Sunshine and Clouds

I wasn't sure about today.

The class I was going to sub for has at times been pleasant, at times they've been difficult. Today, happily, was a pleasant day.

Despite starting the morning with no plans (the teacher I was subbing for had emailed them to the teacher next door, but they were stuck in a staff meeting all morning, so I didn't get the plans until the kids arrived - thankfully I'd found some old plans and sketched out something before they arrived, so I had an idea of what order things were happening), it all went pretty smoothly.

We had math in the morning, which consisted of a short review, a worksheet and making pop-up Mother's Day cards, followed by music, P.E. and recess for the kids. I picked them up after that to get their lunches and bring them back to the room.

Lunch was eventful because they cart they're supposed to put their trays on after they've dumped was missing! One of the kids from the classroom proclaimed he'd get it and ran off to who-knows-where. Thankfully, he came back a minute later pushing the cart and smiling at himself for being so clever, and looking oh-so-cool pushing that cart down the path.

After lunch we did some reading and writing and finish-up-work time. I made them all very happy by saying 'yes' to the requests to draw on the little white boards. Then I made them even more happy by letting them have an extra recess on our beautiful sunny day! (Basically Miss Barnes really wanted to go outside so she made sure they "earned" an extra recess. Although, they really were good, so it's not like they didn't deserve it.)

We came in from our bonus recess to go to my friend's first grade class (this class's 'buddy room"). My group helped the first graders cut out, staple together and stuff big paper clouds with magazines. I'm not sure what they're doing with them after this, since that's all we got to today - it's got something to do with Earth Day though.

I Almost Cried

Today was a really good day. I guess it could have been better if the principal had come down and said, "Hey, I wanna hire you. Come fill out some paperwork?" But the kids were fun again and the day was pretty enjoyable. I read a goofy picture book to them which they liked and we played Mad Libs and generally had a good time. Oh, and we also had a fire drill! We got advance notice from the principal but probably would have been fine without it - the kids were really super helpful. :)

Once again we shared writing towards the end of the day. I asked them if they even wanted me to draw pictures again, to which they responded (quite loudly) that they did. So I drew ridiculous pictures and they begged to see them and then we laughed. After a few kids had gone I called on two girls to come up and share and they started reading their composition....called "Miss Barnes" (You can read it in the picture to the right. Click on it to make it bigger). I seriously almost cried! So when they finished I basically said, "You guys! That's so sweet. I seriously want to photocopy those and hang them on my wall." They then graciously told me they'd leave them out on their desks to I could! So I did. :) And I also wrote them each a little sticky note saying thanks for the sweet comments and put them inside their notebooks.

I kinda also want to submit these in my job applications. Haha ya think??

Draw Me A Picture

It's getting late so I'm going to try to make this quick!

Today I subbed in a different 4th grade. The class was really nice, and fun and well-behaved. They are seriously like the ideal sub job. If someone subbed for them on their first day subbing they get the totally wrong idea about the difficultly level of this job! I however, know how hard it can be so I really savor days like this.

The activities of the day were pretty typical but I tried to be laid back and make it easy and fun for them. I even talked to them for a while about how I wanted it to be fun when they have a substitute, but that also means that they need to be respectful to me and not take advantage of that. Honestly, they were pretty good about it.

Near the end of the day we took an extended period of time for some of the kids to share their writing with the class. I had a notepad and pen in my hand and I just started doodling pictures of the students' writing as they read it. Some kid asked me what I was doing so I showed them the drawing. They all thought this was hilarious, and so I ended up drawing a picture for every kid that shared their writing. They've all got them shoved in their writing notebooks and bookmarks! Ha! Tomorrow I've promised to let the rest share. Wonder what their teacher will think when she returns and keeps seeing odd little drawings in every one's notebooks? :)

Math Quiz Game Show

This afternoon was a bit wild and crazy, but it was fun. Shortly after I arrived for my half-day, the kids were on their way to recess and lunch. The teacher was actually still hanging around too because she only needed to be gone for the last hour or so of the day. She explained to me that she was going to stick around until then, but be pulling kids up to the library to read with her, and I would stay in the room and play a math game with the rest of them. Had a chance to visit with her during the lunch time, which was nice - I don't see this teacher as much as some others in the school and it's always good to get to know them - more likely they'll want me back if they know me personally! :)

Anyway, so once the kids got back I read a few chapters of their book (Gregor the Overlander), and then we started the game. It was kind of like Jeopardy in layout - 5 categories to choose from, 4 point values each, the teams chose the category and point value they wanted and I read the question. That team then got a minute or so to answer, if they got it right they got the points, but if they got it wrong, the next team got a chance to answer. We played this for about an hour. During that time, one kid's dad brought in cupcakes for the kid's birthday. So after we finished the game we passed out cupcakes, and since by this point they were totally hyper and loud and difficult to corral, we got their stuff together and went out to recess for the last bit of the day until the bell rang.

