Happy Face

I am so glad that it's Saturday. I slept so late today (compared to how early I get up for school) and I am feeling totally content to be home and carefree for the next two days. Having four days in the first week this year really wore me out. Some schools start with only half of their Kinders at a time and then finally have the whole class on day three, but not us. We got 'em all right away and continued to get new students each day of the week (except yesterday). My AM class now has 20 and my PM has 18, but one has yet to show up, so I am thinking he may not actually join us. Those numbers are awesome and I hope they stay that way!

Yesterday one kiddo in my AM started to give me a run for my money, but I talked with the school counselor and we came up with a plan to try and get him on board for making better choices. He was acting a bit defiant, yet he does have some issues that we already know about that are most likely contributing factors, so I am trying to have a lot of patience until we can really figure him out. I know he is going to do great once we do.

My PM class is a dream so far, except the little girl who was terrified of the bus is still having some issues. Yesterday she refused to come into the classroom and was crying so hard that when she finally did come in she was so worked up she threw up. Ugh! I made it through three years of teaching without any vomit and yesterday that streak was definitely broken. Luckily, there was a parent volunteer right across the hall so I asked her watch my kiddos so I could bring this little girl to the office carrying the trash can with us the whole way. I am pretty sure I have mentioned before the extreme extent of my aversion to throw up, so it's never a fun day when somebody gets sick. I have to feel bad for her though because obviously she is pretty traumatized, yet she has been in school before and did pretty well in the classroom up until yesterday. Poor thing. I hope she is better next week. And, fortunately for us, Mrs. Bee's classroom is empty in the PM since she only teaches in the AM, so I just had the class line up and and we went into her room for our first few activities while our room was being cleaned. Mrs. B helped get a story started while I went and grabbed some of our stuff and the rest of the kiddos, although a little concerned about their friend, did a fabulous job just adapting to the situation and going with the flow. There were a lot of exclamations from me like, "look, Mrs. Bee has an alphabet rug just like we do!" and "oh, good, Mrs. Bee has glue and scissors just like we do." After about an hour we returned to our room and finished up the day. Thank goodness for an escape route in the event of puke incidents!

I stayed until 5 yesterday doing my planning for all of next week and getting everything ready. Friday is not the preferable day for that since technically we are aloud to leave when the kids get on the bus, but it felt good to get a lot done so I can start the week feeling organized. The to do lists definitely helped! A few of you commented about some cool planners by Erin Condren. I was wondering if they are only available online? I am guessing so since you can have them customized, but I didn't feel like I could see enough of what the calendars looked like to decide if it would work for me or not. And, they are quite spendy, so I wouldn't want to get it and be disappointed....I need to get my appointments and Mr. Sneaker's travel organized though! We use an online google calendar but I am just not good about using that. I want to have something that I can keep with my lesson planning materials and bring to class and staff meetings.

I am working on getting the photos of my kiddos printed up. I got an email from Snapfish that they are running a deal for 1 cent prints. You just need to use the coupon code PENNY094U and you can get up to 500 prints for only 1 cent each.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. We are having some really hot weather here in Portland (I think it's supposed to be 95 today) so I am staying cool in the AC and enjoying the sunny view from my window.