Double Weekend

For some reason, the school district is giving us all a day off on Monday as well as the scheduled federal holiday of Veteran's Day on Tuesday. So, it's a double weekend. We're going to drive north and visit family members.

Hope it doesn't snow the entire time we're driving.

I've become extremely spoiled about weather living here. I know, I know--115 degrees in August. But, the rest of the year is very pleasant. It got up to 82 again today. It's going to drop to 48 tonight. It is a good weather pattern.

This whole week we read and wrote about Veteran's Day. We learned about the history of the holiday, we learned about the hope that they'd fought the war to end all wars. Not quite, it turned out. Every year I've done this lesson, varying it with my students' abilities to read. I've gone on a tour of websites to show them Flanders Fields, what poppies look like (we read the poem), the trenches of WWI, the Tomb of the Unknowns. Finally, I got smart and this year I made a powerpoint of the whole thing. It is a very effective way to create some visuals and background knowledge for them. My goal is to have them write poetry from the point of view of one of the soldiers, or a tomb guard, or one of the unknowns. Some girls today wrote from the point of view of the poppies. I plan to type them up into a little booklet and send it to my nephew and his wife who are in Iraq right now. It'll be a good way for them to know that we're still thinking of them over here as they serve over there.