Wouldn't 've come to school, anyway

Remember my fall, the other day. Well, the pain, today, is incredible. To top it off, I had a reaction to the painkiller and spent a portion of the night hugging the great white wishing well. Needless to say, the heaving did little to comfort the torn chest muscle. I just waited for that call to come, this morning. You see, we have a phone tree -- principal calls secretaries, who call a teacher, and that teacher calls another, and another, and so on.
Even Penn College is closed!! Take note of this rare moment, folks.

Limestone Recipe
I found a neat recipe for making limestone. We will do that on Monday.

If You Are Reading This Blog
If you are one of my kiddoes or the parent of one of my kiddoes, send me a comment on how you are spending this Friday off. We will make up for in at Easter. As it stands, we lost both vacation days in February. This afternoon is 'posed to be warmer, but rainy. I can live with that. For now, the ice is out there, and I'm in here, and we are both happy.

Have a great day off!! P.S. Don't forget to read Mr. Fausnaught's blog and Mrs. Wright's blog. Mrs. W. is an 8th grade teacher. You may as well start being nice to her now. She's a great lady and has been a wonderful friend since my days as a substitute teacher, back in the days of the dinosaur.

Conglomerate Rock

Okay, we made conglomerate rock, in class. Funny, we mixed a grey powder in with our sand and rounded gravel. Conglomerate means multiple or many. The multiple came from the grey powder -- it was a mix of lime, silica, iron oxide, etc. But, wait!~!~

Did you say, lime? But, lime comes from limestone and limestone is formed by combining calcium and carbonate. Calcium comes from sea shells.

Therefore, limestone is formed in ocean water!!! But, conglomerate contains lime. Does that mean conglomerate is a sedimentary rock that is formed by sediment from ocean water and land? Does that mean, we find conglomerate rock near ocean water or where ocean water was once present?

Does that support the theory that Williamsport may have been at the bottom of shallow sea?

Hey. This is getting good. Tune in for more on this theory.

Have a good night. Stay off the ice, tomorrow. Believe, it bites -- hard.

Boo Boo Better

The spill I took, yesterday, at school, was attended to, today, at Divine Providence Hospital. Looks like it was a pulled or torn muscle. I should be right as rain in a week or so. Whew!
Even if it looks like rain on Friday, ain't no way I am coming in unless I know for certain school will be in session.

Makin' Sandstone
A bit o' sand and a wee bit o' Epsom salt with water does wonders for making sandstone. Hope our recipe ripens by Monday. We will examine the resulting stone on Monday. Tomorrow, we make shale and conglomerate. On Monday, we make limestone.

Have a great night. Gotta go ice the boo boo.

Ice? Where? OWWWW!! Oh, There!!

Okay, at 6:10 a.m. I pulled into the school parking lot. My wife calls me on the cell -- two hour delay. Great. I got lotsa work to do. One of our maintenance guys was pushing a spreader, tossing loads of ice melt on the sidewalk and driveway of the school. I follow him to the building. I get to the tech shops and SPLAT!!! Down I go. The maintenance guy got the brunt of my heel on the back of his head as my feet flew upwards. I was down. I was hurt. Wind knocked out of me and a terrible pain in my left shoulder joint. The maintenance guy had to help me up, I could not get a footing. What a nice guy. He grabs my arm and leads me to the building.

I get ready for the day. Ran off today's experiment, prepared the powerpoint presentation and gathered all the materials needed for the experiment. I'm ready to go by 8:15 a.m. -- the cell rings, again. It's the wife. "School is closed!?!?!" Arrrgghh.

Fortunately, no ice encounters until I got home. My front sidewalk is angled down toward the street and the ice was thick enough for skating. This was neat. The guy across the street works for Williamsport schools. He was in his front yard with his dog and very amused and entertained watching me bent over using my pen as an ice pick and inching my way uphill to the front gate. Using the gate as a launching pad, I careened ever so gracefully towards the front porch. I suppose it resembled a cross between a duck landing on water and a water buffalo trudging through mud.

The pain in my shoulder is where the chest meets the shoulder joint. It hurts. Something got stretched. I can imagine, tomorrow. That means, I'll have to hold the coffee cup in the right hand. Great. I may have to put the cup down to eat a doughnut. At least I can type.

I deserve a sticker, a pat on the head and a thumbs-up.

Have a great day off, kids. I got some school work to do.

Finishing With Ocean Water

Well, the unit is over. We looked at freshwater, performed experiments, and then took a look at ocean water. I was going to have the kiddoes conduct a project on density and salinity, but, felt writing skills in greater need of honing, so our project was to write an imaginery story about strolling on the ocean floor.

Making Stone
Tomorrow, we return to the FOSS geology unit. Talk about having to rewrite something. The entire 9-week unit was geared more towards 8th grade. I toned it down a bit, explained more where needed and interjected material I felt was more critical to learning than retrace the exploration of the Grand Canyon. All-in-all, the FOSS unit is great, but needed tweeked. For this week's class, the munchkins will use sodium silicate as a cementing agent (matrix) in the formation of sedimentary rock. We will first make sandstone, coal and shale, then move onto limestone. I can't wait until we do geologic time and dinosaurs - grrrooowwwlll!!!

Speaking of Dinosaurs
Well, sort of, this time I'm talking about the tiny sea critters that inhabited our area 360 million years ago. Keystone Central School District (Lock Haven/Renovo area) has a great website on Red Hill http://www.kcsd.k12.pa.us/renovo/dig/ -- about the fossil finds from the Devonian period. Check it out. The kiddoes in that school district did a fantastic job with this lesson.

Report Cards
Get thos report cards signed and returned to homeroom teachers.

Have a great night.