T is for Tarnation!

I don't know what it is about the "Rocks, Sand, and Soil" lesson that makes us start talking like Stinky Pete the Prospector (Toy Story 2, duh).  We just do.

Maybe it's the excitement of my rock collection. It always gets oooohhhhs and ahhhhhhhs.

Beautiful right? All of the kids get wide eyed. Mr. Mohawk raised his hand to inform me that he has a jelly bean collection. Princess wanted to know if I put all of those little sticker numbers on the rocks (no, my servants did it, Princess). And, Sassy HAD to know WHERE I found all of those rocks!

I don't want to burst their bubbles and tell them they came from a catalog. I did find them...in the catalog...

They decided this one looks like silver.

And this one looks like a petrified chick.

This one looks like a mini glacier.

Then I noticed that one was missing!

Number 4! See!

We looked on the reference sheet to see which one it was.

Number 4 is Fluorite!

Mr. Spacey, Jr.: Fluorite? That's what the dentist puts in my mouth!
Mr. Fact Man: The dentist puts rocks in your MOUTH?!
Smartypants: No, no, no! That's fluorIDE!
Mr. Spacey, Jr.: That's what I said...

During this, I thought to myself, "Self, PYRITE is missing!"

Me: Guys! Pyrite is missing! It's supposed to go here! Pyrite is Fool's Gold!
Them: GASPS!
Mr. Facts Man: Well Ms. Buckler, did you learn a lesson here?
Me: Huh?
Mr. Facts Man: You probably shouldn't leave your rocks in an unlocked box. Not with gold in it anyway.

Now I KNOW I didn't take this box of rocks out last year. For reasons like THIS. Not to mention the characters I had last year. The rocks couldn't have been taken by last year's kids!

So that means one thing. It was my class from TWO years ago! Who are now fourth graders.

I think I may start the interrogation with the president, vice president, and secretary of "The Rock Club" that was created during recess that year. I had a suspicion they weren't talking about guitars and drums...

Drats! Dag Nabbit! TARNATION!

At least someone hasn't poisoned the water hole...yet.

B is for Blogiversary!

That's right! It's been one whole year since I started this little bloggy blog.

I remember it like it was a year ago...

It was the last Sunday of winter break and I was preparing myself to go back to the craziness that was last year. I decided I needed an "outlet" that didn't involve anything illegal.

I just want to say thank you for reading about my foolishness.

My venting and whining.

My victories and failures.

Thanks to all of you that tell me I should publish my posts to make a book. If you know any publishers call me! =)

Most of all, thank you for your comments. They truly make me feel like I'm not the only one that has that kind of day.

Oh, and I think Mother Nature tried to tell me Happy Blogiverary in her own way today. She dumped tons of water on us...I think to remind me of this.

I love you for all of your support, my lovely readers!

H is for HoliDAZE

Now that it's January and the holiday hubbub is over, I can finally find the humor in the last week of school before break.

As a teacher, I find myself making New Year resolutions at the start of the new school year. January is just the time to pause and reevaluate the steps to meeting my resolution.

This school year's resolution was meant to minimize the everyday stress of paperwork, lesson planning and implementation, and keeping up with the "time lines" all while meeting students' needs. Basically, my resolution was to NOT sweat the small stuff.

This resolution was totally forgotten the last week before break. THE SMALL STUFF WAS ALL THAT MATTERED! 

Before continuing I do need to say that we were one of the only counties in Florida to have school on December 20, 21, and 22.

Here is what the plan was for these three days:

Monday - Winter Celebration (with parents invited)
Tuesday - Annual Polar Express Day
Wednesday - Roll with it day (aka...entertain hyped up, sugar-filled kids day)

I was aware this plan sounded way too simple. It was anything but...

MONDAY
We invited all the parents of second graders (6 classes worth!) to come to school for a Winter Celebration. We talked about different winter holidays and sang songs, recited poems and showed some examples of holiday symbols. This went surprisingly well, considering the fact that we had to organize around 100 seven and eight year olds. Even the surprise delivery of over 100 red balloons was bearable.

