Busy!

Life is Busy (with a capital B!) It always feels like this at the beginning of the year, but right now I am having a harder time balancing than usual...maybe it is because...

• I am a kindergarten teacher. enough said :)
• I am a part of an exciting church plant opportunity in our community! We are launching October 9th, so there is a lot going on to get the children's ministry ready to begin! Think inflatables, exploration, music, snacks, and FUN! Sooo excited for this!
• I am waitressing part time still
• I also want to be the best wife I can be :)
• We just began doggie sitting for 2 of our best friends pup Kirby, an adorable bulldog. he's here with our big boy and having a lot of fun! Pics to come :)

Understand why I'm exhausted??

Well here's a quick recap of life!

• We're in our first full week of school and I must say I am loving my class! Sure, there are the usual suspects ;), but as a whole they are doing SO well and the number 19 just seems to die for! Today we even had our first fire drill and while my expectations were very high, for the more part they held up to them!
• We're still waiting for our new rugs to come, so management on the "invisible carpet" has been rough to say the least. It should be coming by tomorrow afternoon! woohoo! I am trying to hold off official reading instruction until it comes. right now we are doing more intro work and I am itching to begin Fast Track Phonics (Love this program!)
• Back to School night was monday. it was our first time participating in kindergarten and having 2 sessions was REALLY hard with all of the questions kinder parents inevitably have. The first intro from our staff went over, so by the time they got into my room and sat down we were already behind. And of course my presentation went over, so by the time it was time to talk to my second session (only 1 parent) there was only a few minutes left. The poor mom felt pretty upset about this and left in tears. After crying myself I talked to my principal and agreed to email that mom right away. I apologized profusely for it and we agreed to meet and talk through "Back to School night info" on friday after the kids leave. hopefully this will go well!
• My Donor's Choose science supplies arrived today! I was so excited to break those bad boys open and am now looking forward to using them during our travel tuesday rotations! I plan on using 1 exploration station a week for science (along with our new curriculum). During travel tuesdays we will also be having a reading station and a word work station. 

I so badly want to share all of the fun stuff we've been doing, but it will have to wait. Hope you're all doing fantastically in your new classes!

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Supply Night

I have been thinking of so many things that I want to write about, but just don't have the energy! Like getting the classroom ready, trainings galore, and oh ya, the 200 mile relay I ran last weekend. I'm still trying to get back into my sleep patterns! whew!

Well, last night was supply night and I sure did not feel ready. however, I got my room set up and was excited to see all of the families that came. We did it a little differently this year, which I wasn't too keen on, but I figured I would try it and then give my input for changes next year. In the past we have called it our kinder meet and greet. only the kindergarten families came, checked in and got their bus information verified by their teacher, and then went into the classrooms to sort their communal supplies and get their pictures taken. this gave them time to explore the room a little and find where they would be sitting. Then they would go to the cafeteria and get ice cream and mingle while the teachers finished checking in students. Then we would give a speech/intro to kindergarten and show them all of the highlights/important information for the year. During this time the kinders would get to go on a short bus ride and then play on the playground. the parents LOVED it!

Well, this year the school decided that we would ALL have supply night at the same time (k-5) and it was from 3:30-5:30, not our normal 5-7:30 (the early time is hard for working parents!) I enjoyed being in the room and getting to talk with families, but the turnout was horrible. normally all but 1 or 2 kids come, this time I only had 12 of 18! I'm bummed because I didn't get to meet them, check their bus info, and get their picture taken. I like to have their pictures up the first day of school so that they can easily do their attendance. Now i'll need to catch up on the first day, not to mention the new kids I'm sure i'll get over this weekend...

Add to that the loss of a prep day we used to have on the tuesday after labor day. Now the kids start that day. Needless to say, we are all feeling a little unprepared....I'm pretty much all set for school to start, I just need to get my mind wrapped around the kiddos coming! I'm planning on doing some more work from home tomorrow and then heading to washington to visit my sis and the kids for the weekend!

What do you do for supply night?  

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The good, the bad and the Skunk.

Well, it's been a mixed couple of days! Yesterday was good and bad :) haha. First I did our annual kinder planning day which went great! We got a lot done and for the most part I am feeling good about this year (not everything is done yet) I even talked to my principal and got out of the beginning of the year district rally next week so I can work in my room (1/2 time employees don't get a lot of in room time during inservice week) I also got my projector to work, the tech person found out my ponytail was broken and that's why it wouldn't project my laptop anymore! Here is the final product of my beehive behavior chart, I'm so excited!!

