Back from Colorado

Luckily there were no flight delays coming home from Colorado Springs so even though I was tired from all the travels today was a really good day. Our morning time is starting to come together. This is a big week in that many of the routines we do all year long are just starting this week. This includes weekly math, take home tasks, and morning work.
This year I am doing spelling as morning work. I think I am really going to like doing it that way. Each day the kids will have one or two spelling related tasks to complete when they come into the room. On Friday this will be slightly different in that they will actually begin to work on their skill portion of the spelling test.
Take Home Tasks have been a struggle for me in the past. Every year we have done them I have required parents to sign them. They are designed to be done with an adult. This has caused some problems. A lot of times they would come back not signed and even more disheartening was that I felt like, especially later in the year, that parents were just signing them and not even looking at it with their kids. So today in class we talked about this and as a class came up with a new way of handeling these. The Take Home Task will be assigned on Monday and will be due on Thursday. Many of the skills on the Take Home Task are exactly what will be on the test. We are going to check them as a class on Thursday so that the kids know if they made errors and how to correct them. Then they should be well prepared for the spelling test on Friday. As far as signatures go, we discussed that I still want the parents to sign them but that it is not required. I only want parents to sign them if they actually work together on it. If they are signed and worked together, the kids get one point of extra credit.
We started science today with an experiment that is very similar to one that I will be doing while on the Zero G flight. It involved mixing oil and water. We are letting it set tonight to see if it separates even more. I think the results of this experiment in zero gravity will really surprise the kids.
We didn’t get as far today in Social Studies as I wanted. We only briefly touched on the Cardinal directions. (You know, that is what you get if you ask Albert Pujols how to get to the stadium . . . Cardinal directions . . . HA HA).