Remember that child from hell in my first class? The one who got suspended three times in the first grade, stabbed another kid with a pencil, pulled over an easel in the middle of class, and initiated me into my illustrious career of ducking chairs?

Yeah, he's old enough to DRIVE now.

You're welcome.

Science is hard.

Is it Coachella yet?

I just came across this unfortunately-worded sentence in one of our chemistry lessons ( Read more... )

I just returned from our annual pilgrimage to the Big Teacher Conference. This time, we did a two-day workshop along with all of the normal two-hour presentations and various schmoozefests. Everything went fairly well, even though I was horribly unprepared for one of the presentations (panic = realizing you are a) the only non-science person in a ( Read more... )

Today I learned that if you pulverize Total cereal and mix it with water to form a (rather nasty-looking) goo, and put this goo in a plastic bag, you can then extract the iron in the cereal with a magnet. It forms a visible pile of iron bits ( Read more... )

In one of our recent studies, we posed the question: How can models help scientists understand the Solar System?One student wrote ( Read more... )

One chemistry unit down (only two weeks late! I rule!), one to go. The one I just finished had a lot of heady conceptual visualization for fourth graders. ("Everyone put on your 'nanovision goggles' and imagine what's happening with the molecules.") The one I will start revising tomorrow actually has 'splodey things. Okay, it's only somewhat ( Read more... )

And once again...if I hear the same part of the song one more time I just might possibly go insane. We need a giant house with a separate studio. Also a pony.

I wonder if I could get any work done at Godspeed?

We were asked to remove a picture of hot dogs from one of our books because hot dogs contain nitrates which are Bad for Children.

I can think of a much better reason we shouldn't show fourth graders a picture of hot dogs, but whatever.

So far, 2009, I like you a lot. You have been full of friends and family and baked goods, and this weekend promises more ( Read more... )