Progress...little by little

At the beginning of February at basketball practice {most of you already know I coached a middle school team again this year} I went to catch/stop a misfired ball that was headed towards a player's head and received a direct hit to tip of a finger.  Taking it as just a jam I didn't think too much of it until it started to hurt even more a few weeks after the injury.  It got so that I could not think of using that hand {of course it was my right hand} without a lot of pain--the kind that makes it very hard to think straight.  I tried to let my students write for me as much as possible on the boards, and of course use the left hand as much as possible.  It all sounds very ridiculous now.  Life has been busy lately and the hand injury was the least of my concerns.  I knew the injury was in need of some TLC,  but didn't take the time for it.  If anything, this week off has been about remembering that I shouldn't wait until things can't wait anymore.  Turns out it was a broken knuckle that is totally broken and not healing correctly.  Now it's splinted and propped and iced...something how such a minor thing can hurt so much!

At first I was thinking that this issue would slow down getting the garden back together--something on the top of the agenda during this week off of work.  All that rye {the grass/out of control cover crop growing wild in the garden since early January} would take some work to remove.  It was probably a blessing in disguise!  I don't take the heat well and with the temperatures up in the high 80's and 90's for the first time this year I probably would have done myself in working non-stop weeding and planting.  Instead I've been tackling small portions at a time {mostly one handed}.  Things have been very manageable this way, and if things aren't as neat and tidy as they should be or if I have to take more time later on to get those weeds I've missed so be it.

What you see up above is a finally planted sweet potato bed {sunflower sprouts at the end being guarded from veracious birds} and a sun eagerly waiting being covered again by another round of climbing vines--in this case patty pan summer squash.  Progress.

What you see below is someone who has an excuse to sit back and take it easy inside reading seed catalogs and taking in stuff like this {I swear this was not the inspiration for the video lesson projects--we started those earlier this month}, plus this and this, finish reading this, and go out to a movie, chill during a birthday celebration, and refill those bird feeders.  Progress of a different kind!

Sand Hill catalog here...they offer quite a variety of Orpingtons

and then the niece has been plenty of help relaxing...

Plants at Work Too

I have always done some sort of growing in the classroom with the kids.  This year we're expanding to actually trying to garden.  Creating a school garden down here is not as easy as other places where the climate isn't as dry and the dirt hard-packed and lacking nutrients.  Funding is also an issue.  Right now grants available seem to trend towards technology, not digging in the dirt and emending poor soil even if it is tied to math and science and a number of other things.  I am attempting a few other avenues to help enrich our garden, but right now have spent about $20 for soil and have brought in my own seed stash and planting equipment.  We're basically going to grow our plants right in the bags of soil that are out back of our wing of the school with a not so elaborate layer of bird netting camped out over them.  Once the plants start growing it will look a lot more eye appealing!

We'll be using these plants for tons of "academic" studies, especially our Life Science focus that spans from now until Winter Break, and most likely keep various things growing beyond this.  The class is in plant clubs including beans, radishes, onions, squash, broccoli,  cauliflower, beets, peas, and lettuce and quite thrilled over what they're growing.  We're in the waiting stages right now and watering a lot and impatiently scanning the soil for sprouts.  So far we have some cauliflower sprouts that the Cauliflower Club won't stop talking about.

yes, the ginger pot came to school where I'm making the kids take care of the new root planted in there

Flowers for the Classroom

Flowers add to the garden in so many ways.  Right now there are only the zinnias and the two sunflowers.  Hopefully in another month there will be many more in quantity and variety.  Cutting them for the house and classroom is something I love to do in the early morning.  The classroom has two flower vases...one is really just a jar.  The kids absolutely love the fresh flowers, so it was a must I had to supply a new stash to kick off our week after having some time off from school, and especially to brighten up a day where we would be taking those end of 1st quarter tests all morning--I know at least I certainly needed flowers to cheer me up about that!  The rule is that one cannot touch the flowers, but smell we can.  Out of all the flowers they love the peppermint zinnias, but the little funny sunflowers I brought in today received several complements too.

love rolling up the "dress" pants and cutting flowers from the garden before work...
one new peppermint ready, but I left it because of its position next to a flower bud getting ready to open

off course Jewel is always curious about what I'm doing out in the garden

the flowers after a day at school...no that kid is not shoved in the corner-
his desk leg broke so we pushed it out of the way and he got to sit all day at the blue table
where he stuck his nose in the flowers more than once--who could blame him?!

Smooth vs. Toothed Leafs

I've had some time to think minus the daily blur...

There's a lot of things being home will allow.  Hearing preschool aged and younger children play in the neighborhood backyards while their older counterparts are busy at school is magical, listening to NPR programs at their actual scheduled times kind of feels like quite the indulgence.  Then, of course there's the inevitable turn of my mind towards cool things I can do with my 10 and 11 year olds as the school year finishes up, plus the excitement of planning for next years 9 and 10 year olds-doing a lot of that {one year makes such a difference!}.  Look what I've been pondering...


Prehistoric Climate Change and Why It Matters Today

...smooth versus toothed leafs of course!

I love what the Smithsonian has to offer online.  Its just not in the budget to actually go to the Smithsonian with my students, let alone many of the great museums around locally.  But we can get a taste of a visit.  Stuff like the smooth versus toothed leaf talk can lead to so many other things...writing stories about what it might be like if the temps changed 10 degrees, sorting smooth and toothed trees in the tree field guide, staging a fossil dig, pressing leafs, skits about what life may be like, career investigations {lots of kids say they want to do this, of course, after seeing someone digging up fossils}...you get the idea.  Those kids that love numbers even get off on the equations presented in the little museum segment {yeah, there are kids whose brains love and see the world through numbers!}.

The gist of this leaf thing is that sawtooth edged leafs equal a cooler climate and smooth edged leafs are found in warmer climates.  As the temperature average goes up as a result of more CO2 in the atmosphere there will be less sawtooth varieties and more smooth.  Think of what that means.  I love this stuff.

Next year we may even have some actual trees the class can go look at.

grape sawtooth leafs

raspberry sawtooth leafs

Lemon leaf...I thought for sure the lemon would be
smooth, but are those teeth?  Maybe its just my tree and its difficulties.....