Late night work, with a side of ice cream.

Everyone who knows Chris and me knows we stay up way too late at night. We are the epitome of what it means to be a night owl. All our best work happens at night. When it’s summer time, I’ll be up till 4am a lot of the time. I just love getting things done at night. So does Chris. Though he is much more likely to stay up that late and still get up at  reasonable hour the next morning. (I cannot say the same of myself.)

Last night Chris swiveled away from his side of the desk and suggested an ice cream break. At 10pm. Heck, yes. So off to Albertsons we went, me in my pajamas, and poured over the Dreyers options until finally realizing the Breyers was, for the one time in the existence of ice cream, cheaper than the Dreyers.

Best part of this story is when I came home from work today and opened the fridge to find the two tubs of ice cream melting all over the shelf. That silly guy was a little distracted by his ice cream prospects, I suppose.

This guy...

… Has the weirdest sleeping positions. This one is the, “It’s too hot to sleep normally with the sun streaming in this window, but I’m going to lay here anyway.”

Saturday Night

Baby sis came over tonight to talk works cited pages and exit loan quizzes. She graduates college next month, what the heck?

I seriously can’t believe she turns 25 this month. Wow. She used to be just 5.

Sigh. Why must we all get old?

Project Life: March

We had a ton of fun visiting Salvation Mountain and the Salton Sea over the weekend. We actually ended up visiting Salvation Mountain on the day there was a memorial for the artist, which was crazy. For the memorial, the volunteers were passing out paint cups so visitors could go in and freshen up the paint as needed. Very cool experience.

Memory games + a love/hate relationship with the laminator

I’ve really been trying to come up with new activities for my classes. I don’t think I worksheet them to death or anything, but I do want them to come to math class everyday wondering what new thing they’re going to get to do. Some days are notes and straight up learning. Some days are all review. And some days there’s a perfect balance of new learning and activity that go hand in hand.

So technically scientific notation is not “new” learning for these guys. Or at least it shouldn’t be. But since we switched to common core in the middle of the year, and it’s officially an 8th grade standard now, I felt I needed to throw some sci no review into our polynomials unit. Scientific notation and exponents fit nicely into the beginning of polynomials, I feel. And my kids seem to have a good grasp on scientific notation right now, though we’re still struggling with nailing down those exponents. 

The Memory game was easy to make in InDesign. I made two versions. The blue, pictured above, is the beginner game, where all problems can be simplified by the kids in their heads. Things like 8 x 10^5 and such. The advanced decks are printed on orange and require some scratch paper because they consist of multiplication of expressions in scientific notation. And while it looks like you can see through to the other side, one of my kiddos quickly discovered the backs actually just picked up some of the ink from other cards while they were in a pile waiting to be laminated.

Speaking of lamination, let’s talk pros and cons. While I really like seeing these cards all nice and slick looking on the tables, the days of work to cut them out is kind of a pain. And I don’t even cut them out. My minions do. 

Anyway, I seriously had kids on the floor in the back of every class for two days cutting those things out. They love it, but I don’t love the constant mess and how seriously long it takes to prep for one activity. And with 8th graders, there’s no guarantee that even lamination is going to save these cards for next year’s kiddos. I’ve found myself much more often forgoing the lamination and just printing on card stock, sending a kid to the chopper to slice them out unevenly (perfection is overrated in 8th grade), and just warning the kids in each class that they have to last all day. And they always do, though they’re definitely more worse for the wear at the end of that 4th mod. Then I just toss them in the recycle bin. No storage. No planning weeks ahead to send them off to the laminator (ours isn’t on our campus). No planning days ahead for minions to cut them out. 

To sum up, laminating is overrated. But it’s so pretty and shiny! But it’s time consuming. Bleh. I guess I’ll keep my love/hate relationship with it for now.

Memory games + a love/hate relationship with the laminator

I've really been trying to come up with new activities for my classes. I don't think I worksheet them to death or anything, but I do want them to come to math class everyday wondering what new thing they're going to get to do. Some days are notes and straight up learning. Some days are all review. And some days there's a perfect balance of new learning and activity that go hand in hand.

So technically scientific notation is not "new" learning for these guys. Or at least it shouldn't be. But since we switched to common core in the middle of the year, and it's officially an 8th grade standard now, I felt I needed to throw some sci no review into our polynomials unit. Scientific notation and exponents fit nicely into the beginning of polynomials, I feel. And my kids seem to have a good grasp on scientific notation right now, though we're still struggling with nailing down those exponents. 

The Memory game was easy to make in InDesign. I made two versions. The blue, pictured above, is the beginner game, where all problems can be simplified by the kids in their heads. Things like 8 x 10^5 and such. The advanced decks are printed on orange and require some scratch paper because they consist of multiplication of expressions in scientific notation. And while it looks like you can see through to the other side, one of my kiddos quickly discovered the backs actually just picked up some of the ink from other cards while they were in a pile waiting to be laminated.

Speaking of lamination, let's talk pros and cons. While I really like seeing these cards all nice and slick looking on the tables, the days of work to cut them out is kind of a pain. And I don't even cut them out. My minions do. 

Anyway, I seriously had kids on the floor in the back of every class for two days cutting those things out. They love it, but I don't love the constant mess and how seriously long it takes to prep for one activity. And with 8th graders, there's no guarantee that even lamination is going to save these cards for next year's kiddos. I've found myself much more often forgoing the lamination and just printing on card stock, sending a kid to the chopper to slice them out unevenly (perfection is overrated in 8th grade), and just warning the kids in each class that they have to last all day. And they always do, though they're definitely more worse for the wear at the end of that 4th mod. Then I just toss them in the recycle bin. No storage. No planning weeks ahead to send them off to the laminator (ours isn't on our campus). No planning days ahead for minions to cut them out. 

To sum up, laminating is overrated. But it's so pretty and shiny! But it's time consuming. Bleh. I guess I'll keep my love/hate relationship with it for now.

Project Life: First Week(s) of February

Things that happened this week:

We started using kale as salad bases * We went to Jen and Justin’s with dinner for them, then brainstormed their family photo session and blew up pink balloons for Trinity’s birthday the next day * my students’ schedules switched around for the new semester and I lost my awesome homeroom * Got a haircut and color * Worked from bed, with Jack’s help * Completed 2nd quarter parent-teacher conferences.

Supplies: Liz Tamanaha’s Project Life Midnight Edition and Elise Blaha Cripe’s Seafoam Edition, Ali Edwards’ CK font, arrow card from Just Izzy Design (color altered by me).