School of the Wild!

I went into detail what School of the Wild is in my next post, as things are getting out of order because I am trying to go fast. I did leave out of my post that all this took place last Wed. (halloween) through Friday (Nov. 2nd), we were there for 3 days.

Here are the explanations of these pictures. 1st-2nd picture- Meredith explains all about 2 chickadees that we caught in our "mist net," they have a special liscense that allows them to do this, then she banded them. 3rd- Meredith lets some girls pet the bird. 4th- Meredith holds a nut hatch bird. 5th- I hold the nut hatch and I am going to release it back to the wild, she had already banded it. 6th- Here Jason cuts up some food that he grew in his garden for us all to taste. We got to taste peppers, apples, carrots, and a purple potato!!! (7th pic) I know there are lots of things I am missing that we got to taste, we spent about 2 hours in his garden. 8th- Jason and Chad help some kids plant some garlic in the garden while the other kids worked hard digging up sunchokes (sun flower roots). 9th- Jason slices up one of his tomatoes.

It was an awesome day. Not only did we learn all about plants but also about trees and prairie plants. We also got to play a fun game called "Coyote Tag" in the tall prairie.

School of the Wild!

The tradition at our school is that the 4th grade class goes to School of the Wild, a program put on by the University of Iowa. Basically, we spend 3 whole school days out in the wild.
There are 3 areas of study, one area per day. Wetlands, where we studied ponds, lakes etc. We were taught everything there is to know about wetlands. The second area of study is The Prairie. We learned about the decreasing prairie lands of Iowa, and the importance of it. The 3rd area of study is birds. We actually caught birds, about 6 different ones, and banded them so they could keep track of their migration etc. That is what was going on with the Hawk. They had caught a red-tailed hawk, had banded it and then let me let it go. After they taught us all kinds of things about it.

I can't even really express the awesomness of the 3 days. Our field guides: Chad-Wetlands, Jason-Prairies and Meredith-Birds are experts!! We just had a wonderful time! I took probably 200 pictures in 3 days!

Here is what going on in the picture collage.
1st- we go on a 2 mile hike through the woods and prairies to hit all the different wetlands to study. 2nd- the prairie we hiked through. 3rd-Chad explains to the kids that what they found in their nets was dragonfly larvae, 4th- one of my girls looks through a microscope at pond creatures. They were really weird looking! 5th- Chad explains to all the kids all about the spotted leopard frog they caught in the pond. 6th- Chad gives the kids a lesson at "Duckweed Pond." 7th- One of the 2 hawks I let go. 8th- Me cradling a hawk. 9th- a beautiful hawk.

Workday at my school

Haley and Dayna glue chocolate chips onto my "cookies", they were such big helpers. I think Haley snuck one chip to eat, but Dayna resisted and didn't eat any!

Jenna, Eva(on floor in front) and Ellie took all the books off my bookshelf and alphabetized them by the authors last name, it was quite the job!

Today was a school workday. Meaning that "all" 5th-8th grade parents were to show up and get the school ready for the new year. We all went. While Jeff worked around the building, I worked in my class. There were several students from my 4th grade class last year there ,with their parents, so I put them to work for me! Eva, Ellie, and Kia put up a couple bulletin boards for me, put name tags on my desks, and organized my library. Kia had to leave before the above picture was taken, sorry Kia! I even put the little ones to work. Haley and Dayna, who will be in Pre-K together, had a job of gluing chocolate chips onto "cookies". There are a part of my bulletin board that says, "A New Batch of 4th Graders!" I will post that bulletin board when it is done, I need to take the students pictures on the first day of school and put them in the middle of the cookies, it is really cute. I am feeling pretty good about my room. I am going to go one more time either Monday and Tuesday to work a couple more hours before in service starts on Wednesday.

Jeff and I went out for our anniversary (by ourselves this time :) ) tonight. We had our trusted babysitter, Vanessa, over to watch the girls. It is so nice to have a babysitter that the girls just love and when we come home, they tell us to leave again! We went to the movie Hot Rod. THE DUMBEST MOVIE EVER MADE! Jeff really likes comedies, I like more suspense and drama, but I let him choose this time. Even he deemed it the worst movie ever. We then went to Olive Garden and had a yummy meal. On the way home we decided to drive around and look at all the new sub-divisions being built etc. With Jeff being a realtor, he can get into any house with a lock-box. We went into several, they are gorgeous. I found a house I absolutely love! (didn't know I was looking!) The backyard is wooded and 5 deer were in the clearing. Jeff didn't really like it because the backyard was sloped, which is true. There were some other lots that would be gorgeous to build on. We have always batted around the idea of building. (This is probably news to my family!) We sometimes wonder if we are "too far out" of the loop, with not much of a neighborhood and no friends for the girls to play with. I guess that is how I grew up, and I turned out "ok." Anyway...we'll see what happens.