It was a loud day, a rowdy day, but it was Friday and I was having fun being a game show host and I didn't care so much! :)

Yeah for a full week of jobs and postings!

Firefighters!

I love days like this.

To preface, I actually turned down 3 or 4 jobs for today before finally taking the one I did: a kindergarten at a school I like but don't go to often. I still wasn't feeling that great last night when they kept calling me, and they were all for schools or grades I didn't love that much. But this morning when I got called again I finally decided to suck it up and go. I'm so glad I did, because not only will I have an extra day on the paycheck, but it was super easy and fun and the kids were so cute.

Right off the bat when I arrive I learn that the classes are getting visits from some firefighters today. Three firemen arrived and talked to the class about the gear the firefighters wear and one guy put it all on to show the kids what he looked and sounded like when he was in it. They talked to the kids a lot about not being afraid of the fireman if you're stuck in a fire, because even though he may look and sound weird or scary, he's there to help. Then they had the kids practice crawling low to the ground to escape a smoky room, talked to them about not playing with matches, and had them practice "stop, drop, and roll". After that we went out to the front of the school where the firetruck was parked and the fireman walked them all around the truck and showed them the different parts of the truck. The kids were amazed at the hoses and nozzles and lights and anything else the firefighters showed them. It was very fun.

One of the girls in the afternoon group actually did get scared of the firefighter when he started putting all the gear on and I had to spend much of the presentation right by her side whispering reassurances to her. However, once we got out to the firetruck she eventually left my side and was right up front with all the rest clambering to touch anything the fireman held out to them.

After the firefighter excitement we had snack, recess and free choice/art time.

Don't think I could have hand-picked a more enjoyable day. :)

My First Silly Band

Hooray! I am back to working today!

I was happy this morning to get called to my favorite school, for a teacher who I've subbed for frequently over the past few years, to a group of second graders who I've known since kindergarten! In fact, some of them were adamant that I had subbed in their class last year even though I'm pretty sure I hadn't. I guess it is a cool thing to say Miss Barnes has subbed in your class every year. :)

It was a lovely, delightful day.

Even had another teacher come down and ask me if I wanted to sub for her on Wednesday afternoon!

Yay.

I also discovered today the great popularity of silly bands! At least half of the kids had dozens and dozens of bands on their wrist and during free time they would take them off, show them and trade them with other kids. One girl gave me one. It is shaped like a fashionable boot and it is pinkish-purple. I put it on my wrist and she was very pleased to have been the one who gave it to me. The rest of the kids laughed when I exclaimed, "Now I have one just like all of you!"

3...2...1...Blastoff!

Well, it official - I am done with Super Saturdays for the summer! The last session was one of my favorites - rockets! It was also one of the most highly-anticipated sessions (seemed like every week some kid asked me when the "rocket week" was). I think we lived up their expectations.

We started today's class at the Foundation, as usual. We spent about 40 minutes building rockets. Each kid made 2 to 5 versions. Then we walked the block over to Riverfront Park. They have a nice big lawn area there were we set up the rocket launcher and rolled out a 100 ft. tape measure. After that I pretty much held the launcher at the angle the kids wanted to try, and blew up the 2-liter bottle over and over and over again! I was a little winded after an hour of this activity!

In case you don't know what I'm talking about now, I suppose I should describe the launcher in a little more detail. Basically it's a PVC pipe with a bicycle inner tube attached to one end. The other end of the inner tube is attached around the neck of an empty 2-liter pop bottle. The kids put their rocket on the free end of the pipe, and then stomp down on the 2-liter bottle. The air gets pushed out of the bottle, up the inner tube and pipe and propels their rocket into the air. Some of the rockets traveled over 130 ft across the lawn!

