scaling the ten foot fence

I love teaching, I really do. There are days, like today, when a situation is really stressful at the time, and later on you can laugh about it. This morning, I did an activity with my 3rd graders where I wrote music notes on easter eggs and had two kids from each class hide the eggs outside for the rest of the class to find. I guess that it didn't occur to me to tell them NOT to hide the eggs inside the 10 foot chain link fence surrounding the electrical box. That's LOCKED! I keep forgetting that kids don't have common sense, though. So out comes my class, I tell them to go find the eggs, and the next thing I know, I hear a thud and one of my kids is clutching his ankle FROM INSIDE THE LOCKED FENCE. One of the boys climbed the fence to get the eggs, then JUMPED into the electrical area, spraining his foot in the landing. He's locked in, and can't get out because his foot hurts too bad to climb. I had to send two kids to the office to get someone to unlock him so that we could take him to the nurse. Geez. Does it even sound like I have a valid excuse for the principal?

Give me some chocolate.

Snow Recorder fight

Here's my snow/recorder experiment: take one class of really crazy 3rd graders, add plastic whistling devices, shove snow into them, and try to see who could melt the snow out of them the fastest with their "Darth Vader" breath. Result--one broken recorder, lots of melted snow in the room, children that swear they have frostbitten fingers, and the highlight of the experience is watching Mrs. Fleming's recorder "poop" snow. I wish that you could have been there. But then again, maybe you're glad.