Sunday, October 30, 2005

Florida Fall, Wild Wilma, Cute Cids!

So, a little poetic license on the "kids", but since I already have to explain why Toys R Us can make their r's backwards, why not? Hurricane Wilma left us with wonderful temperatures, low humidity and our first opportunity to turn off the air since last May. Of course one of my students came to school with MITTENS! on Tuesday, but we'll forgive her for that. At least we finally got to color in a square on the weather graph that says "cold". I tell the kids they can't color in one of those until they actually wear a jacket to school - so this week we had four squares in the cold column and 16 matching TCS fleece jackets half of which had no names on the tags because the mothers don't remember that everyone has the same jacket and by10am all the jackets are on the floor or trying to hang on the backs of the chairs and we have a mess to see whose is whose when we hang them in the hall at recess!! (Diagram that one, Emily!) Since Monday was a hurricane day and Tuesday was the Pumpkin Patch trip and Friday was dress-up day and parade around the school and the teacher had a cold and couldn't talk on Wednesday and Thursday it seemed like nothing got accomplished! Add to that a birthday treat with that fluffly mile-high frosting that gets on your nose because you have to take a bite in the middle, and a "decorate your pumpkin cookie with icing and sprinkles" activity at the Fall party and there's no way the wee ones are going to settle down! We had a fun week in spite of all that. The kids did some great creative writing with rhyming patterns, counted 530 seeds in our pumpkin and did all sorts of "pumpkin math", but I'm hoping for a more stable week ahead.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

One Great Day

One Great Day for Downtown Orlando was one great day for The Christ School. We belong to a consortium of downtown schools and yesterday was the day when all the students go out into the community and perform public service tasks. It's a big undertaking to find places and suitable jobs for several thousand students, but it gives them all a taste of helping others. The fifth graders spent the morning at the Salvation Army doing a variety of things. The kindergartners made cards, paper flowers and a big mural and then walked to the fire station, the library, and the Lutheran Towers retirement home to give out their cards and flowers. The big mural with all little people marching across was presented to Compassion Corner which is a homeless help center right here in our building. It was quite humid for these activities, but the kids were good little troopers and a quick ride back to school on the downtown Lymo (free bus) was a good end to the morning.

Now that all you Bosschers have your Christmas name, please remember to post some gift suggestions. If we go ahead and put them on the blog comment place we can all read them and no one will be the wiser about who's got whom. Is that the correct grammar Miss Emily? By the way are cold germs able to be transmitted via the web? I came down with a nice head cold this weekend - however I think it's from a couple of snotty nosed kids that I chased with the tissue box and hand sanitizer this week. I'm trying to get caught up this weekend with school and house work, but keep falling asleep from the medicine I took to get rid of the sinus headache. Can't win.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Wonderful Weekend



We're back home safely after a quick trip to Washington, D.C. The weather was a bit rainy the first couple of days, but Saturday was a fall day in the best sense of the word. We went out to a park that featured some farm animals and enjoyed the sunshine and the playground. The pictures should give you a good idea of where our focus was most of the time. The little grand is a real sweetheart and we enjoyed every minute of our time with the whole Waterhouse family. We even had a ride around the block in the Model A!

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Tough Day

Today was difficult. I had two students who have honesty issues. That’s a nice way of saying they lie to their parents – and me – about homework. Fifth graders! And it’s the end of the quarter, so it’s crunch time. Parent / teacher conferences should be really interesting, especially if we have the little darlin’s present!

The worst of the day was this morning before school. We had a tragedy in Orange County last night – a sheriff’s deputy with marital problems shot and killed his two children, ages 10 and 8, and killed himself. The 10 year old girl was a friend and fellow gymnast of one of my fifth grade girls. I had a heads-up from her mom via e-mail, but it was hard when Sarah walked into the room before school, weeping. I wrapped my arms around her, several other girls came over, and we had a group hug around Sarah.