It was pretty simple for me (I was grateful to have the help of two assistants - shout out to my mom and Dani - as well as the parent of one of the students who stuck around and impressed (and challenged) the kids with his far-flying rocket!) The weather was nice, the kids had fun. No one got hit in the eye. Good week, good summer. I'm glad to be finished, but wouldn't mind doing it again if the opportunity arises.

Stayed tuned in September for my return to the world of subbing!

Whatever Floats Your Boat

Despite some doubt on my part for the ability of this activity to last the 2 hours allotted, all went well and the time flew!

Today, as you can see, we made balloon powered boats. Kids started with a milk carton some straws and a balloon and constructed a boat. Some eventually added multiple balloons and complicated add-ons, but we found that the ones with one balloon seemed to work the best. One the two girls in the class had the most reliable boat - one that traveled in a straight line from the front to the back of the "pool" with no assistance.

Last night I decided milk cartons were boring to look at, so I went to the store and bought a couple rolls of colored duct tape. Green because it's awesome, and for the Ducks, and orange so the Beavers don't feel left out. Most of the kids didn't seem to have a strong team allegiance, so they used both colors together.

All in all, it went pretty smoothly, despite the fact that we had to wait for everyone to finish building before we could travel outside to test...and then all go back in together to alter things. It was just me supervising the class today (as it has been from the start despite my wish for an assistant - she hasn't been able to make it yet!), and since the test pool was out back right by an alley that cars drive way too fast through (!) it was kinda important that I be out there when they were.

Next week - build your own board game. To me this seems like the most sedate of the sessions, maybe the least exciting, but I keep hearing kids talking about how they're signed up for it all excited-like! Who knew?

Stormin' the Castle

Today's Super Saturday featured....Catapults!

I have to say, this has been my favorite activity so far. Surprisingly, it was required less assistance from me, and I was able to spend more time walking around, talking to kids, seeing what they were doing, and taking pictures! There were a great variety of catapults (some more effective than others), but they all worked!

The building phase of today was NOISY! The wheels were a very tight fit on the dowels, and most of the kids found the most effective way to get the wheel on was to "hammer" the dowel onto the table. So for about 5 minutes we had a loud chorus of banging coming from our room.

We used marshmallows as our projectiles. At first the kids just launched their marshmallows to see how far they could go. For the last half-hour of the class though, I brought out the big bin of plastic cups and the kids worked together in pairs (mostly) to build walls of cups, then attacked their walls with an assault of marshmallows. I think they could have been entertained doing this for an extra hour! I got lots of great videos of the destruction too --> and that's a screen cap of one of them! :)

Set the Wheels in Motion

Today was the second Super Saturday! This week we make propeller-powered cars. The kids attached a propeller to a small motor, and then connected that to a 9V battery. Then we did lots and lots (and lots) of time trials! We set up a 30 ft course in the hallway and measured how long it took their creations to make it from start to finish.

This week went a lot smoother than last week, at least it felt like it to me! I was still running around like crazy trying to help 5 kids at once, and time the trials, but it was more orderly. The kids worked at their tables, and I broke the building into 2 sessions - first everyone built their car, then we added motors. There was generally less chaos and it was easier to get their attention. I still wish I had an assistant though. It would have been nice to put an assistant in charge of the stopwatch (my phone), so I could have focused on helping the kids who still needed it. But I'm multi-tasking girl, so I just did it all!

Oh, I did have one funny conversation with a kid this week. One of the boys said he remembered me from a day I subbed in his class - not from the school year that we just finished, but the year before that! He then went on to tell me, "Ya, you were there the day we got our yearbooks and I have your signature in mine!" :) And yes, you can read my blog about this day - it was June 4, 2009.

Once again, they all seemed to have a lot of fun! Next week is catapults...I may have to go searching for a helmet. :)

Full of Hot Air

I can't believe it's finally here, but today was the first day of Super Saturdays! As I mentioned in a previous blog, I'm teaching a series of 2-hour science classes at the Salem-Keizer Education Foundation this summer. The first class was called "Full of Hot Air" and we built balloon-powered cars.

There were 11 kids that showed up - 8 boys and 3 girls. Most of them had just finished 4th or 5th grade but there were a few older and younger. The kids were really eager to get started. I had all the supplies set out and I think I've learned that that's not a great plan for next week! I barely had a chance to tell them what we were doing and they were cutting stuff up and gluing stuff together!

