22.5 Days

        As of tomorrow at 9am my class will be done with the standardized testing.

                                                  Whoopee!!!

       That means we have twenty-two and a half days of school left. The half day is very important ask any teacher. There is no way you want to round that last day up and make it twenty-three when twenty-two and a half sounds a little shorter. Lucky me because I am currently 8 months pregnant with my third darling son I only have seventeen days left.

   The end of the school year is always a slightly chaotic time full of checking-out, cleaning-out, organizing, packing and changes to room location or subject area. While I am waiting to see if I will be teaching fifth grade science again next year (keeping my fingers crossed that I am) and to what room I will be moving (if they let me know before I leave that is) I get to have some fun with my class and try to coast through the last few days with a sense of calm and serenity.

    Or not.

     The science teachers in my building completed all of our curriculum about a month ago. After flipping back through my lesson plan book I can actually pin point the last day I taught anything other than test review was Feb. 29th. I am so ready to do something new and exciting! A few of us decided to focus on health and nutrition the last month of school and collaborated to create a really exciting unit. We will be starting daily stretching exercises and the keeping of a food and exercise log next Monday. The classes will get to learn how to read nutrition labels, locate portion sizes, sugar content, and additional helpful info about the food they are consuming. They will even get to audit our school cafeteria to see how the menu fares nutritionally. I am going to have my classes look at some articles on the spread of childhood obesity and they will brainstorm some ways to combat that in their own lives. Then for the grand finale of the year sandwiched between field trips and such they will get to go outside and play some "lifetime sports". A Lifetime sport is something like golf that they can play throughout their lives not just while they are young and in school. The teachers will be teaching them some golf techniques, croquet, badminton, tennis, horseshoes, and a few others. Sounds like Science will be nice and fun for the last twenty-two and a half days.