What Do Kilimanjaro, Otter Creek, and the FBI Have in Common?

This afternoon we had a very nice visit from the Frenzel family. Maria and her father, Eric, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro last month on an expedition. Maria is one of my students from a couple years ago, and when I saw news of their trip in Africa, I pulled a couple of strings and asked them to come in and speak to the class. Because of Maria's schedule, this had to happen during Math (sorry, Nick! sorry, Tess!), but it was well worth it. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your stories of your safari as well as your cautionary tales of altitude sickness!

So I realize now that I sent the kids home with no homework. If your child tells you there's no homework tonight, they're not lying! Oddly enough, it has happened. Don't worry, tomorrow they will have some for certain. They do have two open-book tests on Friday (Social Studies and Reading).

See below for a little bit of news on the research papers. We're a bit behind the other classes, but I want these to be pretty high quality works, so I'm taking my sweet time. I've approved of some of the outlines and given them the green flag to work on their sloppy copies. Some of them need to do a bit more research, so I've been helping them out by printing some stuff off of the internet.

We didn't do any proper Math lesson today, as much as we need to keep up with our current pace, but we did work on our recently-neglected Otter Creek math materials. These kids are going to know their Math facts if it kills me!

Oh, man, I almost forgot that the FBI came this morning (yes, the real Federal Bureau of Investigation). They presented the third, fourth, and fifth grades all an award for being the top class to take the test on the national level. Us: #1 in the USA! Woohooo! We had the spy camera--er, whoops, I mean the trophy--in our classroom throughout the day, but now I've given it over to Mrs. Melchi, because she's the one who really earned it along with the kids. All I did was walk up and smile awkwardly as they took our picture.

And THAT, my friends, is a day! Over and out!