Kids in My Class

I have seven kids in my class, five of which showed up to "Meet the Teacher" today. I will not post names but will give them other names (just in case).
I have five little girls and 2 little boys. One little girl is sweet and smart I will call her-Lacey, another of the girls looks like she might be rather rambuncious, I will call her Maddie, another little girl is quite but not really shy, just a bit of a step backer, I will call her Elena. The fourth little girl is of Asian decent, with both parents speaking English (thank you), she is cute and funny, I will call her Alicia. The one boy that came today will be a bit of a challenge, not because he is active, but because his mom told me that he is "Verbal-delayed" He only has a vocabulary of approximately 20 words, and she said he may not talk at all until he is more comfortable. Sigh....I guess, that would be the least of the problems I could have. He is rather small, wears glasses and didn't really make much eye contact with me or pay much attention to me. I will call him Trent. His mom is really nice and I will most likely be working a lot with her on what he can and can't accomplish. The other two kids (one boy one girl) never showed. I know the girl, she was a sibling of a girl in Coles class, so I will call her Colette. : ) The little boy, well, I guess I will meet him on the first day of school if he comes. I will call him Quinn. So now that is my class and if I blog about them, I will use their aliases, to protect the innocent. Most likely the ones I right about will be not so innocent, hehe. But you may get a few laughs out of it.

Still Not Ready

Ok, this is just getting ridiculous! My room is still not ready for school! I have been over and over with the director about it and she says the maintenance people just have too much to do.
I don't believe it anymore. My kids came to meet me today and to see the room. It looked ok, other than the bulletin boards being propped up on the table and the cabinets not being hung. They didn't notice, although the parents probably did. I did mention to some that we were still in the process of putting things together. So, what it boils down to is this. If I go in on Saturday afternoon and the bulletin boards are not hung yet, Carl will come in and do it for me. The cabinets he cannot do but I will just have to keep bugging them I guess. It is really hard to get anything done with the school, because even the tiniest problem at the Elementary school is more important than an important one at the preschool. Silly huh? Oh well, I will take photos of my finished room, and will post by Monday at the latest! It doesn't look bad, just not quite done. Sigh....

Transition as yet .....Incomplete...sigh...

Well, it is Tuesday evening and my bulletin boards and cabinets are still not up. I got some more on the walls for decoration and organized my cabinets. I will be finishing up (hopefully) tomorrow sometime. The maintenance guy said he would devote all of tomorrow on hanging the stuff in my room. We shall see. I told Carl that if it is not done by tomorrow afternoon, he would have to come after work and do it. I am not having kids come and meet me with no bulletin boards up! Sheesh!
Talk about last minute!

Part Two of The Transition of my Classroom

Ok, not that there is much of a difference but the room was now painted and the old mini blinds taken off. We started moving a lot in and some stuff out. There was a play workbench that I refuse to have in my room. I can just see the little boys hammering up a storm inside! I chose to donate that to the playground outside. We are a little further along than this but this is what it looked like Friday and most of Saturday. I will be putting the finishing touches on either this afternoon or on Monday. So the last installment of the Classroom Transition will probably be posted on Tuesday or something like that. I am also painting a mural in the little bathroom, since there was nothing in there but a sink and then about 20 ft away was the little itty bitty potty. It was kind of creepy in there. Soon it will be a nice garden with flowers and butterflies, ladybugs and dragonflies. Photo will be forthcoming when finished. So something that normally takes someone 2 to 3 weeks to accomplish I get to do in less than a week, YIKES! I hope I get it done in time for "Meet your Teacher Day" on Thursday! Talk about stressed out!

My Classroom's Transition from Old Nursery to Three Year Old Preschool Garden room.

So at the end of the new school year I decided to take a teaching position. Two days a week teaching 3 year olds. A little scary. Then we found out that we would be getting new rooms that the church was using as nursery rooms. Pretty cool. But they would not be released for a while. Hmmm, another scary thing. Most teachers get a headstart on preparing their classrooms for the next year. We were allowed to look at the rooms to get ideas, but nothing more than that. So above is a photo of what my classroom looked like. So then over the summer I checked in often to see if they had done anything with the room. Everytime I came in the answer was no. So I then went on my vacations and we just enjoyed summer. Then on August 12th we came back from our last vacation and I checked in again. Well, they then gave me the date of August 22, approximately 2 weeks from when school started! Very scary. Then they decided that they couldn't match the paint with the paint on the ceiling so they decided to "shoot" the whole room! Which meant another delay. That brings us to Friday, August 25th. The day I could actually move some things in. I am like a racehorse stuck behind the starting gate, literally chomping on the bit to get started! So Friday I take the kids and we move a large load of toys and supplies into the classroom. Not everything is totally done, but enough to put a lot away. The kids did ok for 3 hours then we had to leave. I took them out to lunch and we called it a day. See part 2, next post.....

