Holidays and Brain Out

          Valentines Day is a non-Federal holiday full of traditions and legends which may or may not be true.  There were at least two, perhaps three, patron saints who bore the name St. Valentine.  Their lives ended in tragic massacres; perhaps it was the way they lived that got the Valentine’s celebration started.  There are many websites to choose from when “Valentines” is the subject entered into a search engine such as Google.  I have never been much into the Valentine spirit.  The concept behind Valentine’s Day seems noble enough, but the commercialism is what keeps the holiday alive and I could do without that.  No one gets off of work or school in honor of Valentines.

https://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day

           President’s Day was created in honor of George Washington, first president of the United States.  President’s Day was initially established on February 22, 1885 in honor of his birthday.  President's Day is a Federal holiday - which means most governement businesses, banks, and schools are closed on Presidents day.  In 1971 the date was changed to the third Monday in February.  This was done as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act (see here) 

https://www.thebaynet.com/articles/0219/calvert-county-presidents-day-schedule-.html 

I had accepted an assignment that put me with kindergartners and first graders on Valentine’s Day.  The first graders surprised the aides when we were invited to play a trivia game to test our knowledge of George Washington.  Each time we answered correctly, we would get a point.  If we answered wrong, the children would get the points.  I thought it fairly easy as all of the questions had multiple choice – though I either hadn’t been aware or agreed with the answers as being correct – like the cherry tree incident I learned to be a myth.  Or that his teeth were not made out of wood but ivory – however ivory was not one of the listed choices.

I don’t remember how many questions there were.  Two of us answered all of our questions correctly.  One answered a couple incorrectly and one I think got only one right.  The aides won.  Later on that day I helped set up for the Valentine party.  I passed out the punch.

We had a three day weekend and did not return to school until today.  I had picked up an assignment to work today as well as Thursday and Friday.  I had accepted the assignment yesterday.  Oh my word, I was soooooooo sleepy.  The fact that I was sitting in a middle school math class was not helping in the least.

A snail travels 0.029 miles in an hour.  How much will he travel in 10 minutes?

saved from Emma Portel Pinterest file

Way too early for my brain to convert anything.  So glad NOT to be a student today.  The second class was more of the X Y chart but now introducing Z.  My brain hurt.  The instructor played this YouTube video.

Next was a prep class.  The instructor wrote a paragraph about a blizzard in the “maintain” and some other misspelled word – no punctuation.  I didn’t know if it was intentional so that the class would correct whatever they happened to write.  But they had to have three paragraphs.  It was definitely interesting. 

Only one recess was required with the schedule I had done on Friday, but the schedule I am doing this week has me outside three different parts of the day.  Though recess is not my favorite, I do enjoy this schedule overall.  But today was fricken cold and I never did get warm or felt awake.  I think I’ll be going to bed early.