June Babies

June is fast approaching and that means birthdays galore in the Sneaker family. I will be landing in Germany just in time for Mr. Sneaker's big day and then exactly one week later we celebrate mine (and the celebration continues on and on until I am good and done with presents, attention, and fun!). 

I love birthdays...can you tell?

But, back to Mr. Sneaker's birthday...

The other day I stopped in at Michaels after I finished up at the library. While I was browsing, I finally got my hands on this:

 I totally want it! 

And...as I just searched for a photo, I discovered that there is a Kindle edition for 9.99! Woot woot! The price at Michaels was 19.99, so I was going to wait for a 40% off coupon, but 9.99 is a deal, especially since that means I can have it with me in Germany without any additional baggage weight.

Once again I was in awe of Bakerella's amazing creations, but I especially loved her tennis ball cake balls and I want to try to make them for Mr. Sneaker's bday. In Germany, when it's your birthday you are expected to bring a treat for people at work. Last year several of hubby's colleagues posted on his facebook wall that they were looking forward to him bringing cake. Luckily, I was on top of it since he was out of town until late on the evening of his bday and I made some cupcakes for him to bring in to work. Since I am literally getting back to Germany on his birthday, which falls on a Sunday, I am trying to plan ahead since all stores are closed on Sundays and I will need to make sure I have all the required goods.

People from Mr. Sneaker's PDX office know all about my penchant for making cake balls and request favorite flavor combos for their own birthdays, but the adidas folks in Deutschland have not yet experienced the wonder of cake balls. I tried to make a batch last year, but it was small disaster....This year, I plan to bring a box of good old American Betty Crocker cake mix, and chocolate melts so I can get it right. Since boxed cake mix is not available in Germany (unless you want to shell out a small fortune at random gas stations that carry Betty Crocker along with Ben & Jerry's), I tried making both cake and frosting from scratch and sadly it just did not work. Also, the chocolate melts were just not the same and didn't harden correctly.

With familiar ingredients in hand, I will try again this year. I can't wait to bake in my German kitchen again! 28 days people :0)

Aren't these great?

I hope I can handle it.....

 

I bet their jaws would drop if he showed up with this...

LOVE it!

It would truly be the perfect cake for hubs...I just may have to take it on!

Visions

Yesterday I mentioned a little fantasy that I have and it has got me thinking about the lovely fresh start that happens each year for teachers--quite possibly making being a teacher the very best job in the entire world. In what other profession do you have the ability to basically reinvent yourself each and every September?! As we creep closer and closer to that coveted last day of school, sometimes our organization starts to slip (ok, who am I kidding, I don't think my organization was ever awesome to begin with), our energy starts to fade, and our mojo is a little short of teachery pizazz. Our minds start to focus on umbrella drinks, lazy mornings, beach books, and the ultra luxury of having more than 20 minutes to eat lunch! I am not saying that we are bad teachers by the end of the year, but I do look forward to a fresh start in the fall when I have renewed sense of energy, purpose, and passion for spending so much time with my little monkeys.

So, back to my fantasy...the one in which I am the best teacher ever and have the most amazing class/activities/lessons/ideas...I came home after hitting up the library for a very large pile of Eric Carle books, a side of Frog and Toad, and a large helping of beginner non-fiction books on various land animals and started filling out my lesson plans for next week. Back to that whole organization thing, somehow this year I am finding myself leaving school on Friday with a completely empty lesson plan page, but while catching up on missed shows from the week and sipping my cold Diet Coke, I somehow manage to get it completed in order to begin the next week with fantabulous activities for my little friends. While I was planning lessons to reinforce teen numbers, I remembered that Mr. H from Look at My Happy Rainbow had posted a good video showing all the teen numbers. I headed over to youtube and entered the wonderful world of educational videos (some good/some bad) and had a lot of fun browsing around. I came across a few gems and started having visions of using a lot of music and fun tunes next year with my teenie tiny newbie Kinders. I really need to learn how to play the guitar or at least the ukulele so I can be like the Jack Black ala School of Rock.

Take a look at some of the videos I found!

I love the hip hop alphabet the most and I am thinking of getting some fun sun glasses from Oriental Trading so we can get into character when we rock it out!

these...

or maybe these...