And then comes the bad. After work last night, where I am a waitress, I found out my dog had been skunked while I was gone. Oh joy. (Did I mention at work a construction worker clipped a sprinkler head and set off the fire alarm/flooded part of the gym AND the power went out? oh ya) So this morning  I got up early and went to buy the ingredients to "help get the smell out" of the dog. It is only going to help a bit, but anything will do! I am picking up a friend from the airport in a couple of hours who is staying at our place for the first time, and then we run in the Hood To Coast Relay starting tomorrow am and ending Saturday around 4. So, hopefully I can get the skunk smell to dissapate and then get onto my large to-do list before we take off tomorrow. The lucky people sharing a van with me during the race (6 sorority sisters) will get to enjoy my lovely Eau Du Skunk :) Bahahahaha. Wish me luck!

I leave you with the aftermath of cleaning the dog :)

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Names and helper chart

Well today I stopped by my classroom for a little bit to see Mrs. Sneaker, so happy she is back! While I was there I *tried* to get some work done. Now one might think I didn't get much done because I was too busy chatting, but actually, it was my darn computer having issues! (or maybe just me)
First, I couldn't get my laptop to hook up to my projector (even though it was last year) and for the life on me I can't figure out what is wrong! I called the IT department, but because they cut media specialists this year, they are way understaffed and were not able to help me. Great. Who knows when this will get fixed. I wanted to project a honeycomb so that I could make my new "beehive" incentive chart. Think like a gumball machine, but with a beehive instead. it's going to be cute, but I need to trace the picture to make it work, and when I printed it out the hive was just too big. Grr...

Then, I decided to work on printing my new class list/labels to get my postcards out....well, our database isn't letting me get into it for some reason. Again, the IT department will help me eventually, but can't right now. Oh joy. For now, I was able to get a list of names only. The list only has 17 kiddos, so I can only imagine I'll have a bunch added in the next couple of weeks. At least I was able to write names on the postcards...now I just need addresses... Oh, and the names? I've got some crazy ones!! I even emailed the secretary in charge of enrollment to make sure a name was correct. The name ends with Jj. doesn't that seem like it would be a typo? well, she checked and NO it is not! Wow...

The couple of weeks before school starts can be so frustrating. The kids coming is so close and so whenever something does not go as planned it just feels that much more overwhelming....I'm sure it will work out, I just need help with my sanity in the meantime! Oh ya, and it doesn't help that this week is UBER packed! 2 work training's (for waitressing??), 2 shifts, a team planning day, bible study, date with a friend AND I pick up a friend from the airport thursday and then we're off to run the Hood to Coast Relay! phew!

Here is the 1 thing I completed in 2 hours, haha. 

On a happier note, Mr. Bee and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary this weekend! We relaxed at the hotel we stayed at for our wedding downtown all weekend, such a blast! We visited the saturday market, got voodoo doughnuts (famous in oregon!) and even stopped by the food carts for lunch. Oh ya, and romantic dinners and such :)







How are you handling the end of the summer rush??

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In the room again...

I feel like I have spent every day this summer either working on stuff for next year or working on my classroom. Yet, it also seems like nothing gets checked off my to-do list. So frustrating! I know a lot is getting done, but many of these projects are big and I am only completing progress towards them, not getting them finished. Does anyone else feel that way? Part of it is my own fault, I keep finding awesome ideas on all of your blogs and implementing them in my room...LOTS of extra tasks I have created due to this :) But my kids will thank you for it!!

So today, shockingly, I was in my room again. I spent about 2 hours laminating and working on changing my bulletin boards. For the past 3 years I haven't taken down the paper I have only changed the borders and contents, so that has helped with time. This time around, I am changing the layout of my room so today I took down all of the old stuff and put up new ones. Just measuring paper takes a lot of time on its own! Here is some of the progress I made today....

Closets that I need to clean out (we put all of our stuff in there for the summer cleaning) 

All of the loot I have accumulated from Target and the Dollar Store that I get to decide where  to use. :)

New Math (yellow) and Reading (green) boards. Our new carpets will help facilitate easy rotations between the two subjects. Yay! Thanks to Mrs. Sneaker's friend at another school in our district for this idea!

My new table arrangement. Hoping this will work! It will depend on how many kiddos I get this year, because the tables are kind of close...

My new word wall! It used to be over on the other side of the room, but with the new streamlined math/reading area it works better here!

My new reading corner. I am so excited about this! It has our leveled reading books on the bookshelf and lots of fun pillows and such to cuddle with while reading. hopefully this will help the kids want to read instead of look at my picture books which are on the other carpet. I also plan on sitting on this carpet during out "flag/country of the week" time, where we will learn about a new country that corresponds with our letter of the week. I feel like it's kind of random having it in the reading corner, but will see if it works.

As you can see, there is still a lot to do and quite a bit of chaos and garbage :) It's a work in progress! But now I feel like I can wait to go back in until next week when my awesome teammate Mrs. Sneaker returns from Germany! We're planning on getting a lot done with planning and in between that I should be able to do some organizing to finish up the room!

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