Grants, and uncomfortable parent night, and clovers, oh my! Plus a "squach" for fun.

 Our school has been awarded 3 grants this month! 

The first is money that will allow our school to continue our inquiry into expanding our inclusive practices as part of our Membership, Participation and Learning initiative. I wrote in detail about MPL in a previous post. It truly has been a great thing for our kids, and I'm excited that our school will be expanding it into 3rd and 4th grade next year. 

The second grant is one I wrote to participate in a program called "PA Trout in the Classroom." As part of the program I will be outfitted with a HUGE 60 gallon aquarium and all the materials to insulate and keep it chilled so that I can raise trout right in my room. The trout eggs will arrive this October and will hatch (hopefully!) and then be released into the wild once they reach a certain size. I think it'll be a great chance for the kids to see a life cycle in action.

I didn't have anything to do with the 3rd grant, but it is really cool. Our school has been donated 20 bicycles so that the PE teacher can teach bicycle safety to kids as part of PE! Also, we got a visit from a pro BMX X Games winner, Jamie Bestwick! Here's a picture of him right before he jumped his bike over our principal and two teachers!

On another note, in my district we teach a Human Body unit in science in 5th grade. As a part of the unit we teach the reproductive system...and are required to hold a parent night where  we show the materials we use (all over 20 years old), and answer parent questions. It's always a kind of awkward evening. Most of the parents wish we were allowed to teach more than we are. We have to inform them that we pretty much just name the parts. No talk of safe sex, STDs, etc. is allowed in school, so it's on the parents to teach that. I'm glad to have the parent night over for this year!

Before the parent night tonight I accompanied Killer B while she took our younger German Shepherd tracking. Tracking is just one aspect of the sport she does with the dogs. And unfortunately, it's kind of the most boring. While I followed along I was looking at the ground and was pretty psyched to find this 5-leaf clover!

Well, that was just the tip of the iceberg. As I walked along I ended up finding another 10 four leaf clovers. All within a 30 minute span of time! Too bad some joker already won that $600 million powerball! Dang it. I tape all the 4 leaf clovers I find to preserve them. Up until today I only had 4 that I keep in my wallet. Some of these are too big for that. I'll have to find a place to keep them. Maybe this means something good will happen soon.

And just for the heck of it, here's a random Sasquatch statue Killer B and I came across out in mid-western Pennsylvania this past Saturday! To give you an idea of how big it is, I'm 6'1" tall.

I know everyone's hearts are heavy with the news from Oklahoma these past couple of days. Hopefully this post brought some levity. Our prayers are definitely with the people struggling with this disaster, and I hope yours will be too.