I am partial to animal prints!

I think I will also throw some of these into the order

 

Pointing to the words is so much cooler with a martian finger!

Year two of Kindergarten is going to be so much fun! 

I had a conversation with a PM kiddo today about him leaving me for first grade. I asked him if he was sure he didn't just want to stay with me, but he told me he wanted to try something new. Sigh. At least he agreed to come visit me and I sure hope he brings along his awesome hugs. I should probably head to Costco one of these days to get a mondo bulk pack of Kleenex because I sure and going to need them on June 15th!

Short and Sweet

Earlier this week one of my PM girls told me that if I needed her she would be meditating by the backpack hooks....

When asked to share something that makes him special one AM boy responded "Jesus made me."

And then there was my PM kiddo whose morning consisted of putting on his pants.

Kindergartners are just too funny!

I just ordered two more books from the International Reading Association:

The IRA publishes so many great books and I have quite a stack that I have gotten my hands on this year that are still waiting to be read. I would have rather read them than a lot of other things I have read this year, but 13-14 credits a term is pretty demanding in terms of required reading. Throw in book club book each term that I read so I could visit with friends and eat yummy snacks every Tuesday and I am pretty much tapped out in terms of time to spend enjoying good books that will improve my teaching. I am excited to read these two in addition to several others this summer in between sleeping, enjoying lattes in Europe, and relaxing! Oh, and writing a teeny tiny 30 page paper...no biggie. What's über cool is that these books come with DVD's too! They are part of my 'next year I will truly be the best teacher ever and have the most amazing class/activities/lessons/ideas' fantasy that I have every summer.

Tomorrow is Friday, I don't have class this weekend, I am getting a mani/pedi on Saturday, and it has been sunny for two days in a row! 

Life is good :0)

Literal

I have a few boys in my classes that are just all boy... active, loud, testing the boundaries a lot. Their behavior has been up and down all year and they are now earning daily points as a motivator to be good listeners and follow the directions in class. Their behavior has definitely improved, even though there are still rough days, but I have heard from one of our IA's that lunchtime is a struggle.

So, I started bringing my lunch into the cafeteria and sitting with them while they eat.

Since I have two half day sessions, I get an hour and 10 minutes in between the AM and PM. Usually I can be found chatting with my friend/teammate Britta for at least a small portion (ok, sometimes big portion) of that time, but I also use that time to get stuff done and often don't take the time to actually sit down for lunch. Since I found out that some of my little gems have been acting up during that break time, I decided that maybe it would be nice to just go and sit with them and talk to them while they eat. When I only have 30 minutes, I just can't swing eating with kids all that often. It's tough to do that and go straight back to working without any downtime at all. With over an hour, I have some time to spare and it's worth it to spend some of that with kiddos like these guys. I like to throw in a whole lot of talk about expectations while they eat, but I also like to just use the time to be with them and give them attention.

Today, I sat down next to one little guy who has been having a really tough time lately. Making noises, grabbing at other kids, hitting, running, break dancing on the carpet, you name it. I started to talk to him as he sucked his chocolate milk through the straw. I made some small talk and he was pretty quiet.

I asked him how his day had been so far and he didn't say anything.

I asked him if it was a good day and he continued drinking his milk.

So, I asked him what he did after he woke up this morning.

He replied, "I put my pants on."

I kind of chuckled to myself and said, and what did you do after that?

"I put my shirt on."

Of course he did. I don't even know why I asked!

Sunday Solace

Whew. Class Wednesday, class Thursday, class Friday, and class Saturday. Thank goodness I get a day of rest!

I did my practice presentation in class on Friday night and I thought it went pretty well. It was almost twice the time limit, so I definitely need to cut it down, but it was really helpful to run through the entire Power Point and get a chance to practice what I will say for each slide. Now I have more than a month to work on it until I do my actual defense on June 16th. I need to submit the final draft of my paper on June 2nd, so I still have a good amount of time to work with that as well. I had a hard time judging if my presentation was going well as I was doing it, but I got good feedback from the other people in my class. My advisers seemed pretty positive as well, but they can't really say that much since they are going to be evaluating it during the actual defense.

