Wednesday, August 12, 2009

In the last fortnight....

I spent the first full week of August working on rewriting the Champaign School District's chemistry course, and am really excited about the two textbooks that I get to pilot this year. (I'm actually glad that I don't have an AP course this year in that respect, as it keeps my number of different classes to prep manageable.)

We spent last weekend in Wausau, visiting Kirstin's mom and stepdad. It was the weekend of the Wisconsin Valley Fair, so we took Leo to his first fair. About two hours was just about right for seeing all the critters and not spending money on any of the rides, as the ride tickets were horribly overpriced. (I know they were expensive when I was a kid, but this seems like they were moreso.) He was too short to go on most of the rides, anyway -- but maybe if we're back there in a year or two.

With as long as it takes to unlock my room for the year, I'm back at school for at least half-days tomorrow and Friday, and probably doing some swapping materials things with a colleague or two, as well.

A few pictures from the weekend follow, with minimal annotation. I'm working on updating the Flickr stream, but something keeps hiccuping, so I've moved to working in small batches.

Brushing his teeth and Granny Marge's














Playing in the corn pool at the fair. They had three pools -- one with corn, one with soybeans, one with cottonseed meal, to reflect the three main parts of a cow's diet.











On the playground at Oak Island community park. It's north-central Wisconsin; of course there's a log roll at the playground.











Playing wiffle ball.

1 comment:

the Provident Woman said...

I always liked piloting new math text books. Well, I only got to do it once. I didn't teach very long before I stayed home with the kids. But it's fun to play with all of the stuff they send with them. Great way to change things up in the classroom. I didn't get to teach any AP. Wish I did...