Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

3 down, 1 to go. It's a little hard to believe that after this week it will be April and the start of the 4th quarter (I know that I make those comments of "I can't believe it's already..." but time is flying!). This has been a really good week, but not a busy one. It's Spring Break week in Sheboygan Falls, and I have taken advantage of some much-needed R&R (and more to come) along with getting a few things checked off the to-do list. On the R&R front, there have been plenty of opportunities for family time. On Tuesday night my wife and I had an overnight stay at the Osthoff Resort in Elkhart Lake. I won it in a basket raffle a few weeks earlier at a fundraising event, and Spring Break seemed like the perfect opportunity to take advantage of using it. We had never been to the Osthoff before, and it was very relaxing--fantastic food and a great suite! We have some more (extended) family time planned this weekend with a trip down to Wisconsin Dells. My ...

All in all, this has been a good week! Tomorrow marks the end of the quarter, so we are wrapping the quarter up with some projects (along with taking it a little easy on the 8th graders since they had state testing start this week). In 7th grade, the students have wrapped up learning about natural selection, and we built the connection from natural selection to evolution. We started off with a WebQuest to learn about the evolution of arthropods. I was a little surprised by how some of the students couldn't seem to handle seeing these creepy, crawly critters on the computer screen, but I guess it takes some of them longer to outgrow this. Once learning about all the unique adaptations that have helped arthropods survive, the students have been tasked with selecting a current organism and imagining what adaptations the organism will have in two million years. I have a feeling I am going to encounter some rather interesting creations! ***Side note: I need to apologize, as last week ...

This week was, for the most part, a "back to normal" week following last week (both at school and at home). I'm definitely not nearly as tired as I was this time last week! One thing I can say, though, is that the students seem to be VERY energized as a whole...I think they can smell Spring Break is approaching. But there's still so much to do! The 7th graders have been focusing on natural selection, and I had a lot of fun with this week's activities! The first (main) activity that they did was to collect and analyze data on fish populations in order to create graphs of how the populations changed from one generation to the next. I borrowed this idea from my daughter's school. She had asked me a question about some homework, and I saw that they were working on some similar topics that we were. I noticed a little bit of the activity that she had done (just the data collection) and asked her to explain it to me. That was all I needed to put the rest together! I...

Today's post is going to be a short one because, well, I'm beat, and sleep is what I need most right now! This was a very long and draining week. Not because of school, though; this week's exhaustion is home-related. Some of you may know that my wife, Erin, has MS, and she has been needing extra help at home due to her disease. Needless to say, as I'm sure you can imagine, being husband, caregiver, father, and teacher all wrapped into one can be tiring at times, especially when you throw in learning new curriculums. But here's to hoping for changes on the horizon, as this week Erin had some MS treatments that are meant to kill off and reprogram the cells that attack her body and cause her MS (the easiest way to describe it is chemotherapy for MS)--that's some pretty cool science right there! And so, I bid you a good night because my pillow is calling my name! Mindfulness thought for the week: If you wait for the ideal time for things to happen, things will nev...