Wow...

This was the first day of dressing up for Spirit Week. It was team color day. I'll upload a few pictures later. It was also one of the WORST days yet for behavior issues. The kids could not focus and they needed their hands held for every single assignment. They stopped thinking and would just wave their hand around and point to something and go "I don't get it." It was beyond frustrating. They were bothering both of us for stuff that they could do on their own if they tried. We didn't even do language arts in the morning because they were all not focusing. I decided to switch to social studies for the hour and a half before lunch and it worked REALLY well. They settled down and were very interested.

This is the first time I've attempted to do centers. I thought it would be chaos, but it wasn't so bad. I've been figuring out how to be more firm and expect more from the kids. I tell them something and I expect them to obey. I think they're beginning to realize that I mean business and they are cooperating. We studied mummies today. I started it off by calling 3 people up and telling them to tilt back their heads so I could remove their brains out through their nostrils. They were a little horrified and then laughed and then order was restored and we began.

First, we talked about death from a Biblical perspective. They said that when people die, they go to Heaven or Hell. I asked "What people go to Heaven?" Princess Talks-A-Lot said, "People who trust in Jesus to save them." I was in the middle of saying yes when Prince Ants-in-the-Pants said, "Yes, and if you do really good things." Screeching brakes. We stopped right there and discussed salvation, grace, and good works. (We were talking about grace in Bible too) He comes from a Roman Catholic background of some sorts, so it wasn't too surprising, but I thought he would have known by now. Then one of the boys said that if you disobey the 10 commandments, you lose jewels in Heaven. Theology issues. It turned into a mini-theology lesson.

I had set up 4 centers around the room. I changed up the pairs because Ivan the Terrible hasn't been working well with his current partner. I had forgotten how well Ivan works with the talkative Princess but I was so proud of them at the end of the lesson. I praised both of them and pointed out the good things they did during the lesson, because the other groups tended to be high maintenance and incapable of working together (except Prince Ants-in-the-Pants did pretty well with his partner). Anyway... that was a rabbit trail.

The first center was an audio book. They sat at my computer and listened to a book and followed along in their own book. That was nice because they didn't have to write anything and all I had to do was press play. (They used earphones.)

The second center was the chicken leg. They got to feel the chicken leg that we're now drying out with salt and then they had to wash their hands, come back, and read a book that talks about mummification. They had to sequence the steps of mummification.

The third center was another book called See-Through Mummies. They had to answer a few questions as well. (By the way, they were each given a "Passport to the Land of Mummies" with specific questions to answer as they went through all 4 centers... except the audio one).

The fourth center was on the classroom computer. They explored a website called "Clickable Mummy" and had to find out how they mummified certain parts of the body and various other things. We had a slight crisis when Prince Ants-in-the-Pants kicked the powerbox and turned the whole computer off. It took a couple restarts to get it back up and running. Thankfully I had a back-up book for them to find the answers they needed. The next pair that came to the center was able to go across the way to the computer lab (no class in there thankfully!). While they were at that center, the computer finally came up and I was able to set it up so that the next rotating group didn't have to go outside.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We're going to close the lesson with some discussion and clarification since some of them didn't really read well and missed some questions. Then they're going to do a think and respond about how the Egyptian idea of mummification and what God says about death.

At lunch, they played a crazy game called "Cross the River." (They play games at lunch for Spirit Week). They had to carry their entire team over the river one by one. It was pretty funny to watch. I have some pictures and videos.

After PE, they came back less wired (amazingly enough) and I was able to get through language arts. It was a very trying day, but after social studies, things improved. Whew!