February

In February we had fun decorating Valentine's bags and trading sweet treats. The kids were so wired, even without eating any candy in class, I was very glad to send them off for their week of no school for the President's holidays. We also decorated Pysanky eggs, which may look like Easter eggs, but no, they are not. Instead, the Pysanky eggs were a project tied in with our Language Arts story, and no, don't ask me the name at this time.

For the eggs we whipped out the old oil pastels, and when I mean old, they were probably made around the same year I was! The kids loved them and actually didn't destroy much of the class. Then we did some of our first water coloring of the year. This was the first of many painting projects we did in the spring. We also continued on with the water colors when we made our geometric shape art. Both of these projects were up for open house and looked beautiful on the windows.

So, I'm a little behind

Well folks, the year is over. However, I missed a lot of blogging due to the amount of stress I was enduring in the last few months of the school year. I have come out with a few helpful hints when teaching.

#1 Do not teach a combo. The schedule itself will make your head spin.

#2 Do not teach a combo that was never articulated to be a combo.

#3 Do not teach a combo that is filled with students who have been administratively transferred, or retained.

#4 Start doing yoga as soon as you think you may need to place a student in an "Emotionally Disturbed" class. I started after several months of this process and I don't think I have still bounced back completely.

#5 Stick to your gut. Think that 8 year olds aren't your thing, well then, you are probably right!

#6 Remember, due to massive budget cuts, no summer school = an actual summer off.

So now I will try to share as many of the projects I did with my kiddos since January. I must say, they did do some pretty amazing things.

Happy Birthday Dr. King

Glitter, Poinsettias, Panettone, and Santas

Well in getting into the holiday season I had several projects planned with my kids for the last week before winter break. Now when I was kid in school these projects got me so excited for the holiday to come. I have now realized that this is not the case for all students. For our last day before break I had a whole array of festive fun planned but was surprised to find that my students were not walking in the door as happy as I was predicting. I found that our day of projects reminded some of my students that they were leaving school for 2 weeks, something that is actually bad if your home environment is not what you would wish for. And for others, it reminded them that they would have to spend another Christmas without their parents. So, after coming to this realization I decided to push on realizing that this might be one of the few positive holiday memories they might have this year. And for the most part I think we succeeded.

Just a few more

Tis' the Season

So I haven't been blogging lately, mostly due to some serious stress in the classroom. Now I have been rejuvenated by some time off and feeling like sharing a few of my holiday decorations. I will also keep up with the projects we finish over the next week and a half. I'd like to start with my holiday stars/snowflakes that I made for my home this year. This is normally a project I do with my students, but seeing as how my kids are only 7, I figured maybe I would skip it this year.  I decided since I was making them for my home that I would use some Christmas scrapbook paper instead of my usual blue construction paper to help them fit the holiday decor. I think they turned out really fun and hope to make a few for my mom soon. Hope you enjoy the decorations, and seeing as how I am pretty much out of room in my house, I think I will be done decorating for the year, but I make no promises.