On Friday, I took every student who got an 80% or better for their average grade for the year (our "Big Goal") to the Maryland Science Center. The thing that I love is that in a safe environment, my kids are all little nerds. There are all sorts of super-educational things that kept my kids entertained for quite a long time. We started out with half of the kids going to a "wet lab" and the other half watching a movie about weather. The wetlab was cool...they got to use microscopes to look at bacteria and cool little things, test antibacterial agents, look at stuff in their bodies, and, best of all, participate in a dissection of a pig heart. They then spent the next hour touring all the space exhibits and a really amazing area on the human body. I had one girl track me down to ask why it is that children's hearts beat faster than adults'. When I told her I didn't know, she was really upset, saying, "I looked for you for like 10 minutes to answer that question!" I was so excited that they were thinking enough about what they were seeing to develop questions. I beamed. The kids who saw the movie first then went to the wetlab, and the others went to watch Bugs 3-D. Afterward we had lunch and cruised Newton's Alley and the dinosaur section. I was delighted watching my babies play with all the fun Physics toys, then cruise the dinosaurs. One kid recognized the model of molecular motion from something we did in class. Another figured out how to create tornados in the cloud simulation. Still another took me to see his favorite dinosaur, and talked to me about anatomy and paleontology. It was a blast. I actually lost track of time and was the last one back to the bus, with the three kids who I'd been cruising the dinosaur section with. (Note...even still we were 5 minutes early, because my kids are totally prompt). It was AWESOME, and I highly recommend that any teachers out there go on field trips. It'll make you like your kids better. Today they all thanked me again for the trip, and I got a lot of comments like "That was a really fun field trip!"
Before the trip, we watched "The Atomic Bomb Movie" to spend a couple of days on nuclear chemistry. I was pleased with how many questions my kids had and how many connections they made with their lives, history, energy, etc. They all loved the explosions, but they actually asked a lot of questions too. One of my really asleep kids (one who is rumored to be on his way to prison for the summer) would not stop asking questions long enough for us to actually hear the movie. It makes me feel like I was successful in developing some critical thinking skills with them. Maybe it's not me, but it was still a pleasant surprise.
On the discouraging side, the beginning of the week was HSA testing. For those of you outside of Maryland, this is a No Child Left Behind style test, designed to find out what kids at each school are learning compared to their peers across the state. Don't even get me started on the test itself...I disagree with it on about a million levels. However, the frustrating part of the week was the administration of the test. We weren't terribly organized, which made the kids feel ancy at the beginning. The classrooms were freezing. My kids worked diligently on the first 2 sections, but didn't try at all on the 3rd section, essentially ensuring their failure. Worse yet, the freshmen have to pass the test to graduate - ours just have to take it for now. I wanted to cry on their behalf.
The 3-day weekend was fabulous. We saw X-Men 3 (which was so amazing I grinned for like 4 hours), played games, cruised Fells Point, went to White Marsh to explore, and lounged around the house a lot. Excellent way to start our second-to-last week.
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