"I luve school it is the best!"

For those of you that are also visual people, we'll start with something to feast your eyes on :)

Check out the person in his picture--arms, legs and even ears!  Pretty good for a six-year-old!

We've got a lot of inventive spelling going on here, but I couldn't resist posting this one...check out the person with the curly hair under the window wearing a red dress.  Coincidence that I was wearing a coral/red dress today? ;)

Day #2, and let me tell you guys, this job was not made for wimps!  I'm pooped!  But I digress on that one...  Today was not too much different from the first day of school; well, all the kids were a little more "used to" being there, but today was again a lot of procedure and routine.  Luckily, my kiddos seem to be catching on a little bit, so hopefully we'll only be drilling these things for a little bit longer :)  A couple highlights from my day:

• The pictures above, for obvious reason...I think that of all elementary school grades, 1st graders are at the most honest, unabashed age where they are not afraid to think, write, and draw what they want.  If we could all be half as genuine as first graders!  (Example: One of my students was next to me at my desk as I was writing something down, and my name badge was lying flat on the desk.  She looked at the picture of me on the badge and looked at me and said, "Ms. W, you look different here."  Curiously I asked her which one she liked better--because the picture on my badge was taken about a month ago and I didn't think I could look that different.  Her response was simple; she pointed to the "real" me (not the picture) and said, "I like you better here because you're just, well, here."  Precious honesty, y'all.)
• I gave my students an assessment of the alphabet today, an "ABC write," where I called out the letters--out of order--and they had to write the capital and lower case version of the letters (or the "big" and "small" one of each).  Most students did an impressive job, but the letter that gave me the most giggles was "Q," because the little version of the letter is really tricky!  I had a couple students write it like this: QQ.  Hope you all got a chuckle out of that, too!
• Microphones.  Yesterday, when my kiddos didn't want to use their big-kid voices at our morning meeting, I pretended that an Expo marker was a microphone, and the kids magically spoke up.  Well, today, it was a spoon, and, like magic, spoons increase the volume of kids' voices, too!  I'm telling y'all--if you are a teacher, try this with your little ones.  And if you are not a teacher, please find a child to test this theory on.  It's unbelieveable!
• Lunch time today was about 95% less chaotic than yesterday--relief!  Or maybe pizza is just a better lunch for a kid and makes them cooperate more than chicken etouffee served over rice (basically a stew, which was what lunch was yesterday).  I'll keep you posted on the effects of kid-friendly lunch menu items on child behavior and readiness in the lunch line :)
• Today I ran into a little something we like to refer to as karma.  It comes in the form of one of my students who is a mirror version of the six-year-old me.  She has the habit of answering questions and making comments as she raises her hand (exactly the same thing I did in elementary school)...I give her a lot of credit for remembering to raise her had, now we just need to work on timing!  I'm trying to remember what my teachers used to do to help me control my urges to talk...or maybe I still just talk too much?
• A veteran teacher asked ME for something today, you guys.  No joke.  I have student work hanging in the hall that was done on a template I created.  Nothing big, just a place for a student's name, a big rectangle for a drawing, and some lines for writing (the elementary-school-type, with the dotted line in the middle).  But a second grade teacher walked into my classroom in the middle of my Language Arts block, begging for an apology that she was interrupting, but wondering if there was any way I possibly had an extra blank copy of the paper that was hanging in the hall.  Y'all--I was speechless.  I had to make sure she was asking the right person.  Wow.
• I had to make my first parent phone call today to a kiddo's mom--she lost one of the lenses in her glasses.  I think the munchkin was scared to death to tell me :(  My fingers will be crossed until tomorrow to see if it turns up when my room is cleaned tonight (even though I had 21 little ones on their hands and knees searching this afternoon), and I'd appreciate any extra crossed fingers that y'all can contribute!
• Indoor recess...can we get a little sunshine?!?  Even if it's just from like 10am to 1pm--enough to peek out from behind the clouds, dry off the equipment, and then allow my energy-filled kiddos to run off some steam for a little bit!  Board games can only provide so much entertainment for little arms and legs that are dying to be stretched!  (On that note, if anyone has any child-friendly board games--or games in general--that you or your family is getting rid of, I have a shelf in Room 106 that would love to adopt them!)

One last thought before I look at lesson plans and then crawl into bed.  One (of many!) ideas that I took away from education classes at JMU was to offer students a "handshake, high five, or hug" as a greeting when they enter the classroom every day.  Let me just tell you that when you get 18 hugs, two high-fives, and a handshake to start off your day, life is good.

Don't get me wrong, y'all, this job is tough.  Two days in and I can attest that it is tiring for my brain, for my soul, for my jaw (all that talking!), and for my feet, but the ups outweigh the downs, so the highs are what I choose to dwell on.  I hope you all have kiddos in your classes (or for those of you with desk jobs, coworkers who surround you) that bring smiles to your faces too, all day long, for all different reasons.

Love and crossed fingers (hoping to find my little one's glasses lens!) from Room 106,
Allie