New Top 10

I feel like David Letterman with my top 10 lists. It's just so easy. I could have a new top 10 every day. So here we go.

10. A girl peed her pants three times in two consecutive days. Two of those times happened while we are on a potty break. The third time happened while she danced around the room, holding herself, yet refused to go to the bathroom - until, obviously, it was too late.

9. A girl told me her throat hurt and then 5 minutes later threw up. Wait a minute. I thought your tummy hurt when you needed to throw up - not your throat. Silly me. The next day, a boy told me he felt fine (I asked about all body parts - does your head hurt? No. Does your throat hurt? No. Does your tummy hurt? No. Do your ears hurt? No. Are you tired? I guess.) And then 5 minutes later he comes running up to me, hands over his mouth, alarmed look in his eyes. GET TO THE TRASH CAN!!! Too little too late. Two pukers in two days. Go figure.

8. In the middle of class a boy suddenly yelled out, "I QUIT!" To which I replied, "ME TOO! Let's get out of here!" Luckily he thought that was funny and fixed whatever caused him to become so frustrated with 5 year old life that he felt the need to quit.

7. I told one of my boys that he needed to stop walking like a dinosaur and start walking like a boy. To which he replied, "I'm not a dinosaur. I'm a monster." Oh excuse me. Since you're a monster then, by all means, continue running into people and rolling your head around until you fall over.

6. During an alphabet recognition assessment: Me: "Ok, point at the letters and tell me which letter you see." Boy: "4, 7, 1, 15 . . ." Me: "Wait, wait. Are you looking carefully at these LETTERS?" Boy: "Yes. 6, 9, 12, 16. . . " Me: "So and So, these are letters, not numbers. You know, A B C . . " Boy: "I know. 14, 16, 3, 2, 8." Me: (I give up).

5. During a different alphabet recognition assessment: Me: "Tell me which letters you see." Girl: "A, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E . . ." Me: "Make sure you look carefully at the letters. They aren't all the same." Girl: "I know teacher. G, G, G, G, G, G, G. . . " Me: (I give up).

4. Heard yelled through the classroom: "Teacher! So and So says I'm a tattle tale." Me: "Guess what you're doing right now?"

3. A little boy tattled on a girl saying that she had said bad words about me. Well, I was not going to let this slide so I asked him what she said. He got all red in the face and whispered, "You have a big fat belly." HAHA! Well, I do.

2. I have been called "mama," "mom," and "mommy" more times than I can count but the best came one day when Mark came into my room for a minute and when he left one of my boys yelled out, "Bye Dad!"

1. This one is just cute: the other day the kids were on the rug and I was sitting in a chair reading them a story. All of a sudden one of the kids noticed a bug about to crawl up my leg. And it was the nastiest, ugliest bug I have ever seen! So I commenced trying to run it over with my chair wheel, but the darn thing would not die. Suddenly one of my little boys came running over, shoe in hand, and smacked the thing. It worked! It died! I told the boy he was my hero and he just beamed all day! So cute!

Kindergarten Update

Being that my entire life is taken up with school these days - this is pretty much all I have to write about.  Even my pregnancy has taken a back seat to this.  And I don't have pictures yet, because my camera is at school so I can take pictures of my kids for their things we are making for back to school night.  Anyway, I digress.  I am happy to say that things are improving.  We are definitely working our way into a nice routine and building habits and relationships; and most of the time I really do enjoy teaching kindergarten.  I have learned that its best to let bad days and bad moments roll off your back and its even better when you can laugh at it.  And so, I give you my top 10 moments of kindergarten so far (that I can remember):

10. I had to drag a kid (literally drag on his bottom) down the hall because he didn't want to come to school and his mom just stood there making it a million times worse.  (note to parents: as much as your heart tells you otherwise, it is best to just leave and let them cry it out.  They'll stop the sooner you are gone - I PROMISE). 

9. I have a girl that I decided is a dog in disguise.  She has already chewed through stick glue, a pencil, scissors, her bus card, and a white board pen.

8. I had a boy tell me he had to go to the bathroom and then made a break for it the second he was out the door.  A proctor finally caught him in the parking lot.  (Where were you planning on running kid?  We are surrounded by miles and miles of desert! - no seriously, its like Holes where our school is).  

7.  When I told a mom that her son didn't know his colors she told me that he was a "free thinker."  Apparently colors are relative these days.  Blue is not blue folks - it will now be referred to as "water." (that is seriously the example she gave me - that he, at one time, called blue, water.  Who knows what his free thinking mind calls it now).   

6. I have two boys that think if they close their eyes while I'm disciplining them I will disappear and they won't get in trouble.  One will even put a pencil in front of his face as if that hides him.

5. I had one girl tell me she could hear my baby crying from inside my tummy. (Wow - you have really good ears!)

4. I have a boy that finishes every sentence with the statement, "I'm super star smart!"  This same kid also insists on saying "Good underwater" instead of "Good morning."  I don't know where that one came from.   

