Comfort Food

In the Fall, it's cold outside. It snows sometimes. We want our comfort food. For Adam, this means anything with a lot of meat and mashed potatoes. Currently, we have a plethora of gravy mixes--this is a good thing. Thanks for the candy-corn, Joanna! Look, the baby pumpkins from the Johnson's farm are still so cute and fresh!

Grilled sandwiches and broccoli and cheese soup!

Meat loaf and mashed potatoes...with gravy...and carrots!

My Mom sent us some pepperoni--which is a genius idea! Adam and I feel a little pathetic when making our pizzas, since we share a pan. We have way too much fun adding the toppings to "my side of the pizza"--we need to come up with a better way to remember which side belongs to which person...


Yummy!!!!

~julie

This and That

Some pictures from the last month. November was not a good month for blogging. My lap top died in October, and I could give it to our school's tech guy so he can fix it, but I'm just worried that he wont be able to--plus I keep forgetting to bring it to school with me--so I've been sharing a computer with Adam lately.

The next three pictures are from last week when I was helping a friend organize costumes for the elementary Christmas concert--we were left at the school (the bus left without us) accidentally, and so found our self walking in the pitch dark of the industrial roads, finally catching a little rickshaw, riding it to the main road, where we stood for ten minutes or so trying to catch a taxi. I got home and Adam was really worried because he didn't know where I was, and I should have been home a while before.

Some guys who live in Shenyang from Papua New Guinea, telling us about their homeland and culture. The people in PNG are really interesting, and it's hard for me to wrap my mind around it. All three of these men come from such a small place geographically, but they are from different tribes--which means they have different languages and customs. It's mind boggling to hear how many tribes there are in PNG that are still intact and separate from the rest of the tribes.

One of our P.E. teachers is from Fiji--so he presented about his nation at International Day. It is very interesting to hear how he grew up, and the things that people do in Fiji still today. They go spear fishing for their dinner, and live in small huts where the children sleep on mats woven from coconut tree branches. Boys learn to climb coconut treas and weave baskets, and women wear dark charcoal on their body for sunscreen. Such a different culture, it's hard for me to even understand it, but it sounds peaceful and very tropical. Dealing with barracudas, sharks, and tourists....

Getting ready for some solution and suspension experiments.

Creating clay creations to teach about the writing process. Students make something out of clay, then add something, change something, remove something, and change something again. They give it a title, and then pass their plate around to get comments and questions from their peers. This is supposed to be a model for how students should look at their writing process.

I wanted this book for my classroom so badly. I even looked for it at book stores this summer. I remember reading it, and having it read to me by Mrs. Nozime, when I was in elementary school and thinking what a powerful story it is. Plus, Patricia Polacco is one of my favorite authors because her stories are so rich and inspired by true events. Her illustrations are great too. Anyway, one of my student's parents is working on college course right now, and she had to order "Pink and Say" for a project. She knew that I like this book and loaned it to me so that I could read it to my students. Of course, I cried and cried at the end of the story. One of my tough boys, who understands the most about the Civil War also shed a few tears. The pictures are sad.

~julie

Our Second Thanksgiving in Shenyang

This is a very food-centered post, but while living in China, I feel like most of my concerns and triumphs are food related. My cousin, Joanna, sent us ingredients to make a pumpkin pie (along with other yummy gifts) so that we didn't have worry about trying to make one by scratch. Pumpkin pie tasted delicious, after not having had any for at least two years. Thanks for the thoughtful package, Joanna! :)

Our teeny-tiny-toaster oven.

Ingredients to make a lot of yummy corn souffle.

The best-looking sour cream I've ever made.

Our Thanksgiving family-away-from-family. We had a large group of about 18 adults/teenagers and a few babies as well!



The lovely, and very festive, autumn decorations! Although at this point, I think we had snow outside...

Lots of scrumptious food, prepared and eaten with such thankfulness and gluttony. At this point, the turkey still had not arrived. Yes, you can buy turkey at one of the stores in our city!

~Julie

Classroom Check Up

Men are from Mars and women are from Venus...that's the phrase I think about when I look at the difference between mine and Adam's classrooms. Learning transpires in both places, but in very different ways. Here's a look at Adam's momentum project his 8th grade students worked on. They didn't do as well as he had hoped, and they TRASHED this classroom. I wish that I could show the video clips of their project, but I am not allowed to post pictures/movies of students. In my opinion, I think it is awesome. It is based on the band, OK GO's music video for "This Too Shall Pass". Look it up on You Tube and you'll get an idea what their project was like!

Mars

Venus

~julie

Biome Flip Book Review

After spending a few months learning about 6 of the earth's major biomes, the third grade students compiled information about each biome and organized it in a giant flip book. They had to write about one plant and animal from each biome and explain how it is specially designed for it's habitat. They also included 5 important facts and a section about how the Creator continues to provide for these biomes. This was their last activity and part of their final for this unit since I did not help them to put together their flip books.

Cute penguin!

~julie

Pilgrim Pocket Books

Welcome to my first attempt at Pocket Books. There is not a doubt, they are a lot of work. First off, you have to actually make the books out of large pieces of construction paper. Then you have to make a bajillion copies and show students how to cut, paste, and color. You have to glean the information that is crammed onto each document, and slowly fill up the pockets. We probably spend 7 hours on the Pilgrim Pocket Book--and learned a lot since it added so much to our curriculum--but we only actually finished half of the pocket book material. I have another one for pioneers, and another for Native Americans. I missed the chance to create the pioneer pocket books because I forgot I had bought this resource--but we will definitely do the Native American pocket book since our social studies book is so bland.


Here's a look at some of the information inside. There really was so much. I was surprised how much about Pilgrims, Wampanoags, and Plymouth I did not know, even after studying and reading about much in my own education, and teaching it last year.

There are lots of little information books about topics. Here you can see three: Building a Village; The Family; and Going to School. Did you know that pilgrim children who interrupted in school had to sit with a stick in their mouth as punishment? My kids thought that was pretty graphic, especially since I'm always reminding them NOT to interrupt. It was shocking to them that interrupting was punished so harshly! Interrupting shows lack of self-control, so I guess that's why they disciplined interrupters.

~julie