Some of the kids got very inventive after trying their car with one balloon and finding it anti-climactic. I think by the end of the 2 hours most of the kids were powering their cars with 2 or 3 balloons, or as shown in the first picture - 4!

I set up a "racetrack" in the hallway before the class started by marking

off every foot with a short line and every yard with a long line. The kids used this space to try out their cars and see how far they could get them to travel. I few got theirs to go beyond the original 25 feet I had marked, so I had to add extra markings to the track!

And of course, some decided to race their creations at the end!

The room was a total mess when they left. I spent about 30 minutes cleaning it all up. Might have to do something about that next week. :)

They all seemed to have fun and none of them were terrors, so all in all I'd say it was a success. Next Week: propeller-powered cars.

Don't Forget to Look Behind You

Today was pretty good. The kids were busy, often loud, sometimes rowdy, but I was still able to corral them. "He/She started it" boy only uttered his phrase of choice twice today (within about 5 minutes of each other), and I'm happy to report I didn't hear him say it again! "I'm hot" boy only referenced his lovely-ness once! He did however, bring cupcakes for his birthday and nagged me all morning, asking, "Can we have the cupcakes now?!"

At the end of the day today we had "Fun Friday". I was in charge of the Capture the Flag game. Which basically meant I handed out red and yellow "flags" for the kids to wear to identify teams, and I stood outside and watched them....and I blew the whistle a few times. The best part of the day though was watching the yellow team win capture the flag! One kid from their team got over and grabbed the red team's flag (in this case, a cone) and got it to within about 3 feet of the boundary line before getting tagged out. Then the red team gathered around the cone to protect it from the too-near yellow team. However, when they were all gathered at one end and not paying attention, one clever-thinking boy from the yellow team crossed over the line at the other end and casually walked a wide loop around them until he was standing behind the whole red team, and just a few feet away from the cone. His team soon figured out what was going on and a bunch of them ran forward, spurring the red team into action and leaving a wide opening for the boy in the back to step forward, grab the cone and run the few strides over to his side, winning the game. Well done, yellow team, well done.

Time Flies

Yes I did sub on Friday, and yes this blog didn't appear until Sunday even thought it's going to be dated as Friday.

Confuse you yet?

I went away for the weekend so didn't get a chance to write this til Sunday, but I like the entries to be dated as the day I actually worked, so I changed the date.

Anyways, on Friday, I subbed in a 1/2 blend that I taught earlier this year. The kids were good and the day went pretty smoothly, and quickly. The teacher wasn't expecting to be gone though, so she'd arranged with another teacher to watch his class during her hour prep at the end of the day. Thankfully, the 5th graders were going to be meeting with their "buddy room" (another 1/2 blend) to read and play outside. I didn't do much except sit outside in the sun and watch the kids play. I was amazed to see some of the 5th graders who had been in my 1st grade class when I student taught at the same school! I could hardly believe how old they'd gotten! About ten minutes before the bell was going to ring to go home I took my newly-acquired class of 5th graders inside to get ready to go home. Except they'd already packed up all their stuff! So we played Heads Up 7up and we were all happy. :)

Lunchtime is Joke Time

Got called really late today - around 10.

I arrived at the school to find that the class was at PE, and when I went to pick them up I found out they had no idea their teacher was leaving. But they were really good, and it was actually a pretty fun day. We told jokes at lunch. They worked on unfinished work and read and went to the computer lab. I finished my book. And, I only worked 5 or so hours but I'll get paid for a full day! All in all, a pretty good day.

Some of the kids even remembered me from last year! I subbed in a second grade at this school last year for a half day - way back on October 16, 2008. They even remembered that I read them a dinosaur book that day! I never cease to be amazed at the random things kids will remember!

(Oh, and blog readers - go back to yesterday's post and read the end - I just remembered to add an important story that I'd forgotten yesterday!)

Happy 200th!

This is, drum roll please.......my 200th post to this blog!

I believe some celebration is in order!

