Constellation Fun

We had the whole group together today for the first time. All 18 of my students - and I don't expect to lose anyone else, though I'll probably get at least two more (if not three). It's a big group! They're such great kids, though. With all those bodies in the room it got louder than I'm used to, and I was a bit snappish close to lunch time. It would probably help if I ate breakfast. I wouldn't be nearly so cranky.
Then there was the bird. Sometimes I really can't handle having her in the room, and today it totally was not her fault. She was being full-on harassed by several students at once, and it seemed to me that she just wanted to be left alone. That was the thing that set me off before lunch - leave the poor bird alone!
Kati did the student interviews today, and I did lessons and classroom management. At the end of the day we did a fun constellations lesson. I got out the constellation viewer and cards that came with my solar system unit kit (thank you DonorsChoose.org!) and then we used glow-in-the-dark paint on black construction paper to create constellations. The students really got into it, and I'm sure several will return to the work throughout the next several days. It's on the shelf now ready for them in the morning. I also did a group lesson on compound words - a couple of extensions called Logical Agreement and Random Placement. MS took it before I could even get it to the shelf. I also did several individual lessons - dictionary usage with LH and KL, squaring chains with AD and BF and reading in Spanish with ID, just to name a few. It was a good productive day.