After the celebration, the parents came back to the room to have some treats. More fun came with the opening of gifts from the Women's Club. They were sweet enough to give my class goody bags. With snow globes. Of course, in the middle of all the chaos and having twice the number of people in our small little portable, I hear an "uh oh!". A snow globe had fallen off of a desk and broke. Thankfully, a wonderful mom grabbed some paper towels and took care of it before I even knew what happened.

As the parents left (and some took their kids home!!!) I thought to myself: The hard part is over!

I scrambled to finish our gifts of handprint calendars. The back table of my room had been taken over by this project for about three weeks and I was ready for it to be done.

I know I had left myself little wiggle room in finishing these 12 months of painted handprints. I didn't think that I would be rushing to finish up calendars for students who were absent on important days. Don't even get me started on the ones that checked-out early this day or the ones who decided to miss the whole week and start their vacations early. (Grrr...)

I had to remind myself: DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF! A special thanks to Mrs. Gray for giving me the support that I needed.) And if I do say so myself, those calendars were pretty cute.

TUESDAY
To the relief of one little darling that had asked EVERY day ("Is it Polar Express Day yet?"), it had finally come. The PTA hosts our annual Polar Express Day and we love it. We all know this means we get to wear pajamas to school, lie on the floor and watch the movie, and drink hot chocolate.

We had read the story and made quilt squares earlier in the month so were very excited for Polar Express Day to come.

We give students little Polar Express tickets like this:

We waited (quite patiently) for the Conductor to come around and punch a hole in it. Pretend I have a picture of the Conductor...she was adorable.

I passed out bells on strings to everyone.

 One little darling rushed up to me with a stricken look on his face.

Him: Ms. Buckler! My bell doesn't work! I KNOW I believe in Santa so it can't be me!!!
Me: Really? Let me hear!....(no sound)...I can hear it! Are you sure you can't?
Him: Oh no!!!!!
Me: Calm down! I'm just kidding! There's no ringer inside. Here have another! Have two! I'm sorry! Of course you believe in Santa!

Yes, I felt horrible.

We got rid of the broken bell so no one else would be traumatized.

I then decided to pass out leftover treats from the day before. However, my slippers were a little too slippery and this happened:

I reminded myself....DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF... as I begrudgingly finished up the last of the handprint calendars.

We finished the day by making some Snowman Soup and drinking hot chocolate.

WEDNESDAY
This turned out to be the best day. We played games, danced to Christmas songs, and did another project.

We made thumbprint cards of Santa and his reindeer for our parents.

I remembered DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF when one darling's Rudolf ran out of room and had to fly up the paper. We turned it into a masterpiece. My favorite one yet.

I went home on Wednesday at 3:15 to catch up on my holiday to-do list at home. Overall, these three days were fun, but I don't mind if the district decides to change the calendar next year.

I just wish we had found some time to clean up and rearrange the classroom, because I know there will be lots of SMALL STUFF waiting for me to take care of on planning day.

I hope everyone had a great holiday! I'll be rested and ready to keep working on those resolutions.

15 is for Minutes of Fame

(We interrupt the regularly scheduled letter program to bring you a number.)

I got my 15 minutes of fame on TV! Okay, so it was just the school's morning announcements, but hey! IT WAS TV and now, according to my class, I AM FAMOUS!

Everyone likes to feel recognized for the things they do. Yesterday, I got one more of those little rewards that comes with being Teacher of the Year.

So naturally, that means Ms. June (SRP of the year!) and I had to show off our awards to the whole school.

Mrs. Madagan asked everyone watching to tell us congratulations on this great honor. All day long, little ones were waving to me and saying CONGRATULATIONS! from their lines in the hallway.

The best part was at the end of the day. I am one of the people who like to "live" at school so I co-teach extended day third graders.

A little bilingual girl was having some vocabulary issues:
Her: Are you Ms. Butler?
Me: I'm Ms. Buck-ler.
Her: Yeah, whatever. I saw you on the morning announcements and I wanted to tell you...I forget that word...um....um... I'm happy that you got that award.
Me: Were you looking for the word "congratulations"?
Her: Yeah that! I'm that for you!

