why some trees are always green

in my last entry i talked about how the week flew by, but this week flew by even faster. here i am on monday...trying to remember all of the events from the past week before another one starts again. let's see if i can recap it all.

(oh, on a side note, our SCA crew made it on one of the SCA website, check it out: http://www.thesca.org/hands-on/2010/01/see-whats-tap-2010. paraphrasing one of my friends, i'm the silly one in the front with the hair).

MONDAY

a planning day as usual.

TUESDAY

started the morning off with 6th grade. our lesson on food security went well! after a discussion of some of the key terms in the food security world, we broke the class up into groups (representing villages) and assigned them to the task of coming up with a name for their village and deciding what they wanted to plant in their 10 fields. there were lots of nuances (how much each crop would yield, the different types of crops, whether it was a wet year or a dry year, etc), so it was interesting to see how the different groups worked together. i've noticed that class works very well in groups. it allows them time to talk with other students while accomplishing something at the same time!

our next lesson was 4th grade. they built their own watersheds which was a lot of fun! they are such a good class...when they were done building and polluting their watersheds, we did some discussion about stormwater and played a fun game.

then we were off to lunch...art class with 1st grade...and then our lesson with 5th grade. that...was interesting. the topic of the day was trees. i started with the tree song, which was crazy. i saw a lot of them had enthusiasm...and a few of them lacked it...we eventually made the tree song work, but once they were back at their seats, the lesson went better. i read a native american story about why some trees are always green. those students did not know much about evergreens or conifers. it was surprising, but it made me glad that we were there to help them re-learn. they seemed to enjoy the story and relating the rest of the concepts from the lesson back to the story : )

WEDNESDAY

instead of morning meeting with 1st grade, we visited pre-kindergarten to talk with them about birds of prey (raptors!). we have this kit, so after some of their morning meeting, we brought out the kit. i introduced them to my red-tailed hawk friend (a puppet) and showed them some of the other fun things. those kids are so adorable. i wish i could just hang out with them all day!

eventually we made our way to prep for kindergarten. it was then that i discovered how entertaining it is to watch an ice cube melt in hot water. after caleb and i had a few rounds of competing to see whose ice cube melted the fasted, caleb made the comment that we really needed a TV. i disagree. watching ice cubes melt is pretty much awesome. we're now planning to do a lesson soon with kindergarten on why there are air bubbles in ice cubes. i'm excited! also in our prep, caleb and i both managed to break thermometers. whoops!

our lesson on temperature with kindergarten went well. they enjoyed putting their hands in the different bins of water and seeing the temperature on the thermometer. hearing them say those new words was really great, too!

then i enjoyed gym class with william. he's so much fun! the kids were playing some fun tag games before playing basketball. william was fascinated with throwing the ball up on the back of the basketball hoops. it was great : )

after lunch, recess and a bit of a break, we headed to 2nd grade for our final round of Oh Deer! the students were much better behaved with the exception of 1...who i gave my 1st time out to. i thought i would feel really bad giving a student a time out, but it wasn't too bad...the only bad part was that we weren't in the regular classroom, so instead of sitting on one of the lunch tables, he writhed around the floor and started to cry. oops!

nature club after school was...interesting. looking back, i don't think it was actually too bad. the kids had fun for the most part, but there is definitely a lot to improve on. i kept them inside partly because last week they showed me they weren't ready to handle being outside the entire time and partly because it was extremely icy and cold. we played a bunch of nature games, but two of the students happen to be very dramatic individuals and had temper tantrums if a game wasn't what they wanted to play...oh man. i'm thankful for the challenge in getting this to work, but sometimes i just wish the students were always excited (and not combative) about what i had planned. we played a lot of hide and seek (nature style where the "it" person chose what predator they wanted to be and everyone else was the prey)...but i'm hoping next week will be better.

THURSDAY

caleb and i both had low energy days...but a lot to take care of! we enjoyed a morning meeting with 3rd grade. they did some fun dances as a part of their activity, so that got me more energized! then we were off to 1st grade for our lesson on common water (water use). it went really well! then...art class with 5th grade (i drew my own self portrait in class with them), lunch and kindergarten art class. then, we got ready for our water cycle game with 3rd grade. i was a little nervous about introducing it, but it was the 2nd go-round, and the kids ended up being great! i acknowledged that the students were very cooperative in sharing the dice for the game...all in all, a great experience! the teacher even made a comment that caleb and i are gaining more confidence in classroom management : ) that made me feel great.

after school we met with a few of the teachers to talk about our service learning project. we're starting to involve the school in a rainfall monitoring program. the coordinator of the program at the state sent a super cool rain gauge that we get to play with. it should be great introducing this to the classes!

FRIDAY

i was supposed to be helping teach some 5th graders about plant and trees....but since it was the coldest day of winter so far (it didn't get above 10 degrees all day with a crazy cold wind chill), the school rescheduled for another day. that brought me to working at the berkshire food project (http://www.berkfoodproj.org/) serving a free lunch. i also addressed a bunch of envelopes for one of their upcoming fundraisers. i enjoyed that! we were done early so we ended up going to a local candlepin bowling place to be chaperones for another school. fun times!

my friday ended with some planning for a nature camp we host in april. we even had a dance party : )