Anyways, I am happy to report that today was an overwhelmingly pleasant day in 3rd grade! The kids were polite, they listened, and to top it off - they were fun! One of them was quite the jokester, but he actually knew when to cut it out. It was nice. I liked them so much that I let them play head-up 7-up for a while and I gave them an extra 10 minutes of recess at the end of the day. We'd run out of things to do, and it was so nice out, and they had been so good that we just went out and enjoyed it! Now I'm really hoping I can go back there again before the years over, because they surely love me now! :)

One of the activities we did today was watch a Bill Nye science video (on the solar system - made when Pluto was still a full-grown planet!) Thankfully 3rd graders are still young enough to think Bill Nye is funny and not stupid and outdated. At one point when Bill Nye was talking about the moon phases he spoke of a new moon - which solicited a few little gasps and giggles from the girls who marveled that, "It's just like Twilight: New Moon!"

Yes, even in 3rd grade.

Finally Friday!

So after the last few weeks of various challenging classrooms and stressful situations I was finally rewarded with a pleasant, easy day! Yay!

The class I was in today is a class I've subbed for several times already this year.  The kids know me well and seem to like me. :)

They've always been a pretty good class, but today was even better!  The two kids who were the most chatty or disruptive the last few times I've been there are apparently no longer in the class - moved I guess.  So the group was really pretty calm.  A couple hyper-ish kids, but half the time the stuff they were telling me was so funny I couldn't really be annoyed.

And it was a fun day - they had a "homework celebration" at the end of the day where everyone just got free time to play games.  I brought a few spatial puzzles with me - a wooden box with 6 pieces of various sizes that you have to get to fit inside the box, and two of those metal puzzles where you have to get a certain piece off of the rest of the puzzle.  They liked playing with those for a while although they didn't really have enough time to figure them out.  They were quite amazing that I could do the medal ones in like 30 seconds (I practiced last night).  Now, onto the weekend and two more weeks of school!

Puzzle Master

Alright, here I am - returned from my venture north to Vancouver - and it is time to blog about Friday's events!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was working in a bilingual third grade class on Friday.  They were a really sweet group and I enjoyed them.  It was also a fairly easy day for me.  We did a couple short activities in the morning before they had PE and music.  An hour later I picked them up and brought them back to class where we meet the counselor who was to give them a lesson in their room.  I sat at the desk and watched while he gave his lesson and tried to remember the kids' names.  I'd only been with them for about 2o minutes before this, so I was still trying to get a feel for the class and if there were any students I needed to keep my eyes on.  They weren't doing a great job paying attention, so I was a little unsure how that would influence my rest of my day with them.  They also kept coming up to me and asking if they could go to the bathroom, which I thought was weird as I was not the one teaching at the moment, so I had to keep telling them to sit down and that they needed to ask their counselor if they couldn't wait because he was the teacher now.  At one such moment I guess the counselor wanted to use me in some demonstration, but I was busy telling a girl to sit back down.  I just caught the end of his sentence; it was something like "...but she's distracted right now."  Oops! haha I need more warning than that!

Anyways, shortly before he left he lectured the class a little about how they need to be more respectful when they have a sub (which I thought was odd because they'd been nothing but great for me that morning.  Sure, they tested me a little - but that's completely expected, and as soon as I made it clear that I wasn't going to let them get away with doing whatever the heck they pleased, they all were really well-behaved.)  I took over and started the class on a game in the 15 minutes we had before lunch, and I noticed the counselor was still hanging around by the door observing (me? the students?)  I suppose he wanted to make sure I was really ok and they weren't walking all over me, but it did make me kind of nervous since I had no idea what he was doing. haha

The rest of the day was taken up by a couple short tests, some math games, and silent reading.  Then for the last 20 minutes of the day they had a "homework celebration" where everyone who had turned in all their homework from the week got to play games and have a treat (Cheetos).  All but one got to do this, and I mightily impressed some of the celebrating students with my ability to solve all the wooden logic puzzles.  Choruses of "Woooooow!"  "She did that?!" and "Whoa! How'd she figure that out?!" were heard all about the room.  I like to keep them impressed - helped though that the instructions were in the box and that none of them could figure out how to read them (no sense in pointing this out to them though!) ;)

Warning: Long Post

So after my great excitement Thursday on the return of our internet, it died on me again that evening! I was trying to figure out why Bobbie couldn't log onto our wireless network, and then everything just went kaput. Thankfully, earlier on Thursday when the internet was working I had gotten a job for Friday on the sub site for a 4th grade class in south Salem. They were pretty funny kids, and a very small group to boot (only 20 enrolled, 19 present that day)! So I've got lots of stories to tell! I even wrote some notes last night so I would not forget all that I was going to write come Saturday. Here we go....

