…who seem to want a new post by now…

Life has been rather busy. This weekend was great–Friday night I went for a “special planning meeting” (aka coffee) with two other sixth grade teachers, then went to a game night at another teacher’s house. A near tornado kind of put a damper on the evening (well, almost literally, since it’s hard to be a hostess and wet vac your basement at the same time), but it was fun to eat chocolate (she’s one of the ones with a chocolate fountain!) and talk with other teachers.

Saturday a friend and I went on a field trip to JoAnn for the ubercoupon sale. I bought fleece to make reading pillows for my kiddos, clear quilting thread, and a whole bunch of yarn and an afghan book (I decided I’d had enough of scarves). The tricky part is coming home to my hubby and explaining why I need more yarn when I have a whole basket full of half-finished projects. Suggestions? :)

Sunday night Jamie and I went to a small group from our church. I think we’ll keep going to this one. It’s mostly young marrieds and a few singles, and I really enjoyed the group (not to mention that it will give me a nice outlet for my baking tendencies).

This week at school has been a blur. I’ve been reading the first set of letters my kids have written about their books (they’ll write one to me each week), which have been fun. Kids tell me a bit about their lives, ask me questions (what’s your favorite color? Would you want to be invisible?), and say cute kid things (from your class clown, from your favorite student, etc.). And now I’m drawing a blank with what to say. Yup. Kids surviving, me surviving (much better than last year!), waiting eagerly for book orders to come.

Oh! I remember! I’m hopefully going to be teaching the craft club after school! Yay for getting paid to knit and crochet with 12 year olds! :)

And that is all.

Love,

Becky

P.S. Jamie says hi.

I stayed home from work today (don’t worry, I called for a substitute first). I have slept for about 12 hours since last night. Still tired.

However, the saddest thing is that it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day and I missed it. Luckily the kids probably didn’t know, so I can read them my pirate book tomorrow. Aye matey!

Hello, gentle guests, we have an excellent selection for you today. Firstly, we have a set of wedding photos! These were taken by our good friend Gigi while her husband Kyle was busy being one of my groomsmen. I’ll eventually put up a couple more sets of wedding photos, taken by various people.

Secondly, you get to see the kitties! Oh yeah, and Becky’s classroom is in that album as well. Cheers!

There seems to be a bit of confusion as to where I have been. The answer could be any of the following:

1. Doing something in my classroom (grading, planning, copying, developing, etc.)
2. Trapped under a mountain of laundry
3. Reading one of my billion library books (okay, so it’s only about four, but I feel like it’s an addiction)
4. At the zoo for a workshop (I forgot how much fun it is!)
5. Cuddling with my hubby
6. (the most likely) Sleeping off the bug I caught from one of my little darlings.

I also took pictures of my classroom and kitties, so hopefully Jamie will post them soon (hint hint!).

This afternoon is a good example of my life of late: Stayed at school until 5, came home to dinner out of the crock pot (best invention ever! I think we might starve without that thing!), watched Jamie wrastle the kitties (trying to trim their claws) while I graded papers, planned the next two weeks (we’ll see how that goes), made hanging file inserts for the kids, and now plan on printing up the guidelines for reading workshop. I suppose that only makes it a 12 hour work day with a break for dinner… sheesh.

I asked the kids to write down questions they had about our class. One kid wrote “How come you get so exited (sic) Mrs. B?”

That made my day. Now I just need to figure out what to respond…:) “Well, how come you get so excited about kickball? Because I just love it!”

As you may have guessed, I have been a bit busy for the past few days. :) School started on Tuesday. The day started as my past two first days have (including student teaching)–with a hazelnut latte! :) It reminds me of the wonderful people who taught me to teach. The first day, while somewhat exciting because you get to meet your new class, is also rather tedious with all of the forms and procedures and such. The kids were on their best behavior, which is delightful. I had a 3-hour chunk of time in the morning to fill, which was rather tedious when it was all “here are the procedures and rules of the room, blah blah blah.” I have about 5 kids who don’t really understand me, so I will be glad when the bilingual program is up and running!

For the rest of the week, I started reading Phineas Gage to them (subtitle: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science–it’s absolutely disgusting, but the kids love it), started in on some new stuff in math (my additions to the school math program–Math 4 Today and Fraction of the Week–more goodies from student teaching!), have planned almost a day ahead most of the time, discovered that being on the same floor as my grade-level colleagues is a blessing and a curse because I socialize too much after school, given tedious handwriting homework in an attempt at behavior modification (it’s worked so far–three paragraphs on “how we walk through the halls” copied on one’s best handwriting will make a kid behave, apparently), started reading workshop (which I am SUPER STOKED about. Really. It is seriously awesome. Any upper-elementary and middle school teachers should try it!), and had a delightful feeling of “I’ve done this before” competence. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Now that I have all my posters up (thanks to Jamie and his parents coming to visit my room!), I’ll try to take pictures soon.

Speaking of Jamie and his parents, Carl and Donna were in town! We had a delightful visit including lots of food (which I enjoyed cooking and I hope the rest enjoyed eating), picking up our new kitties, playing games, and seeing “Wicked”. I highly recommend the show. The score is great, the plot is intricate, and it is in general a delightful experience. We had a good, though short visit. It’s always fun to show people our life in Chicago. :)
it was rather serendipidous that we went to see the show this weekend, as we discovered that our kitties (who came pre-named) got their somewhat strange names from the two main characters in the show: Elphaba (Elphie) and Galinda (Glinda). It’s been fun to see how the cats’ personalities actually mirror the characters’. Glinda is the perky, friendly one, and Elphie is more reserved. They both have interesting hobbies. Glinda likes to try to climb the walls, and Elphie likes to run around the flat, then race for under the bed as soon as you approach her. Neither of them really like posing for pictures, but Jamie tried to take a few anyway. I’ll leave their posting to him. A funny kitty-related conversation:

B: I can tell you’ll be a really good dad because you’re so gentle with the kitties
J: Yeah, but I probably wont’ be able to make the babies jump as high (the kitties have a feather toy that in pursuit of which they will jump in the air)
B: And you won’t try.

So, in summary life is good. I’m relaxed (mostly) about school, though I look forward to coming home to my hubby and kitties at the end of the day. :)