Merry Christmas!

On this, the third day of Christmas my children all have their faces in screens. At least three of them are playing a video game together, and the fourth is watching a movie with Dad. I guess I'm no better, with my own face in my computer.

The run up to Christmas at a Catholic school is very busy. Not only do all the teachers want to finish up units and projects to get to tests and presentations before the break even when snow days cut into our time, but the season of Advent makes for a very chopped up schedule. We have weekly prayer services for the four weeks of Advent, and a school wide Christmas music pageant that has us rearranging our schedules for extra music practices, tech rehearsal, and dress rehearsal. Somehow my class also always ends up hosting the Mass of the Immaculate Conception (not to be confused with the birth of Christ - the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary's conception and birth without the stain of Original Sin) which occurs during the season of Advent, making it even harder for many people to overcome the aforementioned confusion, and requiring me to adjust my schedule even more to allow time for students to practice their readings and songs for mass.

This year I was able to close out my units or at least come to a reasonable stopping point with a bit of time to spare. My partner teacher worked on a craft with half of the fifth graders at a time while I showed A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and ate popcorn and candy canes with the other half. I think I got the better deal.

Energy was high on the night of the Christmas music pageant, with my students all decked out in their finest clothes. They did much better than I expected at keeping quiet while walking to and from the church for their performance, and the finale (with Silent Night sung in English and German) was beautiful. Videos can be seen via the school's Facebook page.

The last day before the break, I left a little gift on my student's desks before they arrived at school: mugs from the dollar store. The staff sang carols to the parents and students at morning drop off (in sub freezing temperatures) and students were offered cookies and hot chocolate. Fifth graders who had hot chocolate left over when they got to my room, promptly poured them into their new mugs. 












My principal knows the kids and teachers are all focused much more on the break than on anything academic on the last day of school for the calendar year. It has become a Saint Luke tradition to have a school wide caroling competition. This is the first year a trophy was awarded, and I am pleased to share that my "house" won!  The caroling was followed by three indoor snowball fights, separated by grade levels. Hands down, Saint Luke has the most fun on the last day before a break.

On the home front, this was our first Christmas with four kids and we kept it low key intentionally. We visited my husband's family in Oregon before Christmas and spent Christmas day at home, just the six of us. We almost met our goal of no tears on Christmas, but were foiled when Christmas dinner was served. My son loves the turkey legs, which we love about him, but something we said made him feel like we were mocking him. I liken his reaction to Marty McFly being called "chicken" in the Back to the Future movies. Whenever he perceives mockery directed at him, his reaction is immediate and HUGE. But he eventually regrouped, and we ate off of our fine china and drank out of our crystal glasses. I went to bed feeling incredibly blessed and told my husband that it was probably the best Christmas I have had as an adult.

I opened my school bag this morning, intending to grade all the assignments I didn't get to before the break began. I was able to grade everything I brought home... but since I forgot to bring home the book reports and the writing grade sheets that have student prewrites on the back at school, I still have two assignments left to score, and will need to make a trip to school today. Disappointing, but since I didn't wait until the last couple of days before school starts again, easily recoverable.

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.