The Things They Say....

I will be back soon with updates on Miss Parker and our life in September... but for now I wanted to share a funny from Kindergarten with you...

We write in our journals every day.  The pages are all blank, and of course, we start at the front and use the next clean page every day.  And, of course, every once in a while, a child will skip a page or two.  So that's where this comes in.

I was fixing a child's journal today, moving "Monday's entry" to after "Friday's entry" because he had skipped a page.  He asked what I was doing, so I told him that I was putting them in order... without skipping a beat he says,

"You should have put them right, then I wouldn't have messed up!"

Kindergarten Tales

Being a Kindergarten teacher, I hear funny things every day. This one stuck with me today...

One of my little boys was sharing a story for journal about visiting his grandparents. Another child asked him what his grandparents looked like (for the picture). His response, "My grandpa has gray hair. And my grandma spray paints her hair so it is red".

Just as cool as a cucumber... I could not stop laughing!

*I have several pictures and videos to share, but the blog tells me I am out of memory. If anyone knows what to do, please help!!

Zoo Trip

We had a great time at the zoo on Thursday!  The kids were all very well behaved and the weather was perfect.  I had a group of three boys who had never been to the zoo, and that just makes it more worth while.  It is so much fun to go and watch their faces as they see animals for the first time.  They were so excited!  I took my new camera, but didn't get a lot of time to play with it.  I left it in automatic, but loved the quality of the pictures!  I can't wait to have time to actually play with it, with photography subjects around :)!



So excited to see the tigers!



Watching the Chimps!



Enamored by the monkeys!



We have to have a silly picture, of course!



Zoo

We finally went on our field trip to the zoo on Friday. It's only been rescheduled twice because of bad weather. Those of you who deal with young children can understand how frustrating this was for them and for me. I was lucky enough to have 9, yes 9, parents go with my class to the zoo, so I didn't have get to take a group around with me. I had my camera and took pictures when I saw my babies. The last picture is what our ride home always looks like... and I love getting pictures of it!!

Snow...Again?!

My poor kids... While it snowed until about 9:00 this morning, they had to stay inside... I guess I'm just a mean teacher. No, really they were working hard, but we did open the blinds and watch it. We were planning on going outside around 10:30 and I was a little disappointed that they had missed the snow.

Little did I know that it would start snowing AGAIN around that time. They had so much fun running around and trying to catch the snow in their mouths. They didn't understand why it melting because so much stuck last time. It's always fun to experience things through the eyes of a child...

Five Year Old Photographers

Many of you know that the teacher who works beside me was out on maternity leave from August to last week. While she was out, she had a wonderful sub Miss Smith ("Miss Smif" as the kids called her.) Last week, Leah took the camera to the playground to take pictures of her and the kids. While we were up there, we decided to try to get the kids to take a picture of us. Here's what we got...

(These are HORRIBLE pictures by the way!)

We would look at a picture, start laughing and pick another child to try... eventually we just gave up!

One of those days...

My shoes broke at 9:30 this morning. I've hot glued them together twice. They broke for a third time as I left the car circle and I decided that since the kids were gone I wasn't worrying about it.

I jammed my finger on a chair.... don't ask me how!

But this weather has been fantastic!!

G-ed again

The rest of the classroom had been cleaned up from center time. G was in homeliving... where I thought he was putting up the last few toys (since it was clean up time)... and what do I find, but G emptying out the cabinets. This was the 3rd time we had helped him clean up home living center on this day. And this picture was after some of his friends had helped him pick up the food that was ALL over the floor!

Notice the doors are no longer on the furniture and he really wanted to be in the picture!!!!

Lunch?

"My mom and my dad are bring my lunchbox"

*Do you really think mom &/or dad packed this one???

Not an artist...

I was helping one of my children today... I was trying to get him to draw a person with a body, not just a head with arms and legs. We were drawing a little girl with braids. This was my picture and he said "She looks like a clown!" I laughed and laughed!

I found this on my desk this afternoon:

Overheard

"My mom had some cold slob for dinner."

G-ed

The works of G:

Every day. Never fails.

Overheard

"Guys, that's a big daddy long head"

(ignore the reflection)

Is it bad....

that after only a week of school I was a little happy ecstatic that my friend G was not at school today? I mean it was so nice not to have to use broken English to repeat things...all. day. long.

Can you spot him?

Can you spot my friend G?

Survived

That's what I did today. Survive. That's what the first day of kindergarten is all about.

I've had criers before. Last year I had one who cried all day every day for the first week of school. Then just in the mornings for a few weeks. But today took crier to a whole new level. See, I have a student from the Ukraine. Let's call him G. G speaks very little to no English.

Well somehow G got on the wrong bus this morning and ended up at Ogletree instead of AEEC. So someone went to get him. By the time he got to school, I had the rest of the class calmed down and our day started. It got interrupted. G came in and started saying "I want to go inside." I said "Baby, you are inside, you are inside the classroom. You are at school. School is inside." This continued for about 20 minutes. I guess G got frustrated and started to cry scream. I mean wow! He almost gagged himself several times because of the screaming.

When we got outside to play, he cried because we went outside. When we came back inside he cried because we came back inside. When we were "practicing" lining up, he cried. I finally got frustrated and called for backup. Someone came and G calmed down for the 10 minutes they were in the room. When they left, it started up. He cried through 3 or 4 stories. He cried through the lunch line. He REFUSED to eat. He cried and cried and cried.

Finally, our reading coach came and somewhat force fed him. She ended up telling him "First eat, then go home" and he all of a sudden stopped. "Go Home?"

The last 20 minutes of my day were definitely the most peaceful. So with all that said, I survived.

(Side note- I do feel very sorry for G. I cannot imagine going to another country to live and not knowing anything they are saying. Poor baby just wanted to make sure he was going home but didn't know how to communicate it! I can't wait until our ELL's start with Rosetta Stone.)

Reality

Does summer really have to end? I quite enjoy not having much to do all day. But until next June, I'll be spending most of my days here....Please ignore the missing triangle curtain... someone borrowed it to do their own!

The Zoo!

What a long, exhausting day today has been! We had our field trip to the zoo today. Typically, we go in the fall and have the zoo mostly to ourselves. Today there were probably 5 other schools visiting the zoo as well as half of ours!
The trip is always exhausting, but well worth it. There is something to be said about visiting the zoo with children who have never been. I always try to keep those children near me. It is a wonderful experience every year. They get SO excited over every little thing (including poop!). Here are a few pictures from today.

More Snow...

I had to share some pictures of my kiddos! We have recess at 8:30 in the morning. We are the first class to go out to the playground. There was still snow on the playground this morning and the kids had so much fun playing in it again today. I had to take some pictures! I also included their "crazy" picture from Friday (pajama day).