I haven’t made a
My husband told me that I’d be good at making an entire mosaic floor… something about repetitive detail work. Yup, he knows me well. That might have been a good job for me 2,000 years ago if I lived on
I haven’t made a
My husband told me that I’d be good at making an entire mosaic floor… something about repetitive detail work. Yup, he knows me well. That might have been a good job for me 2,000 years ago if I lived on
During the first week of school, my third graders worked on this paper quilt. Each block is a grid with 100 squares (10x10). I used blank 100 charts that were in the math textbook we use, but it would be simple enough to create a grid that would work well. Each student made a block by writing their name over and over again in the squares and then coloring each letter a different color. For example, “Jane” might choose red for J, yellow for A, orange for N, and black for E. The pattern is repeated until the 100 squares are filled up.
Students with 5 or 10 letter names just colored stripes, where students with 7 letter names had to be a bit more careful. Overall the project was fun and not too demanding for my uncertain brand new third graders. They were very excited when I unveiled the complete project!
I looked like a busy airport. My students were mesmerized. They just kept staring at my head and talking about the airplanes. Thankfully crazy hair day is during the last week of school!
The main character of Dragonflight is Lessa, a clever girl who is able to speak to all dragons. When the story begins, Lessa is working undercover as a kitchen drudge in her family’s hold. The hold was seized by an ambitious overlord, and she is biding her time before she can take back the hold. This part was a bit difficult for me to be interested in, because it spends a lot of time talking from her bitter and dissatisfied point of view. It is necessary back story, though.
The dragonriders are in disfavor because thread, the destructive silver rain that dragons burn up as it falls, hasn’t fallen in hundreds of years. The citizens of Pern don’t believe it will ever fall again, and they are questioning their support of dragonriders.
The last remaining (and lazy) queen lays a golden queen egg, and the search for a suitable female dragonrider uncovers Lessa. When Lessa is brought to the Weyr and impresses her queen dragon, the story is finally in full swing. The emotional attachment between dragon and rider is a touching component of these scenes.
Of course, the thread begins to fall again, and the small number of dragons are woefully unprepared to fight it effectively. It is at this time that Lessa discovers that dragons can fly through time as well as space, and she mounts a very risky and experimental mission to bring oldtimer dragons and dragonriders to the present time to help fight thread.
By the time I was a quarter of the way into this book, I had a hard time putting it down. There is wonderful tension and excitement in this book.
I have read about the wonders of label makers on many blogs. People seem to be passionate about their label makers. I could imagine lots of ways to use a label maker in my classroom. So when WantNot linked to a great deal on a label maker a few weeks ago, I bought one. It arrived a week later in a box so large it could have held ten label makers.
I carried it to school, thinking that I would have time to label some things in my free time.I am in the midst of reading Anne McCaffery’s Pern series, in the order listed on the informative bookmark at my public library. I have read and enjoyed many of McCafferey’s books since I was in high school, but I’ve never read them in order, and I have missed out on many of the Pern books. The series is addictive. I’ll be posting short reviews as I read each book in the series.
1. DragonflightThis embroidery fit the requirement of being portable (and brainless) perfectly last weekend. These will be tag labels for my linen closet, although my reasons for embroidering the words had more to do with my desire to have a portable project than to have a super organized linen closet.
And… I can’t believe who the cylons are!
A few weeks ago, while I was awake on a jet lag fueled night of insomnia, I saw a picture of a rectangle quilt with sashing that seemed like the perfect project for my beautiful fabric. I spent the next few days cutting and assembling the simple top.
It’s still just a top, but it will soon have a border and be layered with just backing and muslin. I want something very thin as a coverlet during the hot summer. Something more substantial than a sheet, but not as hot as a quilt.