Back! (to school and to the blobosphere)

Vacation is over but I want to pretend it isn't. I figure I can do that because I am living with a wonderful person who I used to only see if I had time off from school.

The first day back was fun. My family was in town for the weekend and they got to come up to help us get in the Halloween spirit by carving a pumpkin and reading some witch stories. Pretty fun! The kids just could not believe that there were THREE Ms. Barnhizers in the room. It is so great to have extra hands in the room. I look back on my preschool teachers who had probably less kids than I do to split among the two of them and am quite envious. My mom even said them seemed like a handful and she teaches in a behavior disorder classroom for delinquent Meredith students.

I got some work done over break. I am going to start doing a "graph a week" activity. Where we get data on one day, make a graph with it the next, make up some questions for it the third day etc. Just a little something fun to do to enrich the math program a little bit. I am also going to send books home for them to read at night and record in a reading log. I sent the first one home tonight...we'll see how many come back. But I made all of these photocopied books over break. It was time consuming but it could have been worse. Our copy machines are fabulous. They have the ability to fold and put a staple in the fold. How wonderful if you can figure out how to do it.

We are also starting centers, or areas where kids work in small groups on fun things that are somewhat within the content area. This week they are making wild animal alphabet cards, looking at how animals grow on the internet, practicing addition with manipulatives, making jack-o-lanterns to decorate our room, and listening to the story Imogen's Antlers (it's a really cute one if you have never read it). Today was our first day and it was really effective. We talked about the rules first and probably will every day this week and next and the kids worked really hard.

I had some laminating that I wanted to get done over break. So while I was up there, I talked to the person running the interim classes who just happened to be my mentor Oh Joy. She gave me the impression that we weren't allowed to use the laminator over break, that we didn't have access to it on and on. Fine. So this morning, I went to the library to use the machine and the librarian told me that all of the film was out because people used it over break and I should have asked Oh Joy to let me in. Interesting, huh?

One of my little girls came to school four weeks ago with these horrible, bleeding, open sores on her arms and of course got sent home. She then missed the next two weeks of school and was dropped because of her absences. Today, she was back with no note and no explanation. Her mom didn't even come in! Can you imagine?

Pictures will have to wait according to bX-6tnmaz.

Love,
Miss Bee