One of my other little friends and I had this exchange:
Him: Ms. Buckler, I'm sorry you're sick.
Me: Thanks, but I'm not sick.
Him: Oh, well I saw you on the morning announcements and you didn't look so good.
Me: (            )
Him: Well, congratulations anyway.

I am trying my very best to not let all of this fame go to my head.

P is for Proclamation

Receiving our Proclamations from Manny Funez and Mayor McDuffy

Cheesing in the wind and cold

It looks so official!

N is for Naughty List

I love the conversations kids have when they don't think an adult is listening. 

I ESPECIALLY love these conversations they have when they don't think an adult is listening at Christmas time.

My little darlings were debating the opinion that the "gooder" you are the more presents you get from Santa. They also did an informal survey of who has actually gotten coal.

One worried little friend came up to me after lunch with a very concerned expression.

Student: Ms. Buckler, can you get off of Santa's naughty list the same year you get on it?

Me: I think my brother did it one year. He was pretty naughty.

Student: The same year? Or did he have to wait till the next year?

Me: Why? Are you worried?

Student: Yeah, kinda.

Me: I guess you'll just have to wait and see.  

He would not tell me what he feels so guilty about.

T is for Thanksgiving!

I decided that if we had to go to school on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving while our neighboring counties did not, we were going to have fun!

There's not much time in the curriculum for learning about Pilgrims and Native Americans and other random Thanksgiving facts, so why not devote 2 days to it?

We read about the history of the first Thanksgiving feast which really wasn't called that after all. It was called the harvest feast. Did you know there was lobster and popcorn at this feast? I'm going to make sure someone in my family is told to bring that to Thanksgiving next year (not me!).

We also read how the men got to eat and play games while the women had to cook and clean and serve and take care of the kids. We learned that the children had to eat standing up and couldn't speak until spoken to (gasps).

We learned that the children had to forage for berries and nuts, so we went outside and tried it for ourselves.

I gave them 3 minutes to gather as many acorns as they could.

Then, they had to put them into groups of 10 to count.

Some of them had very interesting foraging techniques.

 There was the "throw everything you can scoop up with your hands into your shirt then pick out the acorns later" technique.

And the "grab some, throw them on the sidewalk for safety and go back for more" technique.

And of course the "bring them to the sidewalk in pre-counted groups of ten so I don't have to count them later" technique.

None of them thought it was funny when I pretended to be a hungry squirrel. Or a tornado. Or just myself.

So we went inside to do some arts and crafts. Despite what some of you think (Dad) we did not actually have time to trace our hands and make turkeys.

Instead we made "I am thankful for..." wreaths. We were learning about the suffixes -ful and -less and I thought "I am thankless" wreaths were not appropriate.

This one got a bad grade because they forgot to add "my teacher". That thankLESS little darling...

We read another story about what the actual trip on the Mayflower was like. We learned that the only thing they had for almost three months was hard biscuits, moldy cheese, dried beef, and water.

The week before, I told my class that I would be bringing in some food so we can have a "mini meal" of our own. We even made a menu of food we would have. After reading this story, I told them I decided to bring beef jerky, old biscuits, bleu cheese, and maybe they could have a sip of water from the water fountain.

I said that they all had to eat standing up and not talk unless an adult talked to them first. They did not find this funny.

One little wiseguy suggested the girls serve the boys. The girls did not find this funny.

But it turns out that our mini-meal was "delicious", "the best thing ever!", and "sooooo awesome!".

The menu:
Turkey (roll-ups)
Mashed Potato(chip)s
(pop)Corn
Green (jelly) beans
Cranberry (soda)
Mini pumpkin pies
Mini crescent rolls
Mini carrots
Gingerbread marshmallows that some one's grandmother sent in

I sent them to P.E. and they promised me they wouldn't get sick.

You can probably see why I needed that 5 day break. Only one change next year...we WILL make those hand print turkeys!