New government and panning for gold.

Hello,

I'm sure if the big Harry Potter event wasn't lurking, your kids would either have come home and talked about our new government, or what their assignment is for the class paper, or that they got to try panning for gold.

I bought some bags of sand from a retired geology professor. He buys them from a mine in Georgia and usually about half of them have a small piece of real gold in them. He demonstrated to me how to pan for the gold and has always given me free bags of sand if I don't find gold in at least half of them. It takes a lot of patience and a steady hand to do correctly, so despite not finding any of the three bags that we emptied, I'm not going to try to get a free bag. I thought it would be a nice thing to try as we wind down our rocks and minerals unit. We might try again during chemistry next year. Another year to mature may be the trick to finding the gold.

The president signed a law today granting me the power to fine anyone interrupting a class discussion two dollars from their weekly paycheck. I like it. The law yesterday about blurting out being a ten dollar fine lasted less than two minutes. I collected forty bucks from one senator though.  We'll see if this new law works or if it will even last the week.

Okay, I've got the sorting on my mind. Thanks for all of the help so far. We still have work to do.  I really need to have volunteers for:

Putting up banners in the music room
Stringing and hanging the floating candles
Ordering and picking up pizza around five.
Making a river out of desks in the hallway
Helping me with the sound system
Helping with the lighting
Assisting in the creation of a cardboard boat or two
Keeping our kids calm enough to pull this off.
Hanging up the stone walls of the castle and the brick wall of the train station.

Plenty to go around. If anyone has any battery operated lanterns, we could use those as well.

I hope to see some of you after 3:30 tomorrow.  I'm off to get some more tea lights.

Thanks,

Mr. Shea