Tag Archives: School

Tiny teacher treats

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We got presents for the kids’ classroom teachers, but we like to make a little something for everyone!  This year the helper teachers, specials teachers, counselors, and office staff will be getting festive little bags of candy.

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Assembly line holiday treats. Eve fills the bags, Lex wrote the tags, and I tied them all together.

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I love Christmas!

Actually not everybody gets a treat this year.  In the past we have made little treats for the students as well, but this year we didn’t get to it.  Both kids are bringing in cookies for their holiday parties though, so we’ll just call those the student gifts!

Tomorrow is the last day of school before vacation, and my last day in preschool.  I’ll miss the preschoolers, but I’m ready for vacation!

The 2015 Holiday Concert

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We had another lovely holiday concert tonight. I’m so glad our school does this. The kids are adorable and it’s nice to see all the parents I don’t see very often.

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We were five rows back and could barely see! This is a zoomed in picture I took by holding my phone way above my head.

Eve’s class sang Oh, Hanukkah, and did a song with the boomwhackers (plastic tubes the use to make music).

We had a very special guest at this year’s concert. Listen closely to the bells and see if you can spot him.

That’s right, Lex was in the concert this year!! He wasn’t even very nervous! He told me last night that he knew all the songs (they played four) and was pretty sure it would be ok. It was!! It was absolutely perfect, and when they pulled out those hats for the final song (in this video), and he didn’t put one on, that made it even more perfect. He’s still Lex. :)

I haven’t been in school lately and it was nice to get a chance to see all the holiday decorations they have up. I took pictures of just a few things, but the whole lobby looked amazing!

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The gingerbread neighborhood. Each class makes one and then they are all donated to the Gingerbread Festitival, a local fundraiser that happens each year.

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Lex’s class made these. He was telling me about them the other day. The used tin and hammers to punch out the designs. I think the display looked beautiful, but I can’t wait for his to come home.

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They also punched out designs on tin can lids to hang on the tree. I’m not sure who made the pictures on the wall, but they are beautiful too.

Happy holidays!

Math

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While doing is multiplication homework the other day Lex’s mind wandered to the concept of infinity. The idea that three times infinity is a smaller number than four times infinity. I guess he and Alan had been talking about it recently.

After talking about infinity a bit and pondering the size of infinity he said, “I like to think about mind-bending math. The stuff you literally can’t wrap your brain around. It kind of makes your brain hurt. I love that!”

The whole situation reminded me of a comment his teacher had made that he takes too long to do his math work in school. I suspect his mind is wandering to more interesting stuff and he looses track of the time. I certainly see it often at home!

School pictures

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The kids came home with school pictures today! Yay! As I was putting them in frames I was struck by how little they have changed in the past year. There are small changes, for sure, but overall they pictures are quite similar. Lex is even wearing the same shirt. :)

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This year on the left, last year still in frames.

Spelling

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In 5th grade they do spelling a bit differently. Instead of the usual list of ten words that the kids memorize for a week and then forget, in 5th grade they are given a list of 100 words that they have to learn over the course of the year. Each week the teacher pulls ten words out of a bag and those are used for the weekly spelling quiz. At the end the kids swap papers, score each others quizzes, and then swap back. The kids then graph their results on paper so they can see how their scores are improving. The goal is that as they study and learn the words their scores will go up each week. As an added bonus, if you get all ten words correct for seven weeks in a row you get $300 classroom dollars and the chance to opt-out of spelling quizzes.

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Someone is rich on classroom dollars now!

Guess who was the first in the class to reach that level?! Just seven weeks into school! :)

As I said, you get the chance to opt-out of spelling… OR to move on to a harder list. They are working now from a list of 100 content-specific words that cover math, science, literacy, and more. The next list is larger (I’m not sure how large as we haven’t seen the list yet) and taken from the Scripps National Spelling Bee word list. I was talking to his teacher yesterday and he said the Scripps words aren’t necessarily harder, but they are less common words (unlike the content words he uses in school all the time) and there are many more of them, which makes the list a lot more challenging.

Because Lex put minimal work into the first list and whizzed through it easily, we are encouraging him to try the next list. I think he needs more challenge in school, not less. :) I’m looking forward to seeing the list too!

New job!

