Today I had a wonderful opportunity that doesn’t happen as often as I would like. One of my students got to give me a lesson. And it was a very important lesson to which I had to pay close attention. He was teaching me how to take his blood so I could test his blood sugar level at school before lunch.

There were many steps and he had it down really well. Dad was supervising the lesson, to make sure I learned it all correctly, but the little guy did a thorough job of it.

Later in the day when he was going home I mentioned to him that he had been my teacher today, and that really seemed to surprise him. It made me think that we should allow our students to teach us more often. I know that I will be looking for more chances to be a student!

The elementary students had a baby shower for their teacher, Elizabeth, yesterday. We had planned it over the past few weeks on her days off. What a feat. She truly had no clue. I was fairly certain that she didn’t know when she called in sick on Thursday, the day the shower was originally planned.

We had to do some fancy footwork to change it at the last minute, but it came off without a hitch. I had hidden all the supplies upstairs to bring down while the kids were outside. One little wrinkle was that it took them a long time to get ready to go out, so my preparation time was cut to about 10 minutes.

Many parents came, so we had to have a cover-up for that, too. Since folks weren’t here in time for the regular dismissal, we just said tat there was an accident on the highway that was preventing parents from reaching the school on time.

One really nice surprise was that a former student also came. Her mom found out about the shower from another parent and picked up the student from her new school and brought her out. How sweet.

I was so proud of how well all the students kept this secret.

In the Tuesday afternoon science with the kindergarteners this week we were finishing up some work on colors. They each made a bracelet of UV sensitive beads that turn from white to other colors when exposed to sunlight.

Another activity we did was the matching lesson of the chemicals in leaves that make them turn different colors in the fall. They were fairly familiar with the green chlorophyll. For orange the chemical is carotene and tannin makes brown. Purple and red are made by anthocyanin and yellow comes from xanthophyll.

It has been an exciting time in the early childhood room ever since. The chemicals in leaves lesson has been borrowed over and over from the elementary classroom. What a privilege to be able to go into the elementary to get a lesson that is not available in the early childhood class. It is a badge of honor among the kindergarteners.

Once the students know the names of all the chemicals, they can make a booklet illustrating the different colors with the appropriate labels. This is such a popular lesson! Many folks think that this might be too hard for children this young. Just ask them whether they think it is too hard. Chemicals in leaves? All in a day’s work!

We have been going through a lesson with many of the kindergarten students lately called Counting Through the Large Numeral Cards. The kindergarteners have already counted through the beads and now we are adding the symbolic component in preparation for more abstract work with the decimal system.

Yesterday I was doing the lesson with a little girl. When we reached 9000, I said, “That is all the higher we will count today.” She wanted to know why. So I explained that 10,000 would be so many beads it would be too big for us to carry. She thought about that for a moment and then said, “It would be lots of zeroes—four zeroes.” I was truly astounded. She had integrated the abstract symbols for thousands with three zeroes and extrapolated that 10,000 would have four. Oh my!

We had one of those days in the early childhood class Wednesday. It was probably one of the most “disorganized” days of the whole year. Here is what happened.

One of the lessons (that stirring lesson) was damaged so it had to be removed. It can be fixed it, but for the time being it will need to be out of the classroom. Not such a big thing, but still not positive.

The weather was warm, so we wanted to have a fire drill. We need to have an average of one drill each month, so we try to stockpile them when the weather is nice. Then we don’t have to be concerned about going outside without shoes and coats when it is cold and nasty (in case it ever gets that way this year). But just as I was going to do the dishes from snack, the phone rang. It was someone interested in learning more about the school. Not a bad thing, but it did take time.

That put me a bit behind schedule, but I was able to get everything done in time to have the fire drill. Okay, that went great. It took us a whopping 31 seconds to vacate the building. Playtime was warm and breezy and the children had a great time catching leaves that were falling.

Then it was time for lunch. One fellow was leaving before lunch, but his mom called to say that she would be late. That didn’t make him too happy, but he coped. Lunchtime was pleasant enough. But then we had two bathroom accidents! Goodness. That doesn’t happen very often and then two during lunch! Plus there were several kindergarten students absent (or having left early). That meant that we did not have our full complement of workers to help with all the after lunch jobs. Then another mom called to let us know that she was running late for after lunch pick-up.

One of those days. And that is about as bad as it gets. I love this job!

We have a lesson for the children to learn how to stir materials to mix them thoroughly. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but today I presented it to a young man who was simply captivated by it.

The lesson has four kinds of beans. After pouring each kind into a bowl, the students use a beautiful little wooden spoon to stir the beans until they are mixed. After that, of course, the beans must be separated back into their individual containers.

When I give this lesson, I also teach the names of the types of beans. We have kidney beans, black-eyed peas, pinto beans and black beans. Today my student said the name of each kind of bean as he put them back one by one. Then he mixed them again and separated them again. I think he enjoyed separating them as much as stirring them.

At any rate, for him, this lesson made quite a stir!

We have a three-year-old who is learning to cut with scissors. She practices all the time, but her hands are so small that it is hard for her to handle even the children’s size Fiskars. We use Fiskars since they are very effective and cut well. We can judge the level of her success by all the little tiny scraps of paper that find their way to the floor every day. It won’t be long before she is able to cut exactly where she wants. Then we will be able to teach her how to cut on lines and then curved lines, etc. Maybe we should mind the paper that falls to the floor. But it won’t be around for long. And with the help of all the children the floor is swept every day.

Little scraps of paper are good.

A month or so ago we received a case of Froot Loops in the mail as a promotion to encourage children to eat them. Well, that isn’t really on our agenda, but as an Earth Circle School we didn’t want to just toss them.

We have a grinding lesson that we have had in the classroom in the past and Carl had the idea to grind the Froot Loops! They are so colorful and the children just love turning the handle of the little grinder. The scary thing is how quickly we are going through twelve very large boxes of Froot Loops! But at least they were free.

Now we are going to have to think of something useful to do with all those crumbs. I’m not sure we should feed them to the birds like we do with regular cereal that has been ground. What a grind!

Today on the playground there were a few balls being used by children out in the “field.” One little fellow had been enjoying tossing the big purple ball around with some buddies while another group was more interested in kicking a soccer ball back and forth.

Some older kindergarten girls joined the younger boy with the purple ball and after a bit they had somewhat taken over the game. I looked up as the little guy was walking away from the ball group with that totally dejected body language of defeat. But a kindergarten girl came running after him carrying the ball and handed it to him to toss to them. His whole demeanor changed and he ran joyfully back to the group to play with them. Then everybody was happy.

And I got to witness one of those sweet moments that help teachers know that things are sinking in

I introduced a new clay lesson to the classroom today. Clay has been absent for some time now and I really wanted to get the children handling it again. They will ultimately be learning how to make different kinds of clay pots (pinch pots, coil pots and slab pots), but for the time being, I just want the children to become familiar with the medium.

In order to get the children to really mash that clay (actually Plasticine) I have them pinch off a marble-sized amount of a primary color and roll it into a ball to check the size. Then they choose another primary color and roll it into the appropriate-sized ball. Finally they mix the two colors together completely to make a new color. This has been very popular. We are already acquiring a supply of secondary colored clay that can be used for modeling. I can hardly wait!

To augment the process we did some additional color mixing in the kindergarten science session this afternoon. The children each received some refracting glasses to see the rainbows or separate colors in light. Then they mixed colors by using colored circles they had filled with crayons and put on spinning tops. This was lots of fun. We also mixed food coloring to make black. Another time we will use chromatography to separate black into its composite colors.

All in all it was a very colorful day!