Busy, exhausting, rewarding.

I have so much I want to post about it's a little big ridiculous.  But I am so, so tired, I don't know if I can finish this, so we'll see how far this goes.

Yesterday was my first day back after my class finished a four day week with a sub. Yikes. We spent most of the day practicing our five classroom rules and discussing what that meant. Someway, somehow, my class has turned into these mumblers who look at the floor and mumble words and half-ways make motions when doing our rules. So we practiced that. And we practiced again. And again. We had a little time for science squeezed in with all that practice and so we observed our marigold seedlings and wrote about them. They totally didn't follow directions about drawing what they observed. Some drawings I could not tell what they drew, maybe a ferris-wheel?  But that student definitely used five colors on her drawing! One student wrote that they saw a beautiful flower, even though his one plant only has a couple little leaves on it. *sigh* And grrr. One bad day could be barometric pressure, or a bad kid day, but more than that, I say it is the teacher. But then that means that this teacher fails a lot. I am not sure what to do. But we've got to have some good learning days in the near future. Because the near future is all we have left, these kiddo's leave me in three short weeks. *big sigh*

Our class working on their marigold papers.

This is a big week in our town. So today we walked down and watched the cowboys do steer roping at something called "Slack." I don't know what that means exactly, if it is practice or if they are qualifying activities, but we walked down to the arena all sunscreened, capped, and shaded. I told students they would have to be responsible for whatever they brought, and to put on sunscreen at home and think about a hat and some possibly even sunglasses.

 

ever see anything cuter?

This little guy is one I will miss SO MUCH! He is learning so much english and talked to me all the way to the rodeo arena. And he loved the cattle and horses. And when he talked to me and I didn't understand him he would try to say things in a different way.... SO EXCITING! 

We were so exhausted when we got back to the school for lunch! Here is the deep intellectual learning we did when we got back.

That's right! Tom and Jerry!

Here we are, relaxing for a little while.

Then.... ROUND TWO of exhausting activities for the day! Yikes!   Er, I mean, YeeHaw! Fantastic! Fabulous! We did our outdoor Pioneer Days activities. We did a relay where students put on clothes (shirt, pants, hat) run to the other side, the other teach helps them take them off and they put them on, run back... and do it all again. Another relay we played was the egg toss, then we did the stick horse race and lastly... the bucket race (passing a bucket down the line, and dumping it in the trashcan, running up and doing it again).  The last game was guaranteed to get students wet, especially with the "help" of those running the game. Here are a few of the highlights.

Love, love, love to see this smile! 

he was so proud of himself for drinking down his water so quickly! 

Do I think textbook learning happened today? No. But maybe we practiced rule 62 a little bit today and we didn't take ourselves quite so seriously. Maybe we practiced teamwork and good sportsmanship.  Maybe we learned about the horses and steers at the rodeo. Maybe we just had fun.

*so here I sit at 11 p.m. as I finish this post and it is just now dropping into the 70s, but the wind is howling and the high tomorrow is supposed to be the same as the low tonight. Crazy barometric pressure anyway! My kiddos don't know how to act anymore! (When all else fails, blame the weather, not the teacher, right?)