A Road Trip With Jack and Annie

With the school year winding down Gnu decided to ask the scholars to name all of the activities throughout the entire school year that they liked.  When you put this type of task in front of the scholars you really don't know what to expect so doing this was a bit risky I thought.  After all, Gnu has spent one hundred and seventy seven days with the scholars so for them recall only a few items I'm sure would be very disappointing to her.  After a few moments of silence they started naming them and Gnu wrote them on the whiteboard.  I'll list them and when necessary elaborate on the item so you know what was going on.

• The Camp Belzar field trip, outdoor activities at a Boy Scout Camp.  They got to shoot a bow and arrow and a BB gun.  Under very close supervision. 
• Field Day, a school organized day of just having fun outdoors playing games.
• The crime scene investigation, someone entered our room, left a footprint in some flour on the floor and the scholars had to put on their detectives hat and figure out who it was.
• Basketball, Gnu played basketball a lot with them.  She taught them defensive positioning and how to pump fake and them drive to the basket.  With so many male parental units absent in the lives of our scholars this had to be fun for them.
• Our camping day in the classroom to include sleeping bags and an electric lantern.  Gnu joined all the scholars in sleeping bags and read to them stretched out on the floor.  As with camping, s'mores were made and consumed.
• Gnu's fanny pack because she kept loosing or breaking stuff.  Once the fanny pack made it's first appearance the scholars would remind her constantly to be sure she took her fanny pack anytime we left the classroom.
• Bugs, the live ones that sometimes appear in the classroom.  Gnu is actually petrified of bugs and the scholars would regularly pretend they found a bug in the room and wanted to show it to her.  There was a day when she actually left the classroom to avoid the bug.
• Shrek the Musical - a local high school production.
• The Nutcracker - another local high school production.
• The bubble gum sampling project and survey.
• Making the gumball machine for our hallway bulletin board.
• Making smoothies from scratch.  I still can't believe they never heard of a smoothie.
• The ropes course at Camp Belzar.
• The Mother's Day key chains that they made out of beads.  I picked little beads up off the floor for weeks after this project.
• Yoga to include their our labeled yoga mat.  By the end of the year they easily could name a dozen yoga positions and actually do them.
• Reading theater, The Little Red Pen plus the making of the background.
• Baking cookies from scratch.  I'm glad this one came up as it was the first classroom project way back in September of last year.
• Greek mythology and the little Greek gods they made on tongue depressors.
• Making applesauce.  This came about after reading the story of Johnny Appleseed.  Gnu brought in four different kinds of apples.  The scholar were not aware there were so many different kinds.  Like the gum project, each scholar got to smell and taste the individual apples as part of a taste test.
• Painting pumpkins.  This is one of my favorites as the pumpkins looked real nice.
• As they some times call her, Momma D, breaking her cell phone one hundred times.  This one was pretty funny as the scholars actually underlined the words one hundred times on the whiteboard.  I believe three times during the school year Gnu broke her cell iPhone.  Klutz!
• Baking muffins from scratch.

There are a couple more items for our list but I'll save them until later.  The list was pretty impressive especially with the hands on activities like making food.  These were group tasks where everyone was working in close proximity to each other and had to work together.  That may seem minor to some people but when you consider improving the scholars behavior and social skills is second only to academics, getting them to work as a team without any eruptions is a huge accomplishment.  Sitting on a three by five card right in front of me is the list of what I just entered above.  As I hold it in my hand and go over it again I can't help but smile at all of the activities that Gnu brought to the classroom for these scholars who came into this world with some pretty serious issues.  I wonder at some point in the distant future if one of these scholars, when asked who was their favorite school teacher, will say Momma D.

The author is Mary Pope Osborne and the book series is called The Magic Tree House.  In this book, Jack and his sister Annie venture to Egypt in a book called Mummies In the Morning.  For the record, this is a chapter book and it is the last academic task for the year.  I like the chapter book as it gave each of the scholars a chance to read out loud plus the chapters were short.  One theme from the story, as Jack and Annie were on their magical adventure, was bread.  According to the story, bread was a popular food item in ancient Egypt so what do you think Gnu decided to do?  Correct, let's make some bread from scratch in the classroom.  It was a pretty simple recipe, basically flour and water and I think some salt but that didn't matter to the scholars.  After all, they are making bread and doing a fine job of getting the flour all over themselves and half the classroom.  The best part to observe from my view at the back of the room was when they got to knead the bread.  The shorter scholars, in order to knead properly, climbed on top of Gnu's desk so they could do a better job.  At one point, MiniJ decided that pounding on the dough with his fists was the best way to knead the dough.  With the kneading process completed it was time to shape the bread, put it into the bread pans (3) and send it off to the kitchen for baking. As in the past, the guy with the least experience cooking anything was in charge of baking the bread.  The end result was edible bread. 

Just past the half way point of Mummies In the Morning the word sarcophagus was introduced to the scholars.  I was surprised at how many of the scholars were familiar with the word, especially Grrr! our first grader who can't read.  As the story continues eventually the topic turns to mummies and their burial in a sarcophagus.  As a side reading, Gnu read to them the process used by the Egyptians to prepare a body for mummification.  The details of the process were pretty gross but the scholars were fascinated by the process.  I'll give you one detail on the grossness.  You take a small hooked shaped object, shove it up the nose of the deceased, turn it a little and then pull it out to see what you get. Then you repeat the process until the skull is empty. Now that is disgusting.  At this point we have a sarcophagus and mummies so guess again what Gnu does next?  A small brown sandwich sized paper bag is used for the sarcophagus and the scholars got to create their own design on the bag.  For the mummies Gnu cut up white tee-shirts into strips, created a mixture of water and flour and then dipped the tee-shirts into the mixture of water and flour and wrapped the tee-shirt strips around our bodies.  What were the bodies?  Barbie dolls.  As with bread making Gnu's desk and my desk were a disaster.  So were the scholars shirts and pants but who cares they were working together is small groups and they were having a lot of fun. 

A couple brief items and then I'm out.  First, the mummies were made on a Friday so they had to dry over the weekend before the scholars could take them home.  Big mistake as on Monday morning when I arrived the classroom stunk and we had quite a gathering of flies circling our mummies.  Next is the Big B and my trip to her office.  When I walked in she was sorting through some papers.  When she found what she wanted she handed it to me.  I didn't even need to look at it as I knew what it was.  With the paper in my hand I reminded her of my conditions.  She said as far as she knew Gnu was returning next year.  I said good, we have a deal.  So I set the paper down on her desk and signed my name.  In that brief signing moment I committed to returning to the classroom again next year with the caveat that Gnu has to be the teacher.

Thunder is rumbling off to the west, rain is falling and I need to head inside.  Thanks for continue to follow the life of an old guy that will have another full school year with a view from the back of the room.