I haven't done any work since I got home yesterday afternoon because I needed a well deserved break, but I did start organizing my stuff and preparing some winter clothes and other stuff to put in storage. I have just about five weeks left in OR before I go back to Germany for the summer, so I am trying to stay organized so that life doesn't get more stressful as the end of the school year gets closer. My entire car is full of stuff to bring to my classroom and to storage. I am going to put my books in my classroom for the summer since there is ample storage room and I know it will stay dry. The storage unit has not had any issues, but there is always the risk of water damage and I just can't have anything happening to my books! It's always hard to decide what stays and what goes, but I am really trying to go with the less is more mentality since I still have some stuff back in Germany that I left behind in August.

In other news, I got a surprise from my very sweet hubs on Friday....

an iPhone! I feel like a walking advertisement for apple! But hey, when you live in a different country than your husband, it's good to have easy access to staying in touch! I am obsessed with Words with Friends and had a fun time playing a virtual game with Mr. Sneaker! :0)

Later on today, I am going to meet up with some friends from my cohort to get some work done (work never ends!) and I have to grocery shop, do laundry and all that fun stuff. I tried to sleep in, but for some reason my body just doesn't let me do that anymore. By 7:30 I am awake and ready for the day.

Updates

It's amazing that I have created a routine to write daily for one of my classes this term, yet I still am averaging about 1 blog post a week because writing typically means working on one of my many homework assignments or papers.....ok, it's more sad than amazing.... I am so looking forward to being in Germany this summer with so much less on my plate! So, here is the latest:

• Hubs told me today that I am going to get a surprise in the mail soon because he is so proud of all my hard work this year. I heart surprises!

• Hubs also told me that he booked our trip to London and we will be there for my birthday in June! I heart my sweet husband and I can't wait to go to London!

• I applied to teach a professional development class within my district. There were several courses listed that they were looking to find teachers for and one on the list was culturally responsive teaching. I am focusing on culturally responsive instruction for most of my doctoral work and my hope is to teach at the university level some day, so I am really excited at the idea of teaching other teachers in my district on a topic that I am really passionate about. I am not sure what the competition will be like to get the position, but there will be interviews two weeks from now.

•  I met with my advisers last week about my core paper and although I still have some work to do, they said I am making good progress so we went ahead and scheduled my defense date! I am set to defend on June 16th, which is the last day of school for everyone but half day Kinder. This weekend I am doing a practice presentation for my cohort which is a great opportunity to get their feedback since almost everyone in the group has already successfully defended. Then I have two weeks to turn in the final draft of my paper and two more weeks after that to refine my presentation. I am taking 1/2 day off tomorrow to work on my presentation and then I am taking the other 1/2 off the day of the presentation. We get one "floating holiday" per year, so that is what I am using mine for. I wish I could use it for something a bit more fun, but it is what it is.

• My kiddos are doing great and I just love them. We are working on reading a lot of non-fiction books and doing some four square writing this week about sea animals just like Kelly did. Some of the kids are impressing me so much with what they can write! It's amazing. I do have several kiddos that are copying words straight from the book, so I am encouraging them to write additional sentences in their own words to add more details to the facts they have copied. This exercise is a struggle for some, but overall I am really happy with how well they are getting information from the non-fiction books. I was lucky to find some fairly simple non-fiction books that are great for beginning readers, but even the more complex ones are working for them. I feel like I am at the library every other day, but that helps them stay engaged with the books in the classroom library.

•  We are also studying butterflies right now, so we have live caterpillars in the classroom that have been busy turning into the pupa stage this week. The kids are so excited to go over and look at the container each day when they arrive. It is just so great for them to be exposed to this process of change and see it right before their eyes. I love how excited they are and how much they are learning just from looking at/reading the butterfly books that I got from the library. 

•  There are less than 40 days until I am back in Germany with hubs! I am actually arriving on his birthday, which is awesome and I am so excited to feel married again!

• I got a latte every single day last week because it was Teacher Appreciation Week and I thought that I deserved a little self appreciation. I also got flowers, chocolates, a candle, Starbucks gift cards (hence all the lattes), a plant, cookies and several very sweet notes and cards from students and their families. I heart teacher appreciation week!