Student Teaching Shenanigans: Valentines and In-School Field Trips

I have to do a little blog here about my first holiday as a teacher in a classroom.  Yesterday was Valentines day and while it is an adorable holiday filled with love, I believe that it is also a holiday to try to get your teacher's fat! My evidence for saying this? For Valentine's day, I received a total of 4 boxes of candy, 10 or so valentines with candy attached to them, 5 cupcakes, 2 brownies and a cookie! Holy Guacamole! I am surprised that just looking at all this has not sent me into a diabetic coma! Aside from the enormous amounts of sugar, I do think that the holiday is very awesome and I loved spending it and doing fun activities with the children!

There is one thing that I am curious about though.  Is there some sort of trigger or button in a child's head that tells them to act like a nut on a holiday?? I am not exaggerating when I say that every single student, even my best ones, were practically bouncing off the walls! And I didn't even give them much sugar! They only had pretzels, chips, cheese curls and a cookie at the party! Makes no sense at all!  If a scientist can find the cure for holiday insanity in students, I would be much obliged!

My other little story for this post is about a in-school field trip we had today.  The concept of In School field trip evaded our students- we had some even bring their lunches today for the field trip, even though the form specifically said that was not needed and that the people were coming to us.  The "trip" was two women from a local park system who came to our class and did experiments with Solids and Liquids, the science unit I am in the middle of teaching.  They did an excellent job and the kids loved the experiments they did! The only thing I was disappointed about was that half of the experiments they did gave away half of my lessons that I still have to teach.  I was sitting there watching them do Sink vs Float and was disappointed because I am planned to do that lesson with the kids tomorrow! My co-op made a note for next year that if they do this field trip again, to do it in March or so, after the unit is finished so as not to spoil the surprises and lessons we teach the students.  I think the kids will still be excited about the science we do anyway, they love learning about it!

And of course, gotta end this post with a one liner from a student.....I ask the students "When your car is broken, where do you take it to get it fixed?" and a student pipes up and says "The Vet".....priceless I tell you!!