Mother Nature is Drunk

You know, it's one thing to try and teach large groups of children on a normal day. It's a totally different beast to try and teach large groups of children on Halloween (especially when there is trick-or-treating that will be happening after school). But to teach large groups of children on Halloween AND have it snowing all day?!? I was prepared for some craziness today. To be honest, though, the craziness wasn't fully there. Sure, there was definitely a buzz of excitement throughout the day, and at times the students struggled with maintaining composure, but it was better than I expected. Now we will just have to see how things go tomorrow following the aftermath of sugar-highs...
The week as a whole went pretty well. On Monday we headed into the lab to check on our ecocolumns and an acid rain simulation we set up at the end of last week. The ecocolumns, for the most part, have been holding steady these last few weeks. I'm pretty sure that all of the crickets in the terraria have passed away, and the students are handling that pretty well. The aquariums have definitely been more successful. Our acid rain simulation was rather successful. We sprayed some grass with vinegar last week and then checked on it after the weekend. All the grass had thinned out a great deal and was very droopy. It was a very good direct visual for the students! We then decided to see if we could reverse the effects and watered the grass with clean water. We checked it out today, and there were a few blades of grass that seemed to be doing better, but not much. We will see what next Monday brings.
Other than observing the ecocolumns, the students also worked this week on drawing diagrams of them. They were given the task of making detailed diagrams and identifying characteristics of everything included in the ecocolumns. There are several students that have some tremendous art skills, and this was their chance to shine! The diagrams are one of the last parts of our ecosystem unit, and next week the students will begin to bring the ecocolumns home! This has been a hot topic since the beginning of the unit, with plenty of discussions about who would get to take them. I put that to rest pretty quickly by explaining that they would first need parent permission to even take them home, on top of the fact that they would need a ride home (I wasn't going to subject the bus drivers to the possibility of spilled ecocolumns on the bus). Once parent permission is established, then it is simply a matter of splitting the ecocolumn back into its separate sections and sending them on their way. I'm sure there will still be debates about who-gets-what, but that's what Rock, Paper, Scissors is for :-)
Mindfulness thought for the week: Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions. --Dalai Lama

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