Monday, 4/7/14

The first day back from spring break and we all survived! You never know what life will be like after everyone's been gone for over a week. I must admit, it was nice to see all of my favorite little faces! I have "door duty" (aka hang out with the kids from the time they first arrive in the morning until the bell rings) on Mondays. Today's was especially nice because I got to see the kids right away. It's funny how much you grow to enjoy seeing someone (or several someones) everyday, so much so, that even having a week off of school can make you miss them. 

Today is the first day of fourth quarter, which translates to the first official day that I start to fear the last day of school. Fourth quarter is always a blast because all of the work that we've put in all year pays off in dividends, plus there are just a ton of fun activities that occur, but it is very bittersweet because living in the back of my mind is the knowledge that my time of hanging out with these amazing little humans is nearing its end. So, I block that out and we just enjoy every single day we have together. Like today:

Nothing extraordinary except the announcement of our upcoming Day of Stars!! On Friday, April 11th, I'm going to randomly set a timer. When it goes off, regardless of what we are doing, we will drop everything and learn about a few of our star classmates. The kids were sent home today with a "quilt square." It's simply a piece of paper now, but by Friday will become a square which represents each of the kids in our class. I will put them together to form our class "quilt." Once we've learned about those first few kids, the timer will be reset, we'll continue on with business as usual until it beeps again--at which time we'll learn about some others, and so will go the day until we've been through all 23 of my shining stars. Some have a wacky Wednesday, we will have a free-for-all Friday!!  I'll fill  you in on how it goes! 

I'm off to finish up report cards! It's so hard to put into one little number or symbol what 9 weeks of academics, problem solving and growing looks like, so my favorite part is where I get to write on the bottom. That's the part I'm working on tonight. Good thing I seem to be in a writing state of mind. ;)

Happy Monday!