots of flowers

They perked the house up.

I'm not really a cake person, so Jo & Mo made cobbler for my dessert.  (spinning, musical birthday candle)

Got to see one of my favorite humans very briefly.  

A couple thoughts about this book pile:  If you like Paddington (I'm currently reading the first one to my 3rd & 4th graders) More Than Marmalade is a youth biography of Michael Bond.  I really enjoyed it.  

Secondly, my favorite line in the latest Outlander book so far (I'm only on page 553) is, "The lawyer looked as though he'd been taxidermized by someone who hated him."  I'm still chuckling over that mental image.  

Also, we got Adventures in Asian Art a while back, so I requested it again because I wanted to do a spring flowers vase art project at school.  I didn't end up reading it to the kids, but we did have fun making mixed media creations.  

  

  

We talked about the blooming trees.  They drew their stems with brown marker, then fingerpainted the pink flowers.  While the paint was drying, they designed, colored, and cut out their vase, gluing it on over the bottom of their stems.  This project was a hit with everyone, K-4th, so I was pretty happy about that.  

Since the Strange Planet book I got from our fundraiser was a hit with our high schoolers, I picked up another Nathan Pyle book.  I've read about half of it, but it keeps walking off because other people find it amusing, too.

It's fun to have a cat that likes boxes.  Grumman does not.  Fi never met a box she didn't have to try on for size.  

This seems sufficiently long for today.  I'll take a break here and come back tomorrow with more.