Tailless Whip Scorpian

It's not that I've abandoned my blog, it's just that starting up a school year always takes much longer than I would anticipate. This week one of my students remarked to me how fast time goes and that we had already been in school for 4 weeks. This is so true, I feel that the days just fly by and here we are in September already.

This year I have a class of 20 fourth graders. We had several new faces join our class all of whom already fit in so well. In our mix of 20 students half of them are Nicaraguan, 6 North American, 3 Korean, and 1 Canadian. I'm still getting used to the scheduling this year since a number of my students go in and out of my class to recieve Special English, Special Spanish, or Learning Assistance. All around they are a very well-natured class. In devotions one morning we were talking about people in authority over us. Somehow in the discussion one student remarked, "And we know that Miss Bootsma loves us." This took me off guard, but it was the same thoughts I had that previous day when I thought to myself, "I might just have one of the best classes in the school." (So thankful that God gives me a great group of kids each year :)

Below are some pictures of my student with their reading buddies from first grade.

Although I'm not sure why, but I was a little alarmed to see this creature (photo below) in the teacher workroom this week when I was cutting off some butcher paper. Naturally I called over a colleague to help me trap it. The next day the students in my class took a keen interest in looking at it. I heard several people say, "Look a spider", "No a crab", etc. This creature, as I discovered the first time I saw one, is a Tailless Whip Scorpian. It looks ugly and mean but is completely harmless. We put an ant in his jar one day after recess and watched him respond, but he didn't eat it. This guy is more interested in crickets.