Winter Comforts

This week in Social Studies, I set up some exotic islands and sent my students sailing the high seas, island hopping and recording what they found on graph paper maps and in naturalist journals. They learned to use map coordinates by following the ceiling tile grids on their travels. Today, the ships returned to their home port, and I hired the crews to create illustrated maps and guidebooks that we could use to encourage other people to travel to those islands. I paid my staff in hot chocolate.

We Virginians expect some cold spells. But we also expect some stretches of temperatures in the 40's. Not this winter. So today I pulled out these earrings that my friend Linda gave me years ago. And I served hot chocolate during Social Studies. When another teacher asked my student Grace what had gotten into me today, serving hot chocolate during class, Grace replied, "I guess she was just feeling all cold on the outside and warm and fuzzy on the inside!"

I photographed my earrings on top of the woodstove that warms my outside each evening. The comforts of winter are not lost on Folly who dozes next to the stove.