Fall is in the air!

The temperature is starting to drop and the leaves are starting to change - fall just may be my favorite season. It's nice to be able to wear sweaters and watch movies nestled under blankets. There's a chill in the air, although I have to say that the afternoons and early evenings are still warm enough that I tend to leave my jacket behind.

Things seem to be settling down into a routine as everything gets going. I started 5th and 6th grade band at one of the elementary schools this week, and it's going pretty well so far. Parents may not like me so much - all we learned this week was how to squeak/squawk/siren on our mouthpieces (depending on the instrument), however on Thursday we'll learn how to put all of our instruments together. Then they'll be making all sorts of wonderful other noises for their parents to love.

In other band news, my middle school and high school bands are amazing me. My 7th graders played through an entire song yesterday, so we're moving onto harder music this week. My 8th graders have played through (at slow tempos) two of the songs we're going to do for the concert. My high schoolers read through two songs that are grade 4 or so that we may end up doing for the concert, we'll see. I'm so proud of the work that they've put in to get to where they are.

Physical Science is going pretty well. This week is "Adopt-An-Element", which also means that I'll have more planning time with my co-teacher while the students are working on the computer. I'm excited for all of the different things that I'm going to be able to do with this class, and having more planning time will definitely be nice.

Drama, Debate and Forensics looks like it's going to be a great year. I've got to make up a few more information packets - the 25 that I copied to begin with are gone and I've had others ask questions about getting the packets, so I need to copy those. It's going to be a big team this year, which means that it's going to be a lot of fun. Crazy, and super busy, but fun.

I don't have much of a life other than that, at the moment. Spending time relaxing when I'm able, but I do like staying pretty busy. Supposedly, it keeps me out of trouble.