3. I had a parent demand to know how her daughter scraped her knee at recess.  Well, let me think...she fell??

2. All in one day I had boys sent home for: throwing sticks and rocks, biting office staff, punching, pushing, throwing food, and kicking the principal.  And it wasn't just my kids.  The principal actually declared August 12th, as stricken from the kindergarten calendar forever more (ok not really - next August 12th we'll still have kindergarten, but she did say it). 

1. After looking for a student for 30 minutes, he was finally found butt naked in the bathroom.  (I don't know - don't ask.)

There are so many more things that happen every day and I just don't remember them.  Kindergarten may not be for the faint of heart, but its definitely humorous.    

First Day of School

Today was my first day of kindergarten with students and it was . . . well read on if you want to know how it all went down.  Within the first hour of my day I had a girl pee her pants, a book lost, 5 kids fall out of chairs, one shelf ransacked, 2 students get lost, 1 kid from another class end up in my room, and 4 kids ask "is it time to go home yet?"  Dude you are here for 7 more hours, better get comfy!  We spent the first hour before recess learning how to stand and walk in a line.  Our next hour was spent figuring out who brought a lunch from home and who didn't.  It went something like this, "Who has . . " All hands go up.  "I haven't finished asking the question.  Put your hands down.  Now, who brought a lunch from home?"  All hands go up.  "Hmm ok, who is eating the school lunch?"  All hands go up.  Alrighty then.  And this is how we sorted it out.  "So and so bring me your backpack.  Ok you have sack lunch.  So and So your turn.  Ok you have hot lunch."  Kid starts crying.  "Why are you crying?"  "I have hot lunch."  Seriously?  And on and on until we had it figured out.  The next hour was spent trying to go from our seats to the rug.  So each table has a colored caddy on it.  As a class we went over our colors and what table was what color and yada yada.  I'm no fool I know you have to model and model I did - myself, other students, and on and on until every kid seemed to understand.  And once we were ready to try it as a class, this is how it went:  "Yellow table, please come to the rug."  Blank stares.  "If you have a yellow basket on your table please push your chairs in and come to the rug."  All kids get up but one.  "So and so what color is on your table?"  "Blue."  Wow!  At this point I read a story and we made "First Day Hooray" hats and surprisingly that all went well.  Then came time to go to lunch...seriously all I was able to do in half a day was line up, figure out who was eating what, and read a story??  Why did I even plan?  After lunch we did a name activity where they traced their name 4 times.   I modeled everything - how to get my pencil, how to hold it, how to trace, etc.  Once the papers were passed out one kid started trying to write with his eraser.  Honey, you might want to turn that thing around or you will have some problems.  Another kid exclaimed, "Teacher, look how good I did!"  His entire paper was colored black.  That's one way to trace . . . I guess.   We did some other stuff...yada yada.  Finally time for recess again.  HALLELUJAH!!  More time spent trying to get from seats to the line - "Sweety, you are at the YELLOW table."  When we got back it was almost time (ok we still had an hour) to go home.  But I had learned my lesson...things in kindergarten take time.  So we got out our backpacks and tried to put all the handouts in a folder and in to our backpacks.  I learned 5 year olds can't put paper in a folder.  I pretty much walked around and did it for them.  Finally, all papers were put away neatly in our folders and we had 5 minutes to go before we had to be out at the busses.  Too bad for me it took more than 5 minutes to put our folders in our backpacks and on our backs and get in a line and out the door.  Thank heavens Mark came in right at that moment and was able to take the bus kids so I could take the walkers and parent pick-up and amazingly enough... everyone ended up in the right line and I didn't lose anyone!  VICTORY!!  Did I mention the girl that could only say, "Ay Gaunt!"  (I learned that that means, "I can't!")  But at the end of the day managed to say perfectly clearly, "Teacher, you're beautiful."  And the boy who can't speak or understand English?  Or the girl that spent the whole day in great spirits and then started bawling the second she saw her mom, making her mom cry too, and then have her mom ask me, "what happened to her?"  "Um, I don't know...she was fine two minutes ago."  Smooth.  How about the time I lost two kids but thought I had only lost one only to have the principal find the one I didn't know I was missing and say, "I thought you said you were only missing one."  "Oh well, I ... um.... oops."  And so so so many more.  And I get to do it all again tomorrow!  The good news is that I wasn't the only one that lost kids and I wasn't the only one that only got through lines and lunches in a 7 hour day.  Apparently that is how kindergarten is.  One kinder teacher told me to expect to do procedures for the first 6 weeks.  6 weeks!  And that is the end of my ranting.  I hear it only gets better.  And for the sake of my sanity I have decided to focus on what we did accomplish.  By the end of the day we could: pretty much walk in a line, find our desks without help, and put our hands on our heads and close our mouths when I rang the attention getter bell.  YAY!!  And seriously I mean YAY!!  It took all day to accomplish those three things and I am right there with the veteran kindergarten teachers.  I am not behind!  Now that is something to be proud of!