I have had a very, very busy week! It’s my second solo week in kindergarten, though the first one I’ve actually had all five days. Tuesday night my friend from UVEI called to tell me what I’d missed that day, which apparently was a bump up on the due dates for a few big projects due. I know what’s due, but apparently it’s due two weeks sooner than I anticipated! On Wednesday morning I scheduled an interview for next Monday (yay!) which I’m not even remotely prepared for yet. But I’m trying to keep my eye on this week. This solo week. Which has had plenty of ups and downs, of course, and I’m pretty sure I’m learning more than the kiddos this week.

My school day ended on a high. As a UVEI project I wrote a kindergarten unit on neighborhoods and I’ve been teaching it this week. It culminated with the class building a neighborhood in the classroom out of paper, cardboard, wooden blocks, Legos, and more. They loved it!! We gave the other kindergarten a tour, a few teachers, and the principal even stopped by to visit our neighborhood. The kids were so excited!

After school Lex and Eve had their first belt test! They were super excited and I found myself feeling very nervous for them. Eve gets silly when she’s nervous and Lex tends to cry, so I wasn’t sure at all what to expect from the afternoon. Turns out they are both rockstars and did awesome! They needed to ace three separate tasks to move up a full belt color, or there are stripe levels to move up partial belt colors. They had the option of doing the third task or not, but if they did it it had to be done solo, not with the group. Both of them chose to do it! I was so surprised and proud of them! They ended up moving from white to orange with a white stripe, which is one step below orange. The Sensi was proud of both of them for trying the third tasks and they did well with it, but not perfectly. However, they were THRILLED about their orange/white stripe belts. Absolutely thrilled! Eve said her heart was bursting with joy and she swore she had happy tears inside too. :) I did too!!

This video is nearly nine minutes long, but I suspect there are one or two of you out there who might be interested.