It's a Friday Afternoon

I must admit feeling a little ripped off that the nicest month of the summer has turned out to be September, but then again I do like looking at the pics of the kids playing in the beautiful sunshine.

These fellows have been tossing the ol' pigskin around most recesses. I love football, but I'm not as good as intercepting passes as I used to be.

Check out the powerful throw! We work on that in P.E. class you know :)

Enjoying recess...

Oh joy, joy! They're playing Little House on the Prairie! "Pa" sometimes had to be discouraged from hauling his scythe and his rifle around (ok sticks, but still!) I love that they're enjoying those books as much as I do.

I was first introduced to the game Gobblet! at a family Christmas party. It's like tic-tac-toe only you can block your opponent from winning by placing a larger piece over top of their game piece. It was fun and you had to use strategy and I thought what a perfect game for the classroom! I bought the Junior version last year which they're playing in the picture below.

But the game was popular and could be a little easy since you only had to get three in a row. This year I bought the regular version and now two games of Gobblet! are ususally in play on a Friday afternoon.

Popular eh?

While the kids are cleaning out their desks or finishing up work or singing their memory work to me, those who are finished all those things can chill out on a Friday afternoon with various "take it out only on a Friday" game. Here's my best garage sale purchase ever: K'nex.

This must have been after the Tower of Babel story :)

I have no idea what these guys are up to. But they grinned merrily for me, so up goes the picture!

Hiking

As part of our outdoor education at school, we prepared to go for a hike along the Bruce Trail. We had talked as a staff about doing things for physical fitness besides sports oriented activities, and a hike is definitely a great thing to do. We get to enjoy creation and get the heart pumping at the same time!

It's a trail that I'm very familiar with. It starts with a waterfall and then we walk for a ways beside the river before turning into the forest for a bit.

The waterfall was roaring again this day as it has all summer. The summer of rain certainly did make the water rush!

Off we go!

The trail begins with a few stairs down...

and some more stairs, and then a few more stairs...

...before we finished up walking alongside the river. It was a beautiful day, but I'm kind of wishing now we had waiting for the fall colours. Now that would have been beautiful to be walking in!

And a couple more stairs :)

Oh Jonah, owner of Animal Tracks of Ontario, care to identify the tracks we see here in the mud? (raccoon right?)

I'm glad the trail was this narrow, it kept us all in single file with no running even an option for the adventurous types!

Our halfway point was when we reached the river again. Many of the kids were all gung-ho about continuing on the other side of the bridge, but maybe we'll do that another day eh?

Heading back.

We had to stop a couple of times for rest/let-some-people-catch-up breaks. I loved seeing them all trekking with their walking sticks too!

And what went down must go up!

It really is a beautiful trail!

Phew! We did it!

With many thanks to the moms who drove and walked with us!

oooooh scary!

The kids love it, but I don't know if painting is the favourite activity of any teacher. The potential/likely chaos, the clean-up, the messy desks, the paint on kids, the memory of students wiping their painty hands repeatedly upon their pants... Yes, it can strike fear in my heart.

But they love it right? So plans were made to paint our buildings. We are learning about line and are using horizontal and vertical line to draw buildings with some paint to finish it up. Eventually we'll have a little city formed up on a bulletin board to show our use of line.

But alas our dirty paint shirts had been thrown out at the end of last year and I didn't know that rather important detail until I went on a search for those stinky painty things. Our painting session would have to commence without them. Gulp. Ok, I know that the paint washes out of clothes, but I still don't want to send home your kiddies all covered in paint!

I didn't need to worry apparently. They worked so nicely (see video) that it made me think that we could do this waaaaay more often. It was actually fun for all of us!