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I start a new job tomorrow.  I am feeling prepared, but nervous nonetheless.  I’ll be teaching pre-k at a beautiful little school nearby.  It is a long-term sub position while their regular teacher is off on maternity leave.  I’ll be the teacher until Christmas vacation.  I get to do all the fun holiday crafts.  :)

It was a long and emotionally tumultuous path to arrive at this position, but I’m glad I took the journey and ended up where I did.  The first week of school my kids went back to school and I got myself organized.  I wrote up a long to-do list and started checking things off.  I made healthy food to eat and exercised every day.  I was enjoying the at-home gig.  Then a friend told me about a preschool position that was open and a day later I applied for a full-time kindergarten co-teacher position.  Both had some amazing pros, but some serious cons as well, and I again began my internal deliberation about home versus work versus me.  I want to be home with the kids, I want to continue my career, and I want to take care of myself, both physically and emotionally.  Unfortunately there just isn’t any way to do it all.

I interviewed at the preschool and decided not to take the job.  Then I interviewed for the kindergarten position and, after a TON of internal debate and with apologies and gracious thanks to those who were around to listen and support my complex decision making process, I turned that down as well.  That was especially hard because the school is amazing and the job would have been great, professionally.  Unfortunately it was a full-time job at a different school district, which means after school care for my kids and mismatched vacation schedules.  There may come a time when that works, but this year is not that time.  This year my kids still need me at home in the afternoon and I still need to be there for them.  So I turned down the kindergarten job.

“You can’t always get what you want.  But if you try sometimes, you just might find,
You get what you need.”  – The Rolling Stones

A day later I got a call from the director of the preschool at that same school.  She said she heard I turned down the K job and was wondering if maybe I would be interested in a part-time pre-k job instead.  Heck yeah!  I went back and interviewed with the pre-k team and it was a pretty easy decision.  It’s part time and just through Christmas, but I’ll still get the teacher experience (good for the resume!) and the afternoons at home (good for the family!)  Best of both worlds.

I start tomorrow and although I know it will go well and I know I made the right choice, I still have first day of school jitters!  Wish me luck.

 

Writing

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I was at school last night and decided to take a quick walk down the hallway to check out the class bulletin boards. I really missing being in the kids’ school each day and seeing all that goes on. Both of their classes had writing assignments on their boards. I stopped and read many of them, which isn’t something you have much time to do when you’re working in the school every day!

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In 5th grade they are learning about “5th grade words” or higher level writing. This assignment was to write a story about a very inappropriate (for advanced writing) word.

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In 3rd they are working on descriptive language in their writing. Eve brought home a draft of this last week and after I read it she said, “Can’t you just smell the pizza?! Are you hungry now?!” (Sorry this is such a blurry image.)

It’s the first day of school…

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Back to school time again! 5th and 3rd. This will be Lex’s final year in elementary school. I just reread all my “first day of school” blog posts, all the way back to Lex’s first day in pre-K. He was so tiny. Each year has had a pretty different start. I think by now we’re finally getting the hang of things! Both kids made their own lunches (so no sweet love notes from mommy in this lunch boxes today) and got dressed and took care of their morning jobs. No Daisy excitement like last year. Just a calm, happy, silly morning.

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Back to school. 5th and 3rd. They wanted to wear their backpacks for this picture. They both got new backpacks this year, for the first time in years!

The weather this morning is cool and foggy, but no rain. I even remembered to sweep off the porch yesterday! Maybe some day I’ll get around to painting it again. :)

Eve

Eve looking so grown up.

I always take two (or more!) pictures, just in case. Sometimes that works out well (eyes closed, etc) but other times it leaves me undecided. I like elements of both of these pictures. Which do you prefer?

Lex - p1

Which is better? This one….

Lex - p2

…or this one? One, or two?

Crazy kiddos. So excited for school! I love their enthusiasm for school and learning. And I love that no one cries on the first day of school any more!

silly kids together

Keeping it real!

I am now home alone. No job this year. I will eventually put my name on the sub list again, and continue looking for full-time work. Maybe a classroom position will open up mid-year, or a long-term sub position, or something. But for now, I’m home. I have a list of projects a mile long I’d like to tackle. And I really want to get my body back in check. The weight is out of control and Eve is expecting me to run a 5K with her in two months. So I’m hoping to spend the next few weeks getting work around the house done, eating well, and exercising. Probably I’ll be bored and lonely in about three days and eager to get back into school. We’ll see how it goes.