Her mom is sending in a "class set" tomorrow. It's presently "cool" in our classroom.
Oxnard.....hot, dry, itchy, eyes burning, throats sore. And we should hold our breath.
I'm glad I stopped this morning going to work to teach my 1st graders at 6:30 AM and bought two boxes of Dora The Explorer pop sickles. They really help the throat. 48 of them were gone in an hour, so tasty cool. Tomorrow I'm bringing water bottles and fruit pops. Prepared. Perhaps we will try ice cubes.....I'll get a bag of that too. It might make sense to find spray bottles and mist ourselves. It is so very dry.
I'll try to think what we can do with ice and science, it's my son's birthday tomorrow.
The children cannot go outside of course. So finding ways to get comfortable inside a heater is a challenge. If they were in school in Temecula they'd send them out. I found that out with my own kids a few years ago in the Cedar Fire.
No AC for us in our hood. But we are trying.
Southern CA is like nothing I've seen in my 20 years in CA. I'm looking at Rancho Bernardo on TV in horror, Sophia's dance teacher for Highland dance four or so years ago lives there. I am praying her house is still there. It's an awful thing to see their damage and to know I've sat exactly there in my car reading a book many, many Thursdays where this is so burned, going to the mall around the corner for pasteries and going to the bookstore. Frankly I'm just sick for our friends.
Right now I'm watching something floating in the air like I pictured in my 4th grade imagination in olden volcano days.......but the risk to our lives just breathing is a very serious issue. And I would hope to find some humor, but I'm not so sure.....
One of my students was apparently admitted for asthma last night, (a stop on the way home to give the child a gift on my To Do It List). I'm so very thankful his mom got him to the care. (And that they had space too.) This is the worst weather for asthmatics breathing. I hate to say you have no idea because many reading know exactly how this is having experienced it. It might be better to say I had no idea and I've been through a few very serious fires. This is worse. Much worse.
That 98 in the room helped me teach the thermometer today and it's VERY hot for 1st graders, starting at around 9AM it was very heated. The fish tank was way cooler something I'm not sure I understand and our bird spent the day on the floor of the cage. I knew today was a bit like a battle. There is this odd need for folks to have things appear "as normal." So my husband is out tonight running a Migrant meeting. I wonder why, but I guess this is what we do. We "go on."
Unfortunately some of my kids today thought of it as "me against them." Yeah, not good.
I try on that, but they are really not too interested in what I am up too....I'm not too interested either. We cannot open the one window that does open or the door due to the smoke in the air. It is so dry. The winds are high. We are agitated. Every child has spent a good deal of time telling me about every OTHER CHILD's indiscretions. And frankly I agree with them. YUCK, everyone. I bet a study would show a correlation between extreme irritation, smoke and children finding nothing/no one to their liking. And teacher's talking too much.
Dr. Puglisi came over today. I almost fell over thinking maybe someone was sick or worse but he was there he reminded me (rather PUT OUT too) to work on our join Space and Time Project.
Now this is funny because just right now I have a VERY different relationship to space and time.
It would seem we can recall our national charter.
We are in a state of emergency, bringing to it our hearts and our meanings.
Not to get too teary but you have to experience the feelings of going out with a class to measure the sun knowing that the children are so very, very vulnerable. What has happened in just a week. Amazing. Keep a thought in your time and space for all of us in this time and space. And we will do the same.
Anyway, on to our project........to measure and watch the sun through a year.
This is our second day(every Tuesday 11AM) observing/marking the shadow cast from a tether ball court pole (gnomone) so that through the year we can measure the shadow cast and watch how that alters/moves as the weeks go by.
Today the children acted out orbiting the sun and tried to understand what the earth does as it circles the sun before we went out.
Before they went out today we charted their birthdays
(which I forgot to photograph with my "photographers")
as we are creating a large solar calendar from this project thanks to Steven C. Clark. Here he models it at Mesa School with their children. If you look it is seasonal and on it are the months and birthdays arranged. Mine's coming soon. We can't wait.
That "birth data" needs to be on the calendar. Of my 19 Sheltered immersion children only 2 knew their own birthday in either language! Most said their birthday is TOMORROW.
So that was interesting. It might give you a STARTING PLACE notion. Of their time and space.
Mr. Puglisi came over because we are documenting this project with children photographers and I'm teaching them how to do this so just right now I need help. They are learning how to download shots, work on "our blog" at "How Beautiful You Are" and I might be teaching how to dry tears. (mine)
It may seem easy on the surface, blogging with children this age, but it takes a lot of work. Just keeping the camera off the ground a bit of a trick with the cord wrapped around wrists and lots of, "NO, No, No" moments. But, okay, it's hot, dry and I'm not as cheery as I could be. Or not cheery at all. It was a blistering awful day.
So at almost 11AM the time globally we go out....we went out in heat, wind, smoke and as fast as we could.
The magic moment at 11AM
Dr. Puglisi describing what we are there to do.......
The adoring crowd..
My favorite photo
And like all good documentation we FORGOT to photograph the spot AFTER we painted today's mark. So ...yes...we have to work on the photography.
One of my students got this:
One of my students got this:
Good one.
Dr. Puglisi
I love how you set this experiment up. I have wanted to try this experiment, but we don't have any poles sticking up out of our playground. I teach third grade and I know my students would be really into it. I'm going to try to find a window in the school that I can paint a mark on and put paper on the wall onto which the shadow is cast. I just started a blog about six weeks ago and it has been a blast. I am going to start the experiment with my class next year and then blog it. I love the look of your blog. The background is really cool.
ReplyDeleteHello Skip,
ReplyDeleteYou do sound so positive, thanks very much!
My friend Stephen Clark is finding as we add schools to this project that MANY schools won't allow marking pavement. I never thought od the window, which is interesting, but we did create portible kits. A recent blog of mine shows that.
With a tiny little stick as the pole. In the summer I'm prodding these guys to create mats to take outside and carry out/in. If you go to my more recent blogs there is one with links to Math For the Ages, Steve's site for kits. You don't need a kit but his are cool.
The thing that this did for me was create the notion of an observatory, and from that so much unfolded.
If you would like to join this project and get your data recorded with us and have your blogging linked you are invited. We have ten or so schools worldwide so far. The link to that is
http://mesaschool.org/
or email
jpuglisi@mesa.k12.ca.us
or me at smpuglisi@gmail.com
and we'll get stuff to you.
Sarah