We started the day by doing a Second Steps (problem solving) activity that they had started the previous day. They were working with partners to act out an emotion for the class. Then they would present it and the class would try to guess what their emotion was. Some of the funnier ones included "Fury" (two boys pretend shoving each other across the room), and "fear" (two boy "zombies" chasing another around the room and then removing his shoes while a kid from another group turned the lights on and off rapidly). The zombie group was quite proud of themselves and just BEGGED me to let them do their skit one more time before PE. They mostly wanted to do this because another boy volunteered the use of his hoodie for one of the zombies. This particular hoodie had a bizarre pattern all over it, but it's most distinguishing characteristic was that it zipped all the way up - I mean ALL the way up - to the top of the hood. The hood then covering the face had 2 eyes and a giant grinning tooth-filled mouth design on it. Apparently the eyes were made of a see-through material so you could still see where you were going. Odd stuff. I've never seen anything like it. So I relented and let them do their zombie play once more.

After PE we returned to class to do the next activities - one of which required the use of the overhead. It was at this time that I discovered the bulb in the overhead was burned out! I ended up having to write out the material from the overhead onto the white board. However, I knew that all the activities for after lunch were going to require the overhead as well. So while the kids were working I was coming up with back-up plans. Plan A - Kid volunteers to go to the library to tell the librarian the bulb is burned out (she's the one who replaces them). He goes, but she's not there. He leaves a note, but I don't hear anything back for a while. Onto Plan B - borrow overhead from class next door. So I wait until the kids' recess time (my lunch) to go next door and ask if we can borrow the overhead. The teacher says yes, so I cart the thing over to my room and proceed to move the broken on and plug in the new one. I get it all ready to go, flip the switch and.....nothing happens! By this time I've pretty sure I have an overhead curse! I try everything to get it to work - plugging it into a different outlet, moving it to another cart, but nothing works! Moving now to Plan C - go to office and ask them to make copies of the overheads so I can just give the kids hard copies. I get there, tell them my problem, and they do me one better - they make Plan A work by finding the librarian for me, and covering her class so she can help me replace the bulb! After that's all done, I've missed pretty much all of my lunch, so I scarf down my sandwich and some crackers and chug my Pepsi in about 5 minutes. Ugh.

Later in the afternoon we had some extra time and I did a Christmas Mad Libs with the class. And it was pretty funny, so I'll just type it here for you to read!

The Twelve Days of Christmas (italicized words provided by students)
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, an eagle in a peach tree. On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two stinky doves and a glue stick in a pear tree. On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, three French lions, two turtle doves, and a name tag in a pear tree. On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 800,000 weird papers, three French bugs and a cheese in a pear tree. On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five golden heads, four calling birds, three Chinese hens, two turtle doves, and a toilet in a pear tree.

They really loved the toilet part, as I'm sure you can imagine. The golden heads got quite a few laughs too.

After this the 3rd and 4th grades had "Fun Friday" where they can choose a room to go to to do some kind of activity. One was capture the flag, one was coloring, on was a movie, my room was quiet ball. Two girls from my class stayed and a bunch of kids from other classes came in. They all pretty much policed themselves so I didn't have to anything. Although I did have to step in once to break up an argument over whether or not they could sit on the couch when they were out. When Fun Friday was over that was the end of the day. The kids came back to get their stuff, and I was glad because the ones who'd gone to play capture the flag came back completely soaked! They all looked liked they'd taken a shower with their clothes on. It made me cold just looking at them!

Last-Minute Friday

Well, this blog is a little after the fact, but since I was out of town Friday night and Saturday visiting Dani, I did not have time to write an entry about my day subbing on Friday until now!

This day I got one of the latest calls I'd ever gotten - around 10:50. I'd spent the morning packing and getting ready for my weekend in Vancouver. I was totally not expecting a call by this point, but I guess I should learn to never think you've got this subbing thing figured out, because invariably something completely out of the ordinary happens!

So I scrambled around to change clothes, eat lunch and get all my stuff in the car since I was going to have to leave town right after I was done at the school. Thankfully, the school was one nearby and it was also a school with an earlier release time than some.

