Tag Archives: School

Middle school concert

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Lex had his first middle school concert tonight. It was just 6th graders, which was great! Not too long, not too crowded, just right. Lex ROCKED!

The dress code was nice clothes, black on bottom, white on top. Lex managed the correct colors, but it’s debatable whether black sweats and Alan’s white t-shirt count as “nice” clothes. But hey, he’s up there and he’s rockin’, so all is well!

The band was snapping their fingers making the rain sound and Lex did the rumble of thunder.

I love, love, love watching him play in the band. His confidence is outstanding and he smiles and jokes with the other percussionists between sets. It does my mommy heart proud!

Dad, I’m going to find out when his next concert is and you totally should come.  You’d love it!!

Unrelated, but funny, earlier today Arlo was begging for cheese.  See his nose?  :)

Cheese please!

Holiday Concert

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We had Eve’s holiday concert last night.  Alan was sick and didn’t attend.  😢  The kids and I showed up early to help sell raffle tickets.  The kids had a great time walking through the crowds, hawking tickets.  Then Eve took her place and the show began.

Select Chorus singing “Mele Kalikimaka,” a Hawaiian Christmas tune.

Eve had a speaking part this year. Her and a classmate introduced the best song of the night, “Candle light”Save

Unity Day

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It was midnight before we finally got settled and started dozing off last night, so this morning was a bit slow. The tears were still flowing, in sadness and, in part at least, in shear exhaustion. It was also Unity Day at school today and there was a big, coordinated walk to school this morning that Eve and I completely missed. We had our orange clothes and signs ready, but we couldn’t rally ourselves early enough to get there. I got Eve to school just in time, then came home to rally Lex. We let him sleep a bit, thinking he could go in late, but that never happened. He couldn’t get it together and every time he thought about school the tears started flowing again. He begged for a day at home where he could just read and relax. We gave it to him.

The point of this post, however, is that we have an awesome school! There was so much orange it was amazing! All week I’ve been reading books about being proud of yourself (this month’s theme is “Let your True Colors Shine”) and books about bullying and we have been talking about how the two relate. The kids are great and already know so much! In some of the stories we read the kids are bullies are just awful and the kids at school are amazed that anyone would do that. I love hearing the ideas and seeing what strong advocateds they are for one another. (It’s not perfect, of course, they are kids after all, but the school community is so strong it radiates through them al1!)

We missed the walk to school, but we were there for the assembly at the end. We did the unity chain like we have in past years, and two kids read a book called “One” (which I need to get in the library!) Then kids from an enrichment group I run showed the Scratch projects they made. I was very proud of them! They come to me once a week and we work on Scratch programming and I love seeing how much they love to learn and how quick they are to help one another (thank goodness because I don’t know much about Scratch at all!) I told them that if they wanted to share their projects on Unity Day they could, and three groups did!

Each kid in the school writes a strong positive message on a link and they all form together to be our annual Unity Day chain, which is then hung in the lobby for all to read.

My group of enrichment kiddos. See Eve on the left. :) On the far right is our nationally acclaimed school counselor! She won “School Counselor of the Year” for the state of Vermont this year and has been chosen as one of five finalists for “National School Counselor of the Year.” She and the principal get to go to Washington DC for an awards ceremony in the spring.

Select Chorus sang “True Colors” for the crowd. I tried to get a video but failed miserably.

I feel a little rambley right now and my thoughts aren’t flowing smoothly, so I’m going to stop here. I’m just so proud of my kids, my school, and this amazing community! I couldn’t ask for a better place to raise my kiddos. (look how cute they were two years ago!)

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Unity Day at the Middle School

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October is Bullying Awareness month and today the middle school is celebrating Unity Day (bullying awareness).  We celebrate it every year at DBS by wearing orange and having a special group walk to school and a special assembly.  Apparently they do similar things in the middle school, just a day earlier.  

The point of my post is that today Lex is wearing an orange shirt like everyone else (joining in!), he is wearing MY orange shirt because he doesn’t have his own (bending his own rules!), and he is ok that its new and too big!   He is seriously growing up!  

