Here today...

Gone to Maui!

Tomorrow, after school, I'm outta here! Off to Edmonton for the night and then I fly out Thursday morning!

Maui wedding! Shannon's getting married!

So many exclamation points!!!

Winter, begone!

Well, last week I realized that we were still working on a winter craft and my classroom walls were filled with winter artwork.

It was our fault that Spring wasn't here!

I told my students so, and we've been working hard at doing what we can to hurry the arrival of my favourite season. We replaced the snowflakes hanging from the ceiling with flowers, took down our polar bear art, and sent home our penguin craft. The walls are starting to fill up with Spring art grids.

And what do you know, here comes Spring!

You're welcome! Sorry about the long winter.

Not so quiet anymore!

It's funny that a month ago I blogged that nothing much was going on in my life because now I'm super busy! And things won't be slowing down anytime soon. I'm looking forward to the next 2 months because they bring some fun things, but it's going to be a VERY busy 2 months!

2 months from today, the following will have happened:

-Senior Drama Dessert Theatre (I'm one of the directors)
-LOTS of rehearsals
-My grade 1s' recitation of two poems at the Music Festival
-Regional Drama Festival with the senior drama
-Another wedding shower for my sister
-My birthday (yay!)
-Possible trip to Regina for best friend's mom's art show
-Trip to Hawaii for my sister's wedding
-Provincial Drama Festival in Regina
-and hopefully some sleep somewhere in there!

So ya, busy busy!

Here's a cute quote from school today: I try to tell my students how I'm feeling when I'm frustrated or impatient with them, so they can understand the impact of their behaviour. Today I found out that one of them sure has been listening! After we had a talk about her less than stellar behaviour, she said, "Miss Smith, I'm going to be on my best behaviour now so that you're not frustrated with me."

All is quiet on the village front...

Well, my life has been quiet and uneventful lately so I haven't had much fodder for new blog posts. But can I just say how happy I am that the days are FINALLY getting longer? My goodness, it seems like FOREVER since it was light out when I leave for work!

Here's a pretty wintery photo to look at until I can think of something to blog about.

I would love to take credit for the photo, but I can only take credit for finding it, saving it, and posting it on here.

One of these things is not like the others...

One of my EA's has been out sick for a couple of months. My students have been asking about when she's coming back, so we made her a booklet of get well pictures and letters. Most of them wrote things like "I miss you, Mrs. C!", "Are you coming back soon?", "I hope you feel better soon!", and "I hope I can see you soon!".

As I was looking through them, I found one that was not like the others. It said, "Dear Mrs. C, I played on the snow hills today. It was fun."

Just keeping her caught up on current events, I guess!

Favouritest puppy ever!

Oh how I love this puppy. His name is Jake and he lives at my parents' house.













Jake and the arrow on the computer. He's trying to attack it...with his tongue.

One of those days

This morning in the shower I couldn't remember if I'd conditioned yet or not. Then I couldn't remember if I'd shampooed. I knew I'd done at least one of them but I couldn't remember which. So I shampooed AND conditioned again. Then I turned off the shower without rinsing out the conditioner.

I can see it's going to be a great day.

SERIOUSLY???

I went out to my car on this very cold morning to find my car not plugged in. I KNOW I plugged it in last night because I remember checking out my apartment window.

Someone UNPLUGGED MY CAR AND STOLE MY EXTENSION CORD. Who does that? Seriously. There's got to be some kind of honour code in Saskatchewan about extension cords in the winter. You just don't do that. Not cool, dude. NOT COOL.

Starbucks saver

Yesterday I left a Starbucks with 2 delicious drinks in hand. One was for me; the other was for my friend Regan (although I did taste it). There was a lady sitting on bench in front of the dollar store. She waved to catch my eye, held up her drink and said, "Not that I work there or anything, but I just got a cappuccino at the dollar store for 2 bucks. And it's delicious!"

I guess she was trying to be helpful, but does she really think that someone coming out of a Starbucks is going to be converted by dollar store powder cappuccino?

Squashed!

This was my supper tonight.



Can you tell I like squash?

Seriously, I LOVE squash. I can even remember when my love for each kind of squash started.



Ahh, spaghetti squash. My first squash. When I was in high school, Dad baked it and then served it with butter and parmesan cheese. Mmm...still eating it that same way.











The first time I remember eating zucchini was grilled on the barbeque. I think I was in high school for this one too. Now I usually just saute it in a little bit of olive oil with some salt. Dee-licious!


I had my first butternut squash this spring. I loved it immediately. I actually remember thinking, "How have I made it to 27 without having tried this?" So nutty and sweet, butternut squash is perfect just mashed up with some margarine.

Acorn squash: this one is easy to remember because I cooked my first acorn squash tonight. I was almost nervous to eat it because I didn't want to not like it. Well, it was delicious. Very similar to Butternut, but not as sweet.

