Digging in

We're on Day 3 (don't get me started on the law that won't let us begin before Labor Day).  I have about 20% of names down (naughties and cuties and needies, mostly), there were five new kids in one class, and yesterday I apparently completely missed that a student added into one of my classes, because he came in and sat down in the seat of a kid who dropped the class before I changed my seating chart.  Gah.

We're starting things off with the start of the American dream.  My awesome partner-in-crime focused on figuring out how to make Of Plymouth Plantation seem relevant and meaningful through some read/think aloud action that gets the kids thinking about the Puritans' traits and what we can still see of those traits in the way Americans live today.

Before we got down to OPP (Yeah, you know me!), I gave the kids the quick and dirty run down of why and how the Puritans wound up here.  I start with Henry VIII and his devout Catholic Spaniard princess of a wife, the hussy Anne Boleyn and the king's throw-down with the pope, the quick succession of wives following Anne's execution, including Catherine Howard (an even bigger hussy) saying she would rather be another man's wife than a queen before her execution.  [BTW, have you seen The Tudors?  Holy man is it hot!  Netflix on demand rules!]

http://www.ioffer.com/i/pocahontas-14-bustine-trading-cards-skybox-8283141

All of this to prepare them for the Anglican-->Roman Catholic (Bloody Mary)-->Anglican-->Anglican progression that sent the Puritans out of England and into...the Netherlands!  That part always surprises the kids, but they can relate with the idea of being totally out of their element if they were in the same place, unable to to speak Dutch.

http://www.scarborough.k12.me.us/wis/teachers/dtewhey

Today was also ruin Pocahontas day: Sorry, kids, but P. was just a wee girl when John Smith was in the area.  Trees don't talk.  Later, girlfriend married some other English dude, and  pictures of her from later in her life make her seem like any other old white lady.  :(

I love the history, and I think that makes the kids dig it.

Oh, also, today my team teacher said that one of our kids asked her yesterday, "Is Miss MIKD a genius?  She seems like she might be a genius."  I still got it!