We had a meeting yesterday with his teachers and they had nothing but good things to say.  He is adjusting well, doing well in classes, and liked by others.  

I’m so proud of him and how far he has come. ?

Bake for Good

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King Arthur Flour came to school this week and did a bread baking demonstration for the 4th and 5th graders. The presenter was outstanding and had their attention the entire time. She had two student helpers and a camera pointing at her table so everyone in the audience had a good view of the action! She showed them how to make bread, cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, pretzels, and pizza crust – all using the same dough!

The bleacher, not in the picture, are full of eager to learn 4th and 5th graders! I had no class at the time so I came to the demo too. :)

After the demonstration, King Arthur Flour sent every kid (and I think the 4/5 teachers) home with a bag of supplies to bake their own bread! The canvas bag had two types of flour, yeast, a dough scraper, a great recipe booklet, and a plastic bag to bring back one loaf of bread. Kids were instructed to bake two loaves this weekend and bring one in on Monday to donate. All of loaves brought in will be donated to a local food pantry.

Eve has made bread with me plenty of times, but this is the first time we did it all by hand! No bread machines involved.

The recipe said to kneed the bread for five minutes and she made it the entire time! Chatting all the while. :)

This braid took a few tries, but turned out pretty great in the end.

I hope some lucky family enjoys this beautiful loaf of bread! We had fun making it.

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She wasn’t thrilled with the way the other loaf turned out, so she didn’t let me take a picture of it. We had some for dinner though and it is delicious!

It was fun to see so many of her friends and teachers posting pictures of their baking and beautiful bread on Facebook this weekend. I feel so truly lucky to be part of such a wonderful school community!

Library blog

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Hey all, in case this blog isn’t fascinating enough, check out my new school library blog. (You know you want to, Mom!) It’s filled with exciting things like library schedules and book awards! Of course I got a picture of Eve up there already! (Truthfully, I’m not sure yet on the media release situation, so I thought it best to stick to pictures of kids I know for now.) Enjoy!

Also, did you see I just did three blog posts in one evening? That’s my quota for the week! See ya next week! :)

Open House

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This post is a few days delayed, but better late than never.  Thursday was open house at school.  Each grade does a 10-15 minute presentation of their curriculum, but I wasn’t sure if I could get out of the library that long, so Eve and I went for a sneak peek at her classroom.  She showed me around, we did the scavenger hunt, and got full access to the teachers (ha!) until 6pm when Open House officially started and I scooted back to the library.  I wasn’t sure what to expect for library attendance, but I was pleased that it was packed for the entire time!  Kids stopped by to introduce me to their parents (while I desperately tried to recall the kid’s name in my head!) and parents that I’m friends with stopped by and it was very nice all around.  The hour flew by!

I love seeing Eve’s work.  Her poetry is amazing to me, and not just because it’s often about how much she loves me. :)  Lately she has been sitting in her bed at night writing poetry.  She has a great one about the holidays, and the “mom” poem she wrote me a few weeks ago.  At Open House she showed me her, “I am from” poem that they did in class.  I love it!

Eve is an excellent writer… you just have to decode her spelling! :)

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Week one done

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We made it through the first week of school and now we are celebrating the long weekend with a “no-plans” weekend.  :)  Other families are off on exciting Labor Day vacations, and we are cozying down in PJs with the weekend comics and a big mug of tea.  That’s the way we roll.

I had a fairly easy transition into my teaching, with just one class the first day, no classes the second day (but lots of learning about the tech at school), and four classes each the last two days of the week.  I was exhausted Wednesday night (my no class day!) and feeling nervous about the next day with four classes.  I put the kids to bed early and myself to be immediately after them.  Thursday rolled around and the day was great!!  Four great classes!  Friday was the same.  I’m sure they won’t always be great, but I’m super happy about how the first week went.  :)

Eve is enjoying her new mixed class with all of the kids in one room.  It’s a big group of students and teachers, but so far she’s happy.  She also got an award for showing Caring, Safe, and Responsible behavior all week long.  It’s a new program they started this year and Eve was thrilled to be one of the first students to get it.

