Monday, September 8, 2008

The nights are cooling down. Fall is in the air.... This can mean only one thing. Bowling season is once again upon us. The first meeting was last night and next Sunday night we will establish new averages with the first 3 games of the season. This is typically the night I bowl my better games. LOL I'll generally have a couple of 200+ games every year and it would be no surprise to me if one of them is next week--the worst night possible! Haha It would just figure. Hopefully the opposite will hold true and I'll be really bad and set a low average instead? Nowhere to go but up (I hope) from there! (o: Last year was kinda pathetic, though. I think I ended the season in the mid 130's. I tend to range 130's to high 140's. You would think after so many years I'd get better?? Oh well. At least I'm consistent, right? Seems most of the usual teams are back.... a bit wild some of them, but fun.

Joshua has spent the last few days cleaning the Expedition and making it more "his." He's washed things inside and out... The paint is jet-black and shiny (not bad for a '99 with 60K miles on it--still looks great!) and the wheels really shine. He got a new chrome emblem with flames to embellish the "Ford" symbol on the back gate... he's such a teenager! It's so weird to think of him as driving. I still cannot get that picture of him as an infant in my arms out of my head. He's still my baby! How can he possibly be old enough to get behind the wheel of any vehicle beyond a bicycle?? Sobering, really. I'm not ready for him to take to the Interstate, but he's doing pretty well around town.

Kindergarten is going well. The kids are starting to fall into our routine with fewer reminders now. But we are sooooooo busy! The double-up schedule is a real challenge, but we're managing. They live for learning labs where they get to play in the various "labs" around the room; art, science, math, sand/water table, dramatic play, literacy, writing, etc.... I'm trying to take advantage of the time I have a para during this part of the day to get my progress monitoring done. I've done dibels on several of my students--thus far the results are not encouraging. I have to keep in mind that they have not really learned the things I'm asking them to do at this point, but it's still frustrating to see the scores so low regardless. I'm looking forward to seeing their growth, though. I think that will be lots of fun. We are beginning week 4 and so far we've been working on letter sounds /m/, /a/, /s/, and /d/. Tomorrow we begin /t/. They are loving learning the new sounds and it's fun to see them point out the letters with so much excitement in everything we are doing. I was told a funny story last year... at this stage we are only learning sounds--purposely not emphasizing letter names. When the vision specialist came to do vision tests last year, our Kindergartners surprised her by giving her the letter sounds instead of the letter names on the eye chart. I'm looking forward to seeing if that is again the case this year! (o:

Tonight the Broncos meet the Raiders on Monday Night Football. That'll be fun to snuggle up to Tim on the couch and hang out with him for the game--provided things don't get too tense. That'll have him pacing, jumping up and down, and possibly hollering at the TV! LOL At any rate, it's always nice just to hang out. Since the kids aren't all that into football, it's a bit of 'alone' time (sort of) for us. Something we don't get a whole lot of these days--but wish we could. Hard to believe... we will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary this Dec.

I recently ordered the Rosetta Stone (levels 1-3) in high hopes of learning some Spanish. I think this will really give me an advantage not just at school, but in the community as well. The demographics here have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. What was once a mostly Caucasian population is now more than 50% Hispanic. It's wild. As much as I agree that if you are going to live in the United States, you should learn English, I think the reality is that its not always the case. I'm frustrated that I cannot communicate with more than half the parents of the students in my classroom. Here's to hoping I can fit this new venture somewhere into my daily routines.

Well, I had better get back to my lesson plans. It's so hard to keep up--even at half-time! I put in way more than full-time hours, so I have a lot more respect for teachers than I ever have. Not sure how full-time Kindergarten teachers keep up with all the prep-work! Tomorrow after work I get to attend the 2nd night of my classroom management class for new staff "induction." This has something to do with "Highly Qualified" and getting my professional license (my current license is provisional). Of course I have not done the required reading for this as of yet... (might be trying to do some of that during the game!) It's a fun book, though. Harry Wong's "First Days of School." I highly recommend this book for any teacher. Anyway, at some point this fall I'll have to take the ELL course, too. Always something!