Snow Day!

From the time I started teaching until two years ago there were always snow days impacting teaching and learning in December and January. Then, just when I switched schools, the snow just barely dusted the yard, and on a weekend. Last night I saw the snow built up on the top of the car when I was up in the middle of the night, but was still convinced it would start raining and melt all the snow long before school busses took to the roads. Happily I was wrong. There is still plenty of snow all around the area this morning, so my kids and I all have the day off. We slept in and had a post-breakfast snowball fight Perhaps we'll actually get decorations on the tree today.

The fall open house event was very fun this year. I had parents emailing the afternoon of the event asking if it was too late for their fifth grader to join the list of presenters. In fact, so many students wanted to come to present their learning that my partner teacher and I had more students than guests while the middle school students were taking visiting families on tours of the school. Students were so excited to present their learning that they made and posted signs in the hallway to entice visitors to stop in and see their presentations. I didn't snap a picture of my favorite one, but they wrote on the frosted glass outside of the classroom with a dry erase marker, "Awesome presentations inside!"

When an unsuspecting prospective parent did stop to listen to a student present on the geographical regions of the United States or the process of fossilization, they invariably got pulled to watch several other presentations by a line up of fifth graders who were all eager to showcase their learning. It was really amazing and heartwarming to watch my students tweak their presentations in the moment - asking for samples of certain rocks or help quickly finding just the right picture to answer questions from the "real" audience who had come to open house. In all my years of teaching I can't remember a time when so many of my students were so passionate to share something they learned in my classroom.

I was able to follow it up with some fun hands on investigations as we begin our unit on Properties of Matter. The unit begins with eight quick observations that attempt to show one or more properties of matter we will investigate in the rest of the unit. Although it was stressful for many students to have a very short time at each station before moving to the next investigation, by the end most of them had some fun, and understood that they were going to get to dive deeper into each type of inquiry later in the unit. There were giggles as students blew into water and limewater, and at the end of it all, with water, sand, shaving cream, and oil in little puddles near each station, one student even thanked me for letting them do the messy activities.

Advent is always a busy time of year. There are prayer services every Monday morning and extra music practices for the annual Christmas concert. Sweet treats are handed out on Saint Nicholas' Day, adding to the pre-two week break crazy. In addition, fifth graders were tapped to host the mass in honor of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (not to be confused with the Virgin Birth of Christ) which adds even more rehearsals into the schedule. Adding a snow day into the mix decreases the teaching time this year, but it was very welcome as we are settling in with two new kids in our family. An extra day at home together was just what we needed.