I’m a little behind because we’re having so much fun visiting friends! This past Tuesday the 4th, we drove from Janesville, WI (where we had stopped for the night) to Chicago, IL in the morning. We had to get to Wheaton (a suburb outside of Chicago) by Tuesday afternoon at 12:45pm because we had to go visit two fourth-grade classrooms at 1:00 and 1:45! By now, I feel like I’ve blogged ad nauseum about how amazing the experience has been, how glad we are that this geography unit has worked so well (and how much we keep perfecting it!), and how fascinating the book selecting process has been. What we love about doing it over and over again is hearing students’ reactions every time because they are always different. Each group of students asks slightly different questions or makes slightly different comments. At a fourth-grade classroom in Minneapolis where we gave away books, one student asked for our autographs and all of a sudden, everyone had! In Wheaton,  students wrote the most thorough postcards we had seen yet. When we were instructing students to write postcards to the next group of students, one student asked if they could address their postcard, “Dear innocent bystander,” which cracked me up. Another of our favorites read, “I have so many books at home. A garbage bag couldn’t hold all my books. I love to read!!!”

However, outside of our geography classes, what was really fun and different about Wheaton was our presentation to children at an ESL parents’ night. About 50 students attended, ranging in ages from about 2 (the younger brothers and sisters) to 13 or 14 (the older brothers and sisters). I’ve been trying to work on my storytelling skills, so I told a few stories (using props of course!). My mom, the expert ESL teacher who I absolutely love watching teach in front of groups of students, did an awesome activity for the group. She took about 12 kids and gave them each a puppet. Some of the puppets were ferocious beasts–sharks, dragons, snakes, etc.–whereas others were more sweet beasts–dogs, birds, fish, etc. The “ferocious” group lined up on one side and the “sweet” group lined up on the other side. The ferocious beasts said, “I’m going to eat you up!” The sweet beasts said, “No, don’t eat me! You should eat a ____” (and then they had to insert a food they liked). The ferocious beasts responded, “No, I want to eat you!” To which, the sweet beasts responded, “I’m going _____” (home, to school, to the library, etc.). The kids loved it. We broke for pizza and then after, we read a few stories, and then did some craft activities.

We left on Thursday to drive to Detroit. Photos and more about that to come. (Eventually, I promise! We’ve had so much fun meeting students and visiting with friends!).