When the walls yakked up red, white and blue!

One of the things that I alternately love and hate about the US is the patriotism. I love how much the people of this country are behind their country, how much they love it and how much they aren't afraid to shout it from the roof tops. I won't discuss why I dislike it... but I also wanted to share the patriotism going on in my school right now. The kindergartners are learning a great deal about US symbols, historical figures and songs that celebrate their heritage. Now, it's not easy as a Canadian to teach all that, but I will say that I am learning a lot about these neighbours to the south that are letting me hang out here for a while.

Questions...

So today I decided to start my unit on living things with my students. We talked a little about the things that they knew about living things (it was a little like pulling teeth with this class) and then I asked what they wanted to know about living things and they blew me away with great questions!! I don't know if you can read them, but they were really cool.

Mapping it up!

Teaching maps is part of the curriculum for kindergarten here in the US and I usually do a three dimensional model map on a table for the students to use, but I just don't have the space for that here so we did something different! One of my teammates puts her map up on the wall and makes buildings out of paperbags! Great idea, right?! I thought so, so that's what the picture is. The kids really liked making it and they love seeing it on display in our hallway.

100 Days!!

Today is the 100th Day of school. I always assign my students the task of making t-shirts that have 100 things on them for homework. We had some a amazing ones today but even better were the 100! glasses that the kids made as part of one of their centers. So funny!!! I love little kids!

So you can see...

Okay... remember me telling you about all the snow? Well, these images are so that you can see what it was like for us. Now, I know that some of you are used to REAL snow, but here we are not... so this little bit was intense. Anyway, just thought you'd like to see it all go down!

Snow Days

Recently, the Williamsburg area has been hit with insane amounts of snow and wintry conditions and we took some time out from school for it. What a blessing that was, let me tell you! But the bad part is having to make up the days we miss. I don't remember having to do that in any other place that I have worked so it's a bit of a shock to the teaching system! So far, we've had to make up one day from the big Nor'easter and one day from the big snow storm. So it hasn't been that bad altogether but I'm just hoping there are no more days off due to weather!! I can't be stuck here making them up as I try to get as much out of this country as possible before moving on to Turkey.

Snow Days

So we have had 2 full days off from school because of the snow storm that landed here in Hampton Roads, and then the students and some employees had another day off today because of the yuck all over the roads still while the teachers and administrative staff were required to go in. I don't understand why we needed to be there, there were no children and we had just come off a week with 3 half days that were primarily work days. I was very much caught up on all required things in my classroom and so I have to say I was annoyed to be forced to go in when we will all still be required to make up for the two missed student days still. Sure, it was nice to have 5 hours to just work in my classroom (a hidden gift for most teachers) but the pure rest would have been a huge blessing too.