Lex made it to school happily each day.  He has homework now that is often online, so we need to come up with a way to keep track of that.  In the past homework was on a piece of paper that could sit on the table until it was done, but now he’s a big kid and things are changing.  He had a field trip to the lake where they did team building activities and tie-dyed t-shirts.  He had fun.

Everyone is happy to go back next week… after a three day weekend!

First day of a new school year!

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Today began a new chapter in this house. Lex headed off to 6th grade at the middle school, Eve started 4th grade, I had my first day at the Media Specialist in the school library, and Arlo got to spend seven hours in his crate! No big changes for Alan though, sorry. Alan brought Lex in and said drop-off went well. Eve and I walked to school. I start later than she does, so I was able to walk her (and Arlo) to school in the morning, then come home, shower, and get myself ready. It’s a plan that kind of works, but needs some refinement. It worked well today though!

Back to school.

Miss Eve heading off to 4th grade.

My middle schooler!

Flowers for the teachers.

This girl is too much!

I only had one class to teach today, but I also had lunch duty, meetings, and an assembly. Tomorrow it’s just recess duty and meetings, then Thursday and Friday I get classes back to back to back! I’ll be ready for the long weekend!

Flowers for the librarian! Thanks family!!!

At the end of the day Eve came to meet me in the library and she was clearly excited about something. She said she wasn’t working on a project and I COULDNT NOT PEEK! She then asked me when my birthday is (precisely) and then decide maybe not to wait that long to share her project. After awhile she asked if she could take my picture and she set up the scene she wanted.

The new school librarian standing by the “NEW” books shelf!

Then she asked to borrow my computer.  The final output was an awesome poem called, “My Mom Poem.”  She said she started working on it in study hall at the end of the day, not as an assignment or anything, but just because she wanted to.  Sadly, she asked me not to share it because it was special for us. I’ll respect those wishes, though maybe I’m breaking them a wee bit by mentioning it here!  I can’t help it though.   She is amazing and I’m so proud to be her momma AND her librarian!

Lex took the bus to me after school and got off with a smile.  There are a handful of middle schoolers that have parents in my building, so he wasn’t the only big kid getting off at the elementary school.  He said the day went well and when I asked if he was planning to go back tomorrow he said, “I guess so.”  Raves reviews from the boy!  I haven’t heard much else from him.

I had a good day.  I’m so happy to be part of a school community that I love.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Arlo did not like his day and was VERY eager to get outside when we got home.  He has been all teeth and claws ever since.  He doubled one of the holes in the yard, scratched up Eve’s arm, and is chewing everything he can find.  Apparently one 3-mile walk in the morning does not sufficiently counter seven hours in the crate!  That’s a problem I’m definitely going to have to work on.  Maybe Alan should take him to work each day!  :)
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My Library

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I had in-service week last week and on Friday when I was chatting with other teachers they kept saying the were pretty ready for school to start and the more people who said that the more panicked I got that I was not feeling at all ready for school to start!!

Last weekend Alan helped clean up the robotics lab a bit and this weekend we went back for another marathon work session. It was great! I left this evening feeling a thousand times more ready for Tuesday. There’s still work to do, of course, and always will be, but I feel like I can do this!

Let me show you my library…

My new school. Not really new exactly, because the kids have been going here for years and I subbed here and did my student teaching here, but now it’s officially MY school too! 😄

New books are always exciting! (Those are not all the new books, just the ones that were on the shelf when I took the picture! There are lots more!!)

My first library bulletin board.

The Vermont corner. The three maps of the area came from Grandpa’s house. 💜

This year’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher nominated books.

The reading corner needs to be a little cozier. Maybe I can find a nice cozy carpet or bean bag chairs or something.

Group activity area. Elizabeth made the green cushion and the rocking chair was Grandpa’s. He was a library kind of guy!

The computer/robotics lab has been underutilized the past few years since all the classrooms have laptops now. Alan got it all tidied and organized and I hope to put it to better use this year!

Arlo is a great library dog!! Next year I’m going to get him certified to come to school with me each day. The counseling team has a dog in school and I think the library needs one too!