And, as it always has, rock crushes scissors

Ya'll...social studies kicked my butt today. Kicked. My. Hindparts.
In a good way.
In a we-never-made-it-to-math kind of way.

Fourth grade is Texas History, and we're finally getting past geography and into the good stuff. It's no Battle of the Alamo, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless. Stephen F. Austin has just gotten permission from Mexico to settle his colony.

So today, we pretended to be Austin and looked at letters and decided which people we should allow into the colony and which we shouldn't. The kids worked wonderfully, but in the grand tradition of fourth grade group work, we took the first ten minutes of the time trying to decide who was going to read what section, and who was going to record answers, only to be solved by the most official of fourth grade decision makers: Rock Paper Scissors.

We then went on to our next task: to become members of Austin's first colony and decide what to plant, how much, and see just what kind of success we'd have. It was a great activity, except it inolved following directions. And calculators. And using our full brain capacity. And it was exhausting.

The kids loved it and we learned more today than we could have learned from reading a book, but oh. my. word. As the teacher, it took every ounce of everything I had just to do it once...much less twice. Every once in a while, I understand why teachers just sit at the front of the room and read from the book and do a worksheet...it's way easier than actually teaching. I'm whipped.

But I'm also reminded why I do it every day.
Remember my herdman that I've mentioned here and there. Well, he's never turned in a book report (and we're on about our fifth book report). This very much bothered my little angel child, who is sweet and precious, and positive in every way, (and I thought that even before I found out about what he did).

My angel child was bothered by the fact that my herdman never turned in a book report, so he asked his mama if they could drive to his house, pick him up, and bring him to their house so my angel child could help my herdman with his homework. His mama said yes, and they did just that. They went, picked him up, came home, and did their book reports together at the kitchen table.

I am surrounded by beauty, and my heart cannot bear the joy of it.

(p.s. my herdman was SO proud of himself for getting his book report done, it was the first thing he said to me today...)