May went by in a blur. A blur of bad weather that is. I like to do a kite unit in May, but the weather was so awful that I abandoned that idea and turned to another idea. The Honeybee.We have been very busy in class learning about the honeybee. The kids were so excited and drove their parents crazy with facts about bees every night. As we learned something new about bees and their hive, I added something to the display board. Every morning, the kids would come in to check out the display and talk about the changes. It was awesome. The biggest hit were the dead bees. I went to Rose Prairie Honey and got a small jar of dead bees so the kids could look at them up close. When I got there, he'd just opened a hive and had transferred some bees into his observation hive. There were hundreds of upset bees flying around, slightly sedated
from the smoke. Did I mention that I have a very big fear of bees? That I had a childhood allergy? After the initial adrenaline rush, I calmed down enough to really watch the bees. It's a very fascinating society. I learned as much as the kids did about bees. At the end of the unit, I had the bee keeper come in to do a presentation in our class. This unit prompted me to do research into the decline of bees and what can be done to help get their numbers back up. I'm still trying to get Chris to agree to a hive in the back yard.We also had Paul Hann visit our school right after the long weekend. I'd heard about him before, but never had the experience of working with him. The kids learned 2 songs with him. One that he'd already written and one that he wrote with us on a predetermined theme. The theme we picked was keeping our hands to ourselves. We are currently working on PBS a lot at our school, so our AO wanted to keep in line with topics to do with that. Chris and I were having a hard time with some of our kids keeping their hands off of each other and bugging each other so that's what we chose. It was hard, and mostly the song was written by Chris, Paul and I. We had many laughs and I know I enjoyed the process much more than I thought I would.
As well as trying to keep the kids' focus and juggling all the extra special days we've been having, assessments have been happening as well. I call them check-ups in my room rather than tests or assessments. We've been talking about them as check-ups all year, so the kids know that I am interested in what they know, no pressure. I tell them it helps my teaching and tells me what I need to know about their learning. They also get a kick about all the "homework" it generates for me.
Right now, it's the home stretch. We have a field trip to town planned, a district track meet and a fun day all coming up. Our class has 14 days of in-class time left and I find kids are missing randomly more and more. I had 5 away on Monday! With the sun being up so much longer now (11pm is still a little light) parents around here are ready to be done with school too. Kids are going to bed later and later and plans are in the works for vacations. It's hard to keep anyone's focus these days.
