Wonderful, Wild Wednesday

Here's the "Wild" part of my Wednesday:

We candled our eggs and have several "yes" eggs and a bunch more "maybes". The "yes" eggs are ones where we clearly saw the air sac, healthy blood vessels and/or movement. The kids were enchanted by the movement. I think we could sit and candle eggs all day without them uttering a single complaint lol! Unfortunately I can't get our room as dark as I would like, some of the eggs are really thick shelled (the blue and brown ones), and several of my kiddos were very tender-hearted (mostly boys, go figure!) so rather than putting iffy eggs in the "no" pile we left them in the incubator as a "maybe" lol. The plan is to candle them again on Friday and make a final decision before I leave for vacation. They should start hatching the day I come back, so I imagine it will be a crazy day all around!

The eggs on the left are chicken eggs, the big ones on the right side of the picture are ducks but those take a week longer to hatch than chickens, so there wasn't much to see today!

 

Our caterpillars are all in their chrysalises but one fell down! The info sheet said to just leave it at the bottom of the cage, so we are crossing our fingers that a butterfly will still emerge. We are also crossing our fingers that they emerge on Friday rather than over the weekend, but it's a 7-10 day window so we might not be lucky.

Our praying mantis egg sac shows no sign of life. I'm not too worried as the last time we had praying mantises the egg sac hatched without warning and we suddenly had 100+ little guys in the cage.

The seeds that we planted sprouted - or at least 2 varieties did. We planted bell peppers, spinach, impatiens and coleus and only 2 different types of plants have come up. I have no idea which two lol, so I just told the kids "you get what you get". These are going to be our Mother's Day presents - each student will get a pot to decorate and transplant one of our seedlings into it!

 

Here is the "wonderful" part of my Wednesday:

In January I got a new little guy who was way behind my others. Apparently his previous teacher said something to the effect of "I have 24 other students so I don't have time to work with him one-on-one." and "If I do it for him I'd have to do it for everyone."  Not surprisingly, he was something of a discipline problem at his old school and spent several days in in-house suspension and was working towards getting put in a behavioral program. Oh, and the "intervention" that his teacher tried was to give him Mountain Dew. Now, this might help those children with undiagnosed adhd (I've never tried it, so I can't say yes or no) but I do know that this child is not hyperactive at all. So, picture a normal little boy, being fed Mountain Dew at school and then being punished for being disruptive. Fair much? Anyways, during his first week with me, he sat for 20+ minutes quietly working and produced this:

The prompt was "How I make my favorite sandwich" and his illustration clearly showed a sandwich being made, so I knew he understood the assignment. When I asked him to read this back to me, he looked completely puzzled and then tried to sound it all out, not understanding that he hadn't actually written real words. My heart sunk, because I had no idea how I was going to help him. 

Well, we've been working in class and I've had some of his peers helping him, but nothing really earth shattering. His behavior has been really good too, he is not a discipline problem at all. Today however, he was having a bad day and got discouraged about his practice spelling test which he didn't do well on. This translated into him scribbling all over a page in his Hatching Packet so I took it away from him. He slunk off and I knew he wasn't doing what he was supposed to, but he wasn't interfering with everyone else working so I left him alone for a bit to cool down. Then I wandered over to see what he was up to and saw that he was writing on a dry erase board. I heard him sounding out a word so I took a closer look at the board and almost started to cry:

In case you can't translate it, that last sentence is "You're so pretty." and I love, love, love how he spelled pretty! 

Oh my goodness, I am tearing up right now looking at this picture. I asked him if I could show it around and he said yes - probably relieved that he wasn't getting in trouble for writing on a dry erase board instead of doing his work lol! I showed it off to all the teachers in our hall so they can make a big deal over him next time they see him, then I snapped this picture so I would always remember it. I cannot believe the progress that he has made in just 4 months!


And friends, I'm not kidding myself. I don't think I actually did anything that special for him. I don't think I have a magical instructional method that is responsible for this turn around. I just think he finally felt like someone thought he could learn and was worth the extra time it takes him to think things through.

Okay, before I start blubbering like a baby. I have to share one more thing. Way back in October I shared an organizational idea I got from my neighbor.

Well lately it's been getting a ton of views through Pinterest, and today someone left a comment wondering whether I had the divider labels and book list for sale or download. The book list is something you'll have to come up with on your own, because everyone will have different books, but I can share the labels. These are actually the labels I made for my books when I organized them over Christmas Break. There are 57 different labels, so I think I've got almost every topic covered, plus I added labels for all of my favorite authors as I like to keep those books together for author studies. Let me know if I'm missing an item or author though! Just print them onto colored card stock and laminate them, then you can use them to divide your books in the rubbermaid tubs! If you'd like to download the dividers for free, just click here to grab them in my TPT store!