Directions...What directions???

WOW!!! Where has the time gone? It seems like forever since I have had a chance to blog! (Just because I haven't been blogging doesn't mean that I have stopped reflecting on my effectiveness as a teacher on a daily basis.) Where to start...I don't even know! OH!!! Since my last post, I have went from being a "long term substitute" to signing a temporary contract for the remainder of this school year! I strongly feel that this is one step closer to being a full-time teacher in my current school district!!! Also, since my last post, my wife and I have started remodeling our house. I realize that this is no easy task since I am a full time teacher, a full time father, a full time husband, a Sunday school teacher, etc..... So---Without further ado, here is my post for today:

This post actually comes from a lesson that I have learned while doing renovations at my house. We are doing everything ourselves. We have painted, removed carpet, removed base boards, and the list goes on and on... We even decided to lay the new flooring on our own. My father-in-law is a jack of all trades and he has layed flooring in many different settings, so it only seemed natural to have him guide us in the right direction with our flooring. I guess I should say what we are laying, we are putting down wooden laminate floors. He came over last weekend and got us started. We got a few rows down and we were feeling that what we were doing was just a "little" too difficult. We have watched many home improvement shows and it never appears that laying this type of flooring is as difficult as we were making it. We continued with trial and error for a good 2 hours. We were about to give up when we got the bright idea to youtube how to lay our flooring. After pulling up a video and watching it several times, we noticed that we were laying the flooring backwards (YES BACKWARDS...JUST SO YOU KNOW THERE IS A FRONTWARDS AND A BACKWARDS!!!) So we decided to start laying the floors the way that the video showed. We had to pull up everything that we had already done to correct our mistakes. We got several rows down again and we started to thing (again) that this was still just a bit harder that we had thought it should be. (So if you are keeping track we have been working for about 4 hours now with LITTLE progress.) We watched the video again and there was something that the gentleman in the video kept saying ( I think he said it 4 times in the video and we watched it about 6 times, so yes...we heard this statement about 20 times). He kept saying: "There are several ways to lay this type of flooring, so make sure you consult your flooring instructions that came with your flooring". About the 20th time that we heard this statement, we decided to actually find the directions and read them. There was one key step that we were missing, so we had to pull up everything that we had just put down and start the process all over again. THE THIRD TIME WAS THE CHARM!!! We slowly started making progress towards getting our flooring layed properly. After reading and following the directions, the process seemed to go much more smoothly. It was brought to my attention that "if we had read the directions before we started we would be done with the floor by now"....I couldn't argue with that fact... And all of the sudden it hit me, I tell my students several times on a daily basis that they need to read their directions on their assignments. I tell them that everything will go better if they do that first thing....I started to think (WELL YEAH YOU BIG DUMMY, Practice what you preach!!!). Of course, when I got to school on Monday, I let my students know that directions are a part of every day life and if directions are given, it is best to read them before you start your given task. I guess that you are never too old, or too professional to read directions. After all--They are given for a reason.

I know this post doesn't have too much to do with school things, but I felt that if I am writing to reflect then this is a perfect example of something that I needed to reflect upon. I hope you all are having an amazing February and I look forward to seeing you back here soon. I have some great things that I am going to be posting within the next few days...so stay tuned.

Have a blessed day and don't forget to leave me a comment to let me know what you think of my blog! If you really like the blog...become a follower!!!

Dirt Babies

I first heard about "dirt babies" from Dr. Robbie McCarty at S.W.O.S.U. and when I decided last week to teach about the environment and the ecosystem, this seemed like a WONDERFUL idea to get the children engaged and interactive with science. If you do not know what a dirt baby is, stick with me and I will let you know...there will also be PLENTY of tutorial pictures to accompany this post. Let me start off by giving you a glimpse of our finished project....just to wet your appetite.

Dirt babies are basically "homemade" chia pets. The children get a kick out of observing the growth of the "hair" on their dirt baby; they also LOVE to give their dirt babies hair cuts!!! Since we were talking about living things, non-living things, individuals, populations, and communities; myself and the other 4th grade teacher thought this would be a neat way to bring all of the information together. In my classroom, as we were making our dirt babies, I was assessing if the students knew if each item added was a living or non-living thing. The children seem to have picked up on this lesson pretty well. Now...without further ado, I will start discussing how to actually create a dirt baby of your own!

You will need:

--Knee High Stockings (do not get the ones with the reinforced toe)

--Grass Seed

--Potting Soil

--A Cup

--Water

IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE!!! For step by step instructions...continue reading.

First thing that you will need is some grass seed. This can be any type of grass seed. We got ours from our local conservation district (Thanks for the donation!!!) You will want to put about 1 tablespoon of the grass seed into the toe of the knee high stocking. 

Then, you will want to put in about 1 cup of potting soil.

After you pour in your dirt, your knee high stocking will start SAGGING!!!

Be VERY careful not to make a big mess with the potting soil! I accidentally spilled some while filling a dirt baby. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS NEXT SENTENCE!!!!! If you do make a mess, go to your janitor and ask if you can get something to clean up the mess yourself!!! If you haven't figured out yet, your janitor makes the WORLD GO ROUND! Do not ruffle the feather's of your janitor or he/she can make your life no so good. When I made my mess, I told my janitor that I would clean it up, but he offered to go ahead and get it....He did mention that potting soil is not nearly as bad as glitter.

After pushing all of the dirt into a ball, you will want to tie a knot into the stocking so you can form your dirt baby's head. After you have tied your knot, you will want to cut off some of the excess knee high fabric. Be sure to leave enough length on the stocking so that it can reach the water in the cup. Your knee high fabric will actually wick the water to the plant, so if you make sure there is enough water in your cup, you won't have to worry about watering your dirt baby on a regulary basis! We used construction paper to make outfits for our dirt babies and we hot glued googly eyes to them as well. I will give you another shot of our finished product. Both of us 4th grade teachers put our dirt babies on the same table outside of our classroom. My class's dirt babies have bigger heads (on the right)...but it is a good representation to let you know that there is absolutely no single way to milk a cow.

I hope that you have learned something today and might even try this in your own classroom! Thanks for sticking with me today! I hope to see you all back here soon. If you like what you see...FOLLOW ME!!!