Mission Accomplished!!!

Today was the last day of school. Phew! The desks are clean and stacked and the room looks a little bare without all those 5th graders and their stuff.

I am truly beyond exhaustion right now, but it is a good feeling. I hope my students learned something this year. I hope they enjoyed school at least a little bit. It was a good year, but I am glad summer vacation is here so I can have a little bit of time for myself and my family.

Thank you to all the parents out there who supported me and the kids this year. Have an adventure-filled summer and I will see everyone next fall!

Turtle Races

Disclaimer: No turtles were harmed in this race. The turtles were made out of cardboard!

I always end the year with a fun activity called turtle races. The kids design some fun turtles out of cardboard and we race them on a string stretched across the classroom floor. It is a double elimination tournmanet and takes most of the afternoon. Our big winner this year was Grace. Colton was second and Jaylen was third. Way to go, turtles and racers!

Patriots Win!!!

We have been "fighting" the Revolutionary War in my classroom the last month. The students were evenly divided into the British and the Patriots. They chose their leaders (King George and George Washington) and we moved the desks so each group was on a different side of the room. The kids hung flags from the ceiling marking their side.

As we read about each battle that occurred in the war, we had a mini battle in our classroom. These battles included relay races and crazy challenges that had the class competing against each other. The final battle (the Battle of Yorktown) was a heated kickball game. I had to keep reminding the class that this wasn't a real war and we still needed to be kind and respectful of the other side. (Some of the kids took it a little too seriously.)

After the scores were tallied from all the battles, the Patriots came out on top - just like in the real war!

Climbing Wall

The National Guard brought a climbing wall to school today. The kids got to climb it during their physical education class. Fortunately I chose to wear a skirt today, so I stayed firmly on the ground. (Good planning on my part!)

Spring Wildflower Hike

John Latimer visited our class today to take the kids out into the woods to search for wildflowers. John has a radio show on KAXE 91.7 radio in Grand Rapids where he shares phenology information with his listeners. He visits us about three times a year and we call in our observations to his show on Tuesday mornings.

Today we saw many beautiful wildflowers including wild ginger, marsh marigolds, bloodroot and violets.

Take Me to Your Leader

The final project for our astronomy unit was to research a planet and create an alien that could survive on that planet. Each student had to come up with at least three adaptations for his/her alien. We had reflective shields for the great amount of sunlight and warm fuzzy coats for the cold temperatures. There were hover crafts for floating above the gaseous atmosphere and beacons to attract other aliens. The class did a great job showing what they learned about each planet.

Look at the Birdies!

The Hill City archery team is gone to Louisville, Kentucky today and tomorrow, so I am down to nine kids. We have had a lot of fun with such a little class. In reading/writing the kids have been writing and practicing "hat skits." Each group was given a bag of hats and props and they had to make up a play that we are filming for when the other kids come back.

In science we took a long walk in the woods. I have 15 pairs of binoculars, so I took them out for the kids to use today. We didn't see much, but it made a cute picture.

Track and Field Day

Track and Field Day is a tradition here at Hill City School. I have been teaching here 16 years and I can remember 16 different Track and Field Days. The fifth graders compete against the 6th graders which always puts them at a disadvantage, but they try so hard!

The best part of the day is the tug-of-war contest. We do fifth grade against sixth grade, kids against parents, boys against girls, and teachers against students. Today was super muddy, which made it even more fun!

Solar System Models

We have been studying the solar system in science. As a pretest, I had each student make a model of our solar system out of clay. This showed me what they already knew and some common misconceptions.

The last few weeks have been filled with knowledge of the planets, moons and other celestial bodies in our solar system. Today the class got to re-do their solar system models as a kind of final test. It was interesting for them to see what they had learned in the last few days as they changed the order, size and colors of the planets in their new and improved models.