Have fun storming the castle!

This has to have been one my favorite weeks so far in 8th grade History. After studying castle parts in some detail, teams built clay model ones and had to name all the parts they had included. Of course, there was a lot of creativity as well, putting their castles on top of book mountains for protection, surrounded by binder cliffs and paper moats so that enemies wouldn't be able to advance so easily, and of course everyone's new favorite - behind a wall of Greek Fire and under the guard of a fire-breathing dragon.

Then, when they were finished, they were given weapons and told to lay siege to another team's castle.
Things kind of fell apart at this point since paper siege towers could roll right up to book mountains and still be taller. But it was still fun, and I think the students enjoyed themselves AND got the point.

Guess what Iceland has?

According to one student today: volcanoes and geezers (instead of geysers)!

Spirit Day: Opposites

I'm falling more and more in love with teaching Middle School. Or perhaps it's just these middle schoolers. They're so creative and so much fun!!! Check out pictures from our Spirit Day a week ago. The theme was "Opposites."

Nerdy & Popular

Black & White

They switched home countries (Mexico & Yemen)

4 Seasons

Milka & Rittersport

2 sticks of butter

Poor AP and EP. I was supposed to babysit these two girls last Saturday, and their Mom had said we could make cookies together. Anxious, the two girls decided to go ahead and mix up the ingredients before I got there at 7. Then, even more anxious, they decided to go ahead and bake them, too.

However, they were using an American recipe, which clearly called for 2 sticks of butter. German butter comes in packages of 250 grams, roughly 3 sticks of butter each. AP and EP dutifully followed the recipe and put in 2 "sticks."

I know you can just picture the cookie sheet of grease that greeted me when I arrived!

More from Grandma's Kitchen

Here's another Grandma poem that has come out in the last couple of weeks.

Flour flies from her fingers

The gentlest dusting of snow

Over green countryside of countertop

She shoves her glasses up the bridge of her nose

A white print remains amid furrowed eyebrows

As she recites, “Boiled sour cream – secret ingredient”

My pen flies across pages of notes

Studying the queen in her castle of cinnamon and spice

Compelling the ingredients to meld together

Treasures for the tongue which

Fingers fold faster than the eye

I long to emulate her graceful movement

Firmness, resolve, obvious love

As she leans across a snowy landscape and

With a smile brushes white flour from my cheek

Knight in Shining Armor

JB is one of the few students I had last year for tutoring whom I also now teach in a regular classroom setting, and thus he is very dear to me. However, I was pretty sure that he wasn't too thrilled with this fact. He seems to get more tardies in my class than anyone else, he is continually having to "sit down for a chat" with me, and I've ruined more than one of his afternoons doing his favorite thing: inter-murals because of a late or missing assignment. Nope. Pretty sure I didn't rank too high on his "Most Beloved Teachers" List.

And yet, today he melted my heart (and I hope he never reads this blog to be embarrassed by it). We had a guest speaker who was trying to make the point about tribal warfare and belonging.

"Say, JE over here attacks IS. Well IS's clan is going to rise up under the leadership of their chieftain and attack JE's clan, right?" Many nods. "But now Ms. Custer comes in, and she doesn't belong to any of your clans. She's an outsider. If she oversteps her boundaries and is under attack, who's going to stand up and protect her? Nobody."

That's when JB raised his hand. "I would."

Sigh. :-)