Pirates of the Caribbean with Jack Sparrow!

Well, it is now official. Capt. Jack Sparrow has been incorporated into the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. We saw it with the kids on Monday. It was very cool and he appears 3 times in the attraction. The photo of course is not great but you get the idea.
They also have a real life Capt. Sparrow character that works like all the other characters in the park. Shmoozing and doing photo ops. At first I thought they could have done better (looks-wise), but then he started walking around and he moved just like Johnny Depp! Pretty funny! Anyway, we had a blast! The kids actually stayed up until midnight! Whew! All in all we saw 4 pretty new attractions. Pirates was one, then Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (our second time), and then at Disney's California Adventure, Mike and Sully to the Rescue and Turtle Talk with Crush. Both of those were cute. The Monsters Inc one was kind of like Mr. Toad or Pinnochio and Turtle Talk with Crush was an interactive movie that was within the Animation Area. Cole got to talk to Crush as did Carl (that was a hoot!) He asked Cole if his parents were here and we raised our hands (we were sitting right behind Cole) and Crush says, "Whoa, tight leash, Dude!" It was really cute! The kids also surprised us by wanting to go on Star Tours! We went twice they enjoyed it so much! Well, that is it for now, so next time you go to Disneyland, make sure you see the new Pirates, it really is neat.

We Love Lake Tahoe!

This is our 3rd trip to Lake Tahoe and we enjoy it more and more everytime we go. The first year we went Cole was just 15 months old, so there were a few things we couldn't do. The second time was two years ago, two years after the first time, so Cole was 3 and Kaleigh was 5. This year the kids were 5 and 7, the perfect age for more activities. We went speedboating (of course-read below), and Mommy actually tried wakeboarding again after 8 years! The water was extremely choppy and the winds were blowing waves over us (when in the water) so I was only able to get up and stay up for a couple of minutes. It was still fun and I look forward to the next time (in smoother water preferably) Carl both wakeboarded and tubed (I won't do that again!) and Kaleigh even got in the tube with her daddy, unfortunately, the tube got front heavy and Carl had to throw Kaleigh to the side just so he wouldn't get pulled on top of her! She was scared but got over it. The water was pretty cold and that was probably the biggest shock! Cole didn't attempt anything after that! But there was plenty to watch with their cousins and Aunt and Uncle, tubing and wakeboarding (or attempting to wakeboard- hee hee) All and all it was a great trip! We went to the beach, mini golfed, boated, and just hung around with the family. It was a blast and we hope to do it again next year!

Canada Trip 2006

Well, this year was chock full of vacations! We managed to get in a few places and a couple of family reunions! Our first stop was to stop by Lee and Tina's to visit them. We stopped for lunch and picked up and dropped off various items. Then we continued up to Canada. The visit was very nice and we all had a good time. Dad was not doing great when we arrived (he had been in the hospital with 103 degree temp. But it went away pretty quickly and was home when we got there. He was tired but happy to see us. Then as the days went on, he improved a lot! Ate meals with us and even went shopping with Carl! I think he enjoyed the male company. : )

In any case we got to do some things with the kids that we hadn't done before (see next photo)

Not a Flock of Seagulls

Does this kid look like someone? No it isn't the lead singer from a Flock of Seagulls (younger and cuter?), but Cole, our youngest enjoying his first time in a speedboat! We rented a speed boat on the off chance the kids would enjoy it. We tried when Kaleigh was about 3 and she was scared stiff! So we waited and lo and behold it was a huge hit! The kids loved speeding around Lake Okanagan! Kaleigh kept yelling, "is that the best you can do, Daddy?" har har. Cole just sat there and let the wind practically push him around the boat. Carl of course loved every minute with driving and watching his children enjoy something he really enjoys too! I had a good time too! It was so fun, we decided to do the same thing again in Lake Tahoe! See the next post!