I don't know if I've ever loved any food SO HEALTHY this much. Squash is high in beta-carotene, fibre, vitamin C, and all kinds of other good stuff. Oh, and 0 fat and low in calories! And so yummy!

Father and Daughter Part 2

Our story ran in the Star Phoenix and Leader Post today.

Here it is!

Good Teachers Part 2

Mr. Nethercut taught us Grade 10 Social Studies and Art. He certainly caught our attention. In a small town where new teachers are always a novelty, Mr. N was even more so. On the first day of grade 10, he walked into the room, slammed the door and proceeded to YELL at us "THIS COULD BE THE WORST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE." We were listening. He continued, "Or we could have a great year. The choice is up to you." He handed out blank pieces of paper and had us write down one word: RESPECT. He told us it was his one rule and that if we showed him respect, he would show us respect.

Background info: we were a very difficult class. Substitute teachers didn't want to sub in our classroom. The driver's ed. instructor threatened to walk out on us and fail the whole class. Teachers had meetings about us when we were in grade 8. So ya, no teachers had ever talked about respecting US before.

Mr. Nethercut had no problem controlling us. He didn't need to. We respected him because he respected us. He had high expectations of us and we actually wanted to live up to them.

Father and Daughter

Dad and I are both teaching Grade 1 Math this year, in different schools of course. I was telling my principal and he suggested emailing the Bulletin (The STF monthly publication). A couple of weeks ago, one of the writers visited my classroom on a day that Dad and I had set up our classes on Skype to chat and ask each other some math questions.

Here's the article! Page 7.

Also: Pig in boots

Just because these photos are so, darn, crazy cute.

World Teacher Day

Yesterday was World Teacher Day and we didn't even realize it! Oops.

I've known that I wanted to be a teacher since I was in Kindergarten. Now I am a teacher and sometimes I can't even believe it. My days are crazy and my life is full of meetings and prep work; my head is always full of things I need to get done, needs of students, and thoughts about how things are going. But then my day starts and I have a bunch of small people around me, needing and talking and laughing and learning, and all that other stuff gets put on hold. In grade 1, my students' victories are small and gradual: remembering a letter sound that they couldn't remember yesterday, remembering to get out their books without being reminded, learning routines & procedures, and making better decisions than they made yesterday. Their little light bulbs flicker all day long as they learn and remember new things and all of a sudden something big happens--like they recognize a word or the concept of "adding on" becomes natural to them.

It's pretty exciting.

So I'm going to pay tribute to some of the teachers that had an impact on my life.

Mrs. Gropp-Kindergarten

Mrs. Gropp had contagious enthusiasm. She was always wide-eyed and smiling. I was already a reader when I went to kindergarten (much to the surprise of my parents) and yet I was never bored with learning the alphabet. We sang songs and read exciting stories; we played in the sandbox and dressed in high fashion from the dress-up centre. One of my clearest memories from Kindergarten is of Mrs. Gropp standing at the front of the room, leading us in our exercises. It was the 80's, so she often wore a bright coloured, one-piece pantsuit and had big, heavy beads that she would throw over her shoulder so they didn't hit her in the face as she jumped up and down.

Another clear memory from that year was one day that Mrs. Gropp asked me to come out in the hallway. She told me that I was a great kid and very special. Then she gave me a big, scratch-&-sniff sticker of a banana that said, "I think you're Top Banana!" I remember feeling so special and singled out. She probably did the same thing with every student, but I of course felt like I was the only one.

Kindergarten was the first time I remember wanting to be a teacher. I remember watching Mrs. Gropp, thinking how much fun her job must be. It's definitely harder than I thought it would be at the time, but it's just as much fun. Thanks, Mrs. Gropp!

Beat that!

One of my adorable grade 1 boys was playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with a boy in grade 5 at recess today. After a few rounds, my grade 1 boy, Jonathan, added in "worm" which he claims, beats everything.

After watching him beat the grade 5 boy a few times in a row, I inquired further about the new addition. "Jonathan," I said, "how does a worm beat everything?"

"Because I made it up."

"But if it beats everything in the game, wouldn't you just pick it every time?"

To which he replied, "Obviously."

Mathematical Funny

Yesterday one of my Grade 2 boys came to me and asked me what 8 + 8 is. Of course, I replied that it was 16. He asked if I knew what 8 + 8 is in high school. When I said 16 again, he said, "No, it's B."

Algebra. The funny thing is that he probably doesn't even know why it's so funny!

Lovely, lovely, lovely summer.

Just pictures today! Some of my summer adventures.

Busy summer life

I'm a busy girl today! I'm meeting my cousin Rachel for some time with the baby cousin (who's not so much a baby anymore) then I'm rushing off to meet my friend Deb for a canoe ride and then scooting off to get my nails done. Then it's back to the Day house to make a yummy curry with Em. And all this is between the hours of 1-7!

Too busy to blog...

too busy relaxing! Happy summer!