Maybe a little tooooo quick

This past Friday, we were a small group. 2nd grade was on a field trip, so 3rd grade got to make the Challenge paw print stepping stone. We used Quick-Set cement and boy was it quick! A little too quick. It hardened in the bucket before we could pour it in the mold. Most of the Challenge kids had put little souvenirs in the mold to represent themselves. Once we poured the cement, a lot of the light-weight things floated to the top. The super balls were the worst. Mrs. M kept poking them back down with a pencil but they would come back up. Finally, when the cement was hardening, they would stay down. We can't wait to see which of our trinkets will be able to be seen. What was really cool though was how when we poured it, the concrete was cold. But as it started to get hard, it got HOT!

We took a look at our jar plants. Some of us have new sprouts, some of us don't. One of us even has 2! Two of us have sprouts underground but next to the glass. We took some moisture readings and gave the soil some water if it was too dry. Then we placed them all back in the sunshine.

Finally, we went outside and did some more weeding in our hosta garden. There's a weed in there that looks like really big creeping Charlie. It is really rooted in there well. We pretty much left it alone. The grass, though, was easier to pull up. And we kept amazing ourselves with how long of a root we could pull out. We took a look at the outdoor classroom space and pulled up a few big weeds there, too. The deck was put in this weekend! We'll have to get all our paw print stepping stones out there pretty soon.