Sunday (no)Funday...

Whoever coined the term "Sunday Funday" was not a teacher. Sunday's are not fun for me, ever. In fact, I've recently discovered how utterly lame I am becoming. I spent ALL of Friday night getting work done. That included staying up until 12:30 (wayyy past my bed time) to grade, track, plan and organize all of my stuff for professional saturday the next day. And now it's Sunday and I have to spend the entire day studying for a test in Curriculum Development...snooze...I have to keep telling myself that this grad school business will be worth it in the end, because right now, I only have 1 night a week open and spend most of my weekends doing work. Well betcha wanted to hear me complain about that, huh?

Quote from the kiddos...Kayla counting aloud for me, "one....two...three...September." "No Kayla, September isn't a number." "August." "What comes after 3?" "B." "okay, you can go back to your seat." This was last week. This week (Friday) the two kids that cannot count past 3 made it to 10 with some assistance. They are SLOWLY starting to learn what number comes next, it's about time, we count no less than 15 times a day. One funny note...one of the kids that cannot count past 3 was listed as proficient in math according to the district test they were given weeks ago. Um...I think something may be wrong with your results. He is OBVIOUSLY minimal in math. This week is another district testing week which means 3 days of no instruction happening. However, this is the last time that Kindergarten and 1st grade have to deal with the district tests and curriculum, HALLELUIAH!

So, while the leaves are changing colors and the nights are getting cooler, Mississippi is getting DRENCHED. Literally. It rained ALL last weekend...to the point where I was cringing thinking about how wet it was and how the playground was not going to dry out for a month. That makes me very unhappy. Well, Friday night I woke up a couple of times before my alarm and it sounded like ship loads of water were being dumped on the house. I guess that's what 10 inches of rain sounds like. Anyway, the streets were flooded. There was at least a foot of water in some portions of our street. Don't worry, I know you're not supposed to drive down a flooded street, but I had just watched a cop car come through it and he said it would be fine! Well, Ruleville didn't have school, parts of the school had water damage. I swear to you, all I want is a rain/snow day. Here's a link to an article from the Cleveland newspaper. I live on Floyce.
http://www.bolivarcom.com/index.cfm?event=news.view&id=D4E327C5-19B9-E2E2-67FB4DF991DFD6EB

Write it on your calendar...September 20, Jeannie's already asking for the Christmas letter...after I just vented about hating my lack of free time. mehhhhhh. Don't worry, I'm only writing this while my soup cools....

Uh, an update about my class....I have 12 kids that have mastered all of the letters we have covered and I have 7 kids that have hardly mastered any. My class is either doing REALLY well or REALLY poorly. I only have 3 kids in the middle. Pretty unusual, but means that I'm now going to have new centers for those tactile and kinesthetic learners...someway, they'll learn it, I hope. My principal has spent the last two weeks cleaning out our book room which was in complete disarray and soooo jam packed you couldn't even want in there. So, each day someone brings more CRAP for us to have in our classrooms. I asked her one day when the new cabinet was coming to keep all of this stuff in, she laughed; I was being serious. I mean, thank you for all of the mix matched social studies workbook/leaflet pages. Can we get some copy paper so I don't have to keep buying my own? We are going on week 7 and we still have not gotten ONE package of paper. Soooo annoyed. We finally got math curriculum 2 weeks ago, so we could stop copying those work sheets. And now last Wednesday we got the phonics program, so there are a few more pages we can stop copying. But really...who gets their phonics program almost a quarter of the way into the school year? The first 9 weeks test are right around the corner...meh (again!).

Okay...back to studying, the day is getting away from me and this stuff isn't memorizing itself.

Here's to rain and recess-less school days.