Monday Make-up

I'm making up for lost time today. I forgot how busy a teacher's life gets once school resumes. How do you folks do it who, not only teach, but also have to juggle family time on top of blogging and TpT-ing? Bless you for all that you do! I am behind on grading papers, cleaning house, doing laundry, and blogging. It seems all I do lately is a hurried post with a few pictures... that's today as well. I'm sharing three things with lots of pictures each.

FIRST... Our school did something for the first time: we all participated (K-12) in the Kick-It for Cancer fundraiser! If you are not familiar with this endeavor, please check it out here. It's a fundraiser that was begun by a youngster who suffered with cancer and wanted a way to help other children like him. His idea was to host a kickball game wherein the participants would pay-to-play and the money would be donated to juvenile cancer research. The idea went viral when the Cleveland Indians heard about the game and stepped up to bat, promoting the fundraiser and raising a great deal of money each year.

We had a GREAT time today, in spite of the busing situation (I refuse to talk about this and spoil a terrific event), as is evident from the smiling faces and busy/active children.

SECOND... I'm participating in the September Photo Challenge on Instagram and have been keeping up fairly well over there. I'm sharing the photos here as well so that you have a peek into the life of an old experienced, sixth-grade teacher who still LOVES what she does! Here are days 11-15.

THIRD... Each week I've been trying to involve my sixers in a hands-on science investigation. This week we investigated the physical and chemical properties of matter by simply burning a small amount of sugar over a candle flame. By experiencing the phase changes (from solid to a liquid to a gas) and noticing the change in color, smell, and texture of the sugar, my sixers came to the conclusion that what was left in the mini-aluminum pan was no longer sugar. What it was they were unsure; however, once I showed them the chemical formula for sugar (C12H22O11), they quickly deduced that the hydrogen and oxygen burned off in the form of water vapor or steam, and what was left was carbon. Tomorrow they will be recording important vocabulary and key concepts in their science interactive notebooks that relates to this investigation, while I locate all my tools for this week's project: graduated cylinder, balance, weights, spring scale, centimeter rulers, etc.

And there you have it... my make-up work! PHEW!