Rear in Gear

I have been having a terrible week! I can't go into details as to why because this is a public blog, but trust me that I've had better times with school. I finally am getting back into the swing of things, kinda, maybe, hopefully. I think it took having someone make me smile yesterday, my best friend being constantly there for me and then another friend telling me exactly why I needed to get my rear back in gear.

All I have to do is make it through this next month and then road-tripping it to New York to see my best girl friend with my best guy friend :) I miss her soooo much!!! We talk on the phone everyday but I haven't seen her since spring break last year. We met out freshman year of college in California but since then I moved back to Indiana and she moved to the east coast. One day we will have to live near each other again because the phone bills aren't pretty ;)
My best friend Cathy and I <3 One more month! Turning my frown upside down right now.

Another reason to get in a better mood is that my little brother Sammy is at my moms now for spring break so I just have to make the three hour drive on Thursday night with baby Joe and we get to see our Sammy! Therefore I get to see both my baby brothers this weekend :)

***Edit*** decided when I got off work at 7 tonight to drive the three hours to my mothers. Hanging out with Sammy tonight and then in the morning hopefully driving back with him to hang-out for the week :)

Bank of Bow-Wow

I love arts and crafts type projects! So when my brother Joe was assigned a project to make something useful out of recyclables I was more than happy to help :) His dad and him gathered the recyclables and then his dad put it together with nuts and bolt. Joe wanted to make a cat, but when it turned out to look more like a dog then he decided to make it a dog :) I still think it looked the most like a horse or donkey. Joe chose to paint it blue, green and brown. Or earth colors as he said. So we started off by taking it outside my apartment and spray painting the whole thing blue with this special plastic paint. He had a ball! I had him read the directions and do the spray paint himself. With a few pointers along the way, like not standing downwind when he sprayed it ;) Also I'm well aware of the irony of using spray paint for a recyclables project.

Once the dog dried we brought him in and Joe painted the rest of him with the green and brown. I only have two paint spots on my carpet from it too ;) Sometimes putting something under a project seems futile. While Joe painted him, I made the collar.

The first Bank of Bow-Wow received an A+ in science, it's also a piggie bank and you can take the money out by undoing the lid. Now it's at Science Central in the Trash to Treasures contest :)

I take way too many photos of my baby brother, but I love him!

A rather cold Spring Break

I spent my Spring Break in my fifth grade classroom for a couple days and basically did nothing at all for the rest of it. That seemed like a good idea...at the time. Then I looked at my calender today :0 I have five lesson plans to do. I am doing three lessons in my fifth grade class this next week. Then the fourth one is the actual observation lesson. Then there is of course the one in here. I might be loosing all the sleep and rest I caught up on ;) Right now I have laundry and dishes going and I'm doing the smaller assignments in between cleaning. I should have done something useful this week, that was my original plan after all. I also forgot my step-dads birthday, he turned 50 on Monday because I didn't open my calender all week. I did get my bulletin board done and I love it!

I had the students all draw a name of a classmate. Then they made a flower for that classmate. On each flower was six positive things about the person with their name in the center. They weren't allowed to tell each other who they had and once they wrote the name of the person they had to give it to me right away. After they were all up then they could go find the one with their name on it. They really seemed to enjoy it.

Boiling Point.

I am burnt out! I had an emotional break-down at the end of my first class this morning. I know this is because I'm a bit tightly strung when it comes to school. I like to do the best I am capable of and I put way too much pressure on myself :/ I am also an extremely organized person and like to plan things out as much as possible. Obviously the teaching program does not condone organization and it can drive me crazy!

I still love the days I get to spend in my 5th grade classroom and am spending all week there during spring break. I'm teaching four different Math lessons in two weeks, so that should be interesting. The fourth one is my observation day.

Creative Classroom is a highlight to my week :) I love the fun things we do and make in the class. I love arts and crafts and it's such a happy light atmosphere in the class.



This week we made "Burgers" out of Vanilla Wafer cookies, Thin Mint cookies and colored icing. A couple weeks ago we made a map of Illinois on a cookie with icing and candy. We've made a fun little box for 'nothings' and spent a few days learning about movement in the classroom. Learned about Flat Stanly and made his sister Flat Stacie(she was helping me at the library). Plus we have read several great children's books. Basically it's my cup of tea ;)