This is my first post on this blog and I do not know where to start. I started this because I need a place to talk about my interests and to chat about the books I read, the photos I take and my genealogy research. I will also post about the things we are doing in elementary summer school. I am an aide and will try and post about the things the children do and say if I can.
I am re reading "Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood. I read it when it first came out but then dropped it as other things happened in my life. This reading I find that it is really apocryphal. Snowman is telling the story of his life while we watch his present . The world is too hot and flooded the only person left is Snowman(aka Jimmy).
There are other humanoids that were constructed to survive the environmental changes by Crake(aka Glenn) and Snowman interacts with them as a story teller and prophet. He is their connection to Crake the creator.
I am about half way through the book and hope to read the whole trilogy this summer.
In other happenings today I signed up for an online course through Coursera. It is Crafting an Effective Writer. I hope to improve my writing skills as I know that I have become lax and rusty about usage and things like that.
It is also World Cup time and today both of my teams moved up to the next level. Of course, the US has Potugal to thank for the advance, if Portugal had not beaten Ghana then the US would be going home, they lost to Germany but by the point system US had more points than either Portugal or Ghana. Close call.....you better play better next round or bye bye Brasil for yall.
I decided to help out as an aide with Summer School this summer and I am both happy and not. School started on the 17th at 830, I am at Frazier E.S. I am helping in the Enrichment class. It is fun. We have an animal a week and do activities that help the children learn about each animal.
The first week we had snakes, Mr. Milledge and I are comfortable with them but when we had a sub for one day the snake had to leave. The children all loved it and even named it Sam when during one of the videos they discovered how to sex a snake. A boy has a sharp pointy tail; the girl's tail is thicker and rounded. FYI. We made noodle snakes, paper snakes and we started our Journals. We have 2nd graders going into 3rd and a class of 1st going into 2nd. On the last day of the first week we did a smelling test. we had 6 containers of different extracts, orange,mint, strawberry, lemon,chocolate and cherry. The two citric acid smells confused them so much. One of the first graders, could not let it go that he was smelling two lemon while his partner insisted that they were both orange. For a while the discussion became heated until the second set of partners came along and got the scents correct. Mr. M then explained how both were based on the same base odor and that was why each sort of smelled alike.
The second week we did Bats and Birds, 2 days of Birds and two of Bats,oh yes I forgot we only go Monday - Thursday. This week we had a pair of Zebra Finches in our room. The children were not as fascinated with them as they were with the snake. I think it was because they could not hold or touch them. The Finches were very noisy though, especially when the kids were loud. We made bird nests and discussed different types of birds. On Wednesday we switched to Bats and that was when all of the misconceptions about them came out. We watched a couple of videos about bats . The boys were thoroughly disappointed that all bats weren't VAMPYRES. on Wednesday we made bat wings with toothpicks or Popsicle sticks and today,the 26th, we made Oreo Bats .
They came out really cute. Of course, non made it home.
