~SMILE!~

It was Megan's first day of school today -- fifth grade, "only one year away from Middle School," she cheerfully told me many times this summer -- and it went beautifully.

The teacher (a friend of mine from Girl Scout leadership meetings) led her 33 students in a rousing game of "Get to Know You" Bingo, challenged each student to create a geometric shape with six straws and "as much string as they needed" to make it 3-D, and demonstrated the turning-off-the-lights technique if the class has to leave the room for any reason. (Er, not all at the same time -- sorry! -- but over the course of the day!) The third thing sounds like a no-big-deal sort of thing, until you hear what happened when the lights went out: I guess RIGHT as she flicked the light switch a fire alarm was pulled somewhere on campus (accidentally, it turns out) but to all involved it sounded like the lights going out set off the cacophony of sirens!

Ah, fifth grade... when else can bingo, straws and fire alarms make the top three stories about what happened at school today?