Teaching Adventures

Kids right after our Green Eggs. 23/25 liked them!

I let them write words from Green Eggs and Ham on the sidewalk with chalk

For Math, we recently learned about measuring. Here they are seeing how many spoonfulls of beans fit into one cup.

For our transportation unit, the kids all got to help paint big foam boards and also paint wooden vehicles. Then I stapled/taped it to the floor for one of our centers. They've loved the imaginary play!

Farm Day! Last Friday, we went to a local farm! Kids got to hold chicks, pet goats, take a picture with a mini horse and plant a seed!

March has been a crazy month so far in school! We've crammed in Dr. Seuss birthday with green eggs and ham, Farm Day (field trip), St. Patrick's Day, Amtrak train trip and Easter....all within a few weeks!

And today, for St. Patty's day, the "leprechauns" visited our classroom last night! They teased us by knocking over all of our chairs, leaving green footprints in paint all over the classroom and leaving us gold coins filled with chocolate! The kids were thrilled by our mysterious visitors!

The struggle for me as a teacher is to enjoy the moment while living in the future. If my mind is not always thinking weeks in advance, then we'd never get all the special holidays, seasons, themes and standards met. Some days I feel like someone pushed fast-forward with how much we fit into one day! But the shocking part is....these kids really can keep up. In fact, it's an art to keep them perfectly busy. Not too much and not too little. In fact, too little is worse than too much because if their brains get bored, you loose 'em. Every single MINUTE counts in kindergarten!

I think I'm completing my 10th week (now it's all a blur) and I have learned SOOOOOO much! I think every teacher should HAVE to do a long term assignment before having their own classroom. The strange part for me now is to realize that I'll turn back the classroom to Mrs. R in a few weeks and then it's just over. I won't necessarily get updates on "my" kids. But to her, their "her" kids. Maybe it's like foster parenting? :-)

The kids are really growing at rapid speeds this time of year, which is SO fun to see. The girls are also growing in their ability to have "girl drama" and the boys are getting more physical (tackling, etc). The tattles are enough to kill me off. If I hear "teacher, she hurt my feelings!" one more time, I might scream! There is always one that is the nucleus of it too.

Anyway, I just feel like I'm just surviving life. I don't feel like I'm giving 100% to anything. Its like I'm too tired all the time. But it's not like before I was teaching i was on the ball with everything either! I'm just really morphing into a disorganized person! I was complaining about Lexi's horrible closet the other day (I mean clothes piled EVERYWHERE). And then I walked into my own and thought....well, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree! How can I expect her to do something her mother doesn't even do! It's the whole "do what I say, not what I do" notion, right?!

Too tired to write more now. Trying not to be too hard on myself for all that I don't have and don't do. Grateful for the blessings I have and really no need to complain about the hard stuff. It can always be worse, is what I've found!