Once they wake up at nap time, my elves know they can choose a book to look at quietly while they wait for the others to wake up. Elf 1, on the far left, was the first to wake. Then 5 minutes later, Elf 2 came and quitely sat next to him. Elf 1 offered him a book. Elves 3 and 4 followed quitely. I watched the whole thing happen. It was so cute!
I know I've had a lot of vacation recently, with Christmas, and Chinese New Year, and I'm not complaining or anything, but this week has been SOOOO busy!!!
- Report cards were due to go home on Tuesday. Oy! My first set. And conferences are next week. We stay at school till 7 pm on Monday and Wednesday. Now that is a long day at school!
- Our school is also trying to be WASC accredited so we have a lot of different committees for how to improve our school so we can submit a final report for WASC in March. I've been bounced around a lot since I got here, but they finally landed me on the Curriculum Mapping committee. Here's the story:
My first meeting was CHAOS. By asking all my questions and figuring out the purpose/goals of the committee, I kinda forced them to get their act together and organize things. I guess the chair of the committee had left several weeks before my arrival. By the end of my second meeting, somehow I was the one delegating tasks and guiding the minutes of our meetings. By the end of our third meeting, I was nominated the chair of our committee, and asked to present our findings to the rest of the faculty. That happened yesterday. I think tomorrow they will make me their queen! Okay, just kidding. I have to admit, at first I thought maybe no one else wanted to do the work. But outside meetings I've received so many thanks, and a bunch of HUGS (????) for bringing organization and leadership to our meetings. And my Head of School stopped me today to say the saame thing. During meetings, often times I have to tactfully head off accusations and frustrated remarks and turn them into something productive. It cracks me up. I feel like the babysitter of 15 year veteran teachers. I know I was hired to be the nursery teacher, but really? I didn't realize how much of a full time job it is!
Okay, so this is an old story, and I can't remember if I've already written it down, but something similar happened yesterday, so I'm resharing.
To get to the playground, we exit my classroom out the front door, we walk around to the side, walk around the back, and there it is! One day late after school, 2 of Wendi's elves came racing down the hallway, obviously returning back to the playground.
Elf 1: sprints out the door as fast as he can, and starts to run around the outside of my classroom.
Elf 2: comes to a screeching halt at the door, looks at my classroom door, back at the outside door, I actually see him make the decision in his mind, and then he's barreling through my classroom heading for my back door. Clearly, cutting through my classroom was thought to be much faster than running around.
One of the 4th grade math standards is being able to look at a map and draw the shortest distance between point A and point B. I'm thinking that general concept was mastered in that one moment. I was proud of him, and I told him that I thought the idea was brilliant, but right after that, I strictly told him that my classroom was not to be used as a shortcut, and had him walk around the outside anyway. Mean teacher! :)
I have one elf that has the attention span of a bat. It's AWFUL. It's frustrating because sometimes I have to ask him very calmly 7 times over to complete a task since our curriculum says that you ask as many times as it takes (There is no, "If I have to tell you one more time ... !") But it's also hilarious at the same time.
- At lunch, he'll clean up his tray and walk it over to the garbage, toss any extra food, and walk back to the table, still holding the tray. Wait for it. Give him about 20 seconds and suddenly he's surprised that he's still holding his tray, and he rushes back to the garbage to put his tray on the rack.
- When he runs, if he gets distracted, he'll watch something else, sometimes running forward and looking the complete opposite direction at the same time, and not realizing that he still has forward motion. He ran square into me at recess doing this. I'm so glad I'm not a metal pole. But I can totally see that happening.
- Yesterday at snack time, I caught him absent mindedly licking a banana like a lollipop. I asked him, "Do you need to peel that?" And when he looked at it, I swear it was the first time he noticed the fact that he was holding a banana.
Sometimes I put on kids music during work time, just because the elves like to sway and hum while they play, and as I listened I found a random song called, "Build it up and tear it down, build it up again." Perfect!!!!! This is the perfect motto for our block area. We started learning the song yesterday, and here's what happened today:
One elf built a fortress, gave me a race car, and asked me to try and break through the walls, taunting the whole time *You can't get me!* He ended up knocking over all the walls himself as his racecar attacked mine. We paused to put our race cars back together, and I started building the walls up again, humming the tune of "Build it up and tear it down, build it up again". My elf started copying me, humming sweetly as he built. Sharp contrast to one minute later when he's yelling "BAM BAM!!!! I got you!!! Let's make again!" And then sweetly humming. I have the best job in the world! You know, except for the snot, tears, and germs and other body liquids that I choose not to name.
So, I drew a picture of all the different weather. Rain, snow, clouds, sun, rainbow, yada yada. And here is my snowman. I drew in red. After I was finshed, one of my elves took the blue pen and scribbled on the face. Then he turned to me and said happily, "Angry!" Oh yes, angry is still their favorite word/emotion. I'm not sure it will ever get old to them.
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