I got there and found out from the teacher the reason for the late call: apparently the teacher had wanted to go to some meeting/seminar thing that was that afternoon but didn't want to ask for a sub for the afternoon until one of the other teachers in the school heard about this and said that she should just have them call and see if they could get a sub. Well, they could, and it was me, so here I come strolling into the building at noon. The kids (2nd graders) are outside when I arrived, because this was the day the school was having some jog-a-thon sort of event. Of course it was raining steadily all day, so all the kids came back in completely soaked. The teacher next door told me that she was going to let all of her kids go change if they brought a change of clothes and then just kill time until lunch which was in about 15 minutes. So that was what we did as well. Lots of kids headed to the bathrooms to change, and others sat around and looked at books, or drew or visited. I just supervised...and periodically went over to the girls bathroom to ask to girls to get changed and come back and not be so loud. :) It wasn't long before lunch when I paraded them all up to the cafeteria and returned to the room to read my book (Graceling by Kristin Cashore- which I am still working on, and LOVING by the way).

Since it was raining, the kids had inside recess, which meant they returned to the room after their lunch and played with games. The recess duty people kept an eye on the rooms so I didn't have to be there, but I decided to hang around and visit with the students if any of them wanted to chat with me. Turns out on boy in particular wanted to play games with me. First he brought over a couple Rubik's cubes and wanted me to try to solve it. I manged to get one face all one color - which is the best I can do without instructions - and this had him and some of the other kids around amazed and prompted questions such as, "How'd you DO that?!" I enlightened them by stating, "I just turned it around and around until it looked like that." haha how else do you explain it though?? Then we played Uno and War and he beat me every time - which he was quite proud of....as he should be...because I'm pretty tough competition! haha

After recess the kids had to work on math workplaces which is one of the key components of the Bridges/Investigations math curriculum that all of the Salem-Keizer school district uses. So needless to say I have done them LOTS of time. Teachers generally like to have subs do workplaces, because usually the kids are pretty well trained on how to manage themselves during that time, and it's fairly simple for a sub to supervise. They were finishing up this particular round of stations, so the teacher wanted me to check their folders when they were done to makes sure they'd done all the parts and then let them have free time. It went pretty smoothly, after about 30 minutes most of the kids were done, and I had more of a chance to help a few that seemed really confused finish one of the stations. I also had one sweet little girl offer to help them, so of course I let her. Between the two of us we helped them understand the project and before time was up all of the kids had finished! Yay!

After the cleaned up we did another quick little math activity that I led, and then it was time to pack up and go home. I quickly wrote a letter to the teacher, and got my stuff together and raced out of there. Made it out of town by about 3:45. Traffic was horrible all through Portland and I was very relieved to finally arrive in Vancouver. Had a fun weekend with Dani even though it was quick. Today I had church and then spent the afternoon goofing around with Sarah. And tomorrow we start the madness that is subbing all over again! Only a 4-day week though as Friday is a Statewide Inservice Day. :)

Too cute for words!

This morning I got called at around 8:30 to head off ASAP to a school in south Salem. (Seems like I'm going to south Salem all the time doesn't it? I enjoy it - we'll see how long it lasts!) It was a morning job in a kindergarten class. I got there and the school had their building sub in the room in case I didn't get there before the kids (think I got brownie points for getting there so quick - I didn't bother telling anyone I live like 3 minutes away, because hey, even for living close I did get there quickly - I just get ready fast). But anywho, there was also an assistant in the room so she told me a couple things and then let me read over the plans. It was a pretty simple day for me.

The kids started arriving at 8:50 and in their cute little kindergarten voices, one after the other asked, "Where's my teacher*?" (*they actually used her name, but for the sake of being somewhat anonymous I'm gonna leave it out.) They actually adjusted really well to having me there instead. Often in kindergarten some kid(s) starts crying because their teacher is gone and they don't know me. But here they all just seemed perfectly happy to tell me all their stories and have me sit with them.

We did attendance and then a little writing, followed by something I've forgotten, then snack and recess, then math stations (playing with unifix cubes and pattern blocks), then story (I read the Kailey book) and then they went home. Nothing that was outstandingly amusing happened, but as a whole they were totally cute and REALLY well behaved for kindergarten! The assistant confirmed to me later that they had worked really hard on training them to walk down the halls and listen as well as they did. It was obvious - they were some of the best listeners, and quietest in the halls of all the classes I've ever subbed for. Top 5 easily.

So all in all, it was easy fun day for me hanging with the little ones!