It was so good to see the compassion and concern that the class showed to Sarah throughout the day. They made a card and gave it to her at the end of the day. The whole class faced Sarah and said in unison, “We’re sorry, Sarah.” Children who had minimal experience with grief, and yet they reached out in their simple way to their friend. The Body of Christ at work in fifth graders…

This golden thread of encouragement continued after school. I had a call from a former fifth grade student in Ft. Myers who is now a freshman at the illustrious University of Florida. Trevor had tracked me down after reminiscing over his fifth grade Summit yearbook. We caught up on family news and he thanked me for a good fifth grade experience. What a great, timely call! Thank you, Lord!

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Walkathon Blessings

In a week of over 6 inches of rain, Friday morning's hour and a half window of no rain was such a blessing as The Christ School celebrated it's most successful fundraiser. "Roary" the Christ School mascot got everyone pumped up and ready to walk.



The children participate by bringing in the pledges and donations and then we all celebrate by walking around Lake Eola in the heart of Orlando. We raised over $42,500.00 dollars and had such fun in the doing. The Orlando police stopped the traffic downtown and were positioned along the route and in the park. The kids loved the motorcycles and talked to the policemen along the way. It was good community PR for our school, but also for the police department.

Then after a nice lunch the kids go home...and the teachers have a reward! Dad and I stayed at school and worked on report cards for awhile so we can be mostly done by Wednesday afternoon.

My students bring their dads to school for Dandylion breakfast - it's a way to make sure that we have lots and lots of adult chaperones for the students on the walk. They are all so cute - wish I could post all their pictures, but you get the idea. There's a lot of hype and preparation for this event, but it was so well organized this year. We all had a great time!

Sunday, October 02, 2005

A Green Week

At the beginning of last week we had talked about driving to Sarasota on Saturday. My favorite plant nursery – Tropiflora – was having its annual fall sale. Tropiflora has about 100,000 square feet of nursery plants under net and six true Northern greenhouses for special plants like orchids. Tropiflora is the largest / best place I have found in Florida for bromeliads. Most of the “under net” is for hundreds of varieties of bromeliads. We have visited there three times; I bring my camera because of the spectacular plants and inflorenscences (that’s what bromeliad people call the flowers…great word, huh?). I also get a new sense of awe about the amazing conglomeration of plants God has created.

A trip to Sarasota takes about 2.25 hours and we spend 2 to 3 hours with the plants ooing and ahhing as well as buying. It’s a whole day commitment, and with the price of gas and the Pres asking us to conserve a bit, and the typical busyness of our weekend, we decided to use the Internet and forego our little excursion. I ordered seven plants from the Tropiflora catalog Monday night and they were delivered to school on Wednesday. A couple of the larger bromeliads were shipped unpotted so I had to get them in dirt. One already had a large pup. A pup is how bromeliads normally propagate. A new plant buds out from the base of the parent and eventually gets clipped off and repotted. By supper time I had them situated in their new home.

We have three unusual new plants – one for its flowering (Vriesea scalaris), one for the pattern on its leaves (Vriesea hieroglyphica), and one for both leaves and flowers (Billbergia vittata ‘Domingos Martins’). I love the names! I think that I’m continuing God’s mandate to Adam when I learn plant names and care for them.

On Saturday I spent about six hours on the yard. Mowing and edging go quickly right now; the grass doesn’t grow as fast as it does in June and July. I still have to spend time pruning and weeding each week – stuff grows quickly and it’s not all where I want it to grow. The majority of my time was spent in the back yard. We have one laurel oak left and it’s doing well. The grass was growing right up to the trunk and I wanted to get that back a bit. I also had a Billbergia pyramidalis that needed to get out of its pot. This bromeliad does well around trees – tends to have many pups and will “climb” a bit.

I dug out about 2 feet of sod all the way around the tree. I had a problem with sod webworms in the back yard and before I treated them, I had about a third of the sod dead. Hateful things! I took the sod from around the tree and put in shovel sized plugs in the dead turf. And I dug into the electric cord that I had buried a year ago to run the pump that recycles the water in the fountain. I didn’t cut through the wires but I did cut the insulation, so I spent 20 minutes berating myself for carelessness while I taped up the nicks in the wires.

It’s still hot in Orlando. It was about 90 degrees again yesterday, but we had a nice breeze. For Florida it was a windy day, but in the Midwest or New Mexico it would be just breezy. A front came down to northern Florida so we got a breeze and last evening, about a tenth of an inch of rain. Good for the sod project!