Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Long Time No Update.


I really need to get wi-fi at home so I can update you more easily. 

Oh my goodness, what have I been up to these days? 
Horrible Movie Night was Friday and we didn't watch a horrible movie.  We ended up watching 'Gran Torino'.  I wasn’t expecting to like it, but I did.  I know, it wasn’t a chick flick or a horror movie and I loved it!  In addition to Horrible Movie Night it was also Snack Shack Night!!!!

What’s Snack Shack?  It’s the restaurant with no dine in area and no drive though window, basically isn’t an expensive, fast food place. For $19, I got a cheeseburger, 4 mozzarella sticks (NO MARANARA, I might add) and a chocolate milkshake.  Who likes chocolate milkshakes better than me?  Name anyone, anyone at all.  Errrr.  Wrong answer.  The correct answer is nobody.  Now you’re getting it, I like chocolate milkshakes a lot, okay, so I like chocolate in general a lot.  Anyway, the milkshake from Snack Shack was good but it was actually a bit too chocolaty for me and for those of you who know me, that doesn’t happen often.  I don’t think I will be getting a cheeseburger from there again either.  Over time, my preferences on how I enjoy having my meat cooked have changed.  I still do not want to see blood coming out of my burger, but no, I don’t want it burnt to a crisp.  Want to guess what I’m going to tell you next?  My cheeseburger was almost burnt to a crisp. I’m sure many people enjoy having their food prepared this way; it’s just not for me anymore. 

Over the course of the rest of the weekend I spent most of my time at the school working on lesson plans and preparing for this week.  I’m currently caught up though the end of next week but my intention, in all honesty, it to type everything into GOLD (my lesson plan website base) until the end of September, by the end of this weekend.  Did that make any sense at all?  I really don’t feel like figuring out how to rephrase that so go ahead and ponder it a while if it didn’t click right away for you.

Monday, Monday, Monday. Ummm..I know it’s not a good idea to use ‘ummm’ in a paper, okay, or language in general but I’m going to anyway; so sue me (cliché intended).   I had my first Monday with students this week!  I have to split my kids in half (I enjoy doing this vertically so they can still hop around and I can still see at least part of their faces) because otherwise the ratio of students to teacher goes over.  I cannot have more than 10 students at a time with me being the only teacher in the classroom.  Take a guess how many kids showed up for school.  Come on, take a guess.  I know you don’t want to, do it anyway.  Peer pressure getting to you?  I had 2 kids!  Yes, you read that right! 2!!!  I have a feeling that this happened because typically I have students from 12:30-4 but on Mondays I have students from 8:30-12.  I hope that next week I will have more children bright and early to start the week off right. 
Today (Tuesday) I had 15 of my 17 kids in class.  The theme this week is ‘How Do You Feel?” 

We spent lots of time talking about how we felt today and matching emotion names with looks on faces.  We’re going to do something similar tomorrow; hopefully it goes well.  In addition to playing games having to do with emotions, we also did some hands on math.  We made ‘Shape Pizza’.  Want to do this at home?  You will need play dough and cut outs of shapes such as circles, squares and triangles.  All you need to do is put some shapes on the pizza (play dough) and count how many shapes there are.  I also expanded the activity by counting individual shapes, identifying shapes, identifying colors, adding to get the total number of shapes, and visualizing the number of shapes using fingers as well.  Did you know a teacher could do that?  Yes, I do intend on getting the point across to you that I’m not just a ‘babysitter’.  I know that’s what you (or most of you) were thinking. 

Here’s a small update for all of you readers out there.  I’m not going to go into detail but I will give you the jist of it.  Pam, my ECE (Early Childhood Education) principal came to visit with me Monday afternoon-Wednesday morning.  She observed my class all day Tuesday and told me that she’s very pleased with what she saw!! In addition to watching me teach she is also making herself available to me if I need anything else, ie.  Getting funding for anything in my room that I feel I may need.  So far, it seems as though I am in a great position to have Pam by my side. 

Pam isn’t the only one who has come to visit me this week.  I also recently learned that I have a mentor (being my 1st year teaching) who’s name is Bev.  She got here today so I haven’t had much of a chance to spend with her so far.
We (myself and the rest of the new teachers) did get to have dinner with Bev.  Bev brought dinner to us!  We had whole wheat spaghetti, sauce, bread, salad (with dressing balsamic vinaigrette dressing!!!) and dessert.  Yes, the dessert was chocolate.  I will learn more about what Bev will be helping me with when I meet with her tomorrow after school. 

So, I have this friend.  Her name is Shayla.  She’s working on getting my kitty for me!!!! The kitty I want lives in Menomonie but I love her so much she better be good at traveling.  Shayla is working on finding a way to get Sally O’Malley (the kitty) to AK to live with me.  There are a few ways that are being considered at this time.  My current favorite however involves Shayla coming to visit me too!!!! Yep!! That’s right, she might come!!! If you’d like to come with Shayla to visit me, just say the word and I’ll sleep on the floor…that way you can have my bed.  Why would I give up my bed you may ask?  I’ll tell you.  If you’re going to travel to Bush Alaska and use the honey bucket, you should be able to sleep in a bed.

Sleeping in a bed, being nice and warm, would be a great thing considering there was frost on the ground on September 11!!!!  Really? September?  I’m not used to this!  Guess I’m going to have to be since we’re supposed to be getting snow soon. 

Okay, I just looked at the clock and it’s not the weekend so I should be heading to bed.  Oh wait, that’s a lie.  I should have been asleep hours ago.  Goodnight world; I will talk to (see you?) you all soon!!

<3 Lauren

1 comment:

  1. Oh, AND when you get into your new ECE classroom in the new building let me know. We can talk window dressings. Could be even MORE fun!

    ReplyDelete