Cake Pops!

Today was a very different day for me. I did not actually get called to work, although I spent most of the day at school.

I decided to make cake pops for the school that I've subbed at most this year. I made this little husky dog cake pops and put them in the staff room with a sign that said "Thanks for another great year" essentially.

Then I went up to one of the first grade classes and volunteered for the rest of the day. I filed, I lead the class in a few activities, I helped supervise at recess, I took a few classes from one place to another, etc.

It was funny when I went into the cafeteria with the other teachers to pick up their students. All of the classes seemed a little confused as they saw their teachers and couldn't figure out who I was there for. A whole bunch of kids asked me I was there for their class anyway.

Basically it was just a fun day of hanging out with some of the kids I've gotten to know well this year. I'm going to miss them this summer!

And with that, I believe another year of subbing is done. Monday and Tuesday are the last days of school for kids in Salem-Keizer (Monday is the last for students who attend one of the schools scheduled for remodel this summer). I'll probably be back to posting here at the beginning of August when I go to the infamous substitute inservice! Until then!

Kid Pix and More Boxes

Well, I'm slow to write this (it's actually Sunday). But I have excuses!

You see, I had my week all planned out.

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get called to sub since it's the last full week of school and I usually don't. So I was going to do some errands and some projects and some homework and keep busy and such. Thursday was going to be a particularly busy day (more on that in my next post).

But then I DID get called to work!

I'm as surprised as you!

So I went to the school I really like and subbed in the library. I had a grand total of 3 classes for 30 minutes each, and they each got free time in the computer lab. During the rest of the day I went around to various teachers' classroom and did odd jobs for them. In one room I re-filed a bunch of stuff. In another room I clean out toy boxes and sorted out the toys. In another room I packed boxes of books. (haha sound familiar?!)

I had lunch with the first grade teachers and it was very interesting. The school was having a BBQ for lunch today and lots of parents were coming to it too. Well, apparently they have a service elevator from the cafeteria to the outside level (I didn't know this until today!), and the elevator got stuck with all the hamburgers and hot dogs in it! It was a mess! The 1st grade lunch got delayed by 30-45 minutes as they waited for the elevator repair person to arrive and/or tried to get the food out on their own. The next 2 lunch times got delayed as well. It was pretty chaotic for a while there and I just tried to stay out of everyone's way. That was probably the only time of the day I didn't have something to do because I didn't want to bug anyone by asking if they had any jobs for me. Eventually it all got fixed, the teachers and students got back to their rooms and I found some more work for myself.

Books and Boxes and Me

Today was probably the oddest day of subbing I've had for a while!

Technically I was subbing for the LRC teacher, but apparently they'd finished meeting with their groups yesterday, so there were no groups for me to work with. Instead, I was was supposed to go to the library and help box up books. (They have to box up the entire library because the school is one of the ones getting remodeled this summer due to the bond that passed a year or so ago.)

At the same time they were also having a book giveaway in the library today. I eventually learned the books were purchased by the parents' club and one of the teachers was kind of in charge of it, but obviously, she couldn't be in there to run it all day since she was with her class. So I sort of ran that too. I helped kids pick books, and straightened out the books on the tables after ever class left and replenished the supply from the extra boxes under the tables. Every class came in for 15 minutes except the 3rd graders because they were on a field trip.

When I wasn't occupied with that I was packing, packing, packing! I was supposed to meet with two kids in the LRC right after my lunch, but the first one was busy in his class and the second was absent. So I went back to my boxes. By the end of the day I had packed 40 1/2 boxes (they were a little bigger than the box for a ream of paper). Then I had to move them over the the corner of the room and stack them up. It was quite an impressive collection.

I think I'm going to be sore tomorrow.

Short Day

Well, after a long weekend and then a few days of no work, I grabbed another sub day for this morning.

I subbed for a first grade at a school I don't go to often. The teacher was actually in the building and was pulling kids out to test them. During this time I had the rest of the class. I read a book and started them on a writing project, then I met with two reading groups. We read a book and played contraction BINGO. After this the teacher came back and I went next door to another classroom. I'm not sure if they were first grade too or second grade. She had me take a few kids out to the pod area and have them take a math test. I was there to answer questions if they had any but basically I just sat there.

After a while of doing this it was the students' lunch time, and still an hour or so until I had to leave. I went back to the first teacher's room and she had me correct a few math papers and then I pretty much watched the kids while they ate lunch. Pretty simple day!

Leg Hug!

Let's see...where to begin?

I was subbing in a different first grade class today and it was a little bit crazy.

After all, there are only 11 days left of school and this weekend is a four day weekend due to tomorrow's furlough day and Memorial Day on Monday.

The teacher left me REALLY detailed lesson plans - I think it was four pages and I only had the kids until 1:45 because they had PE and music at the end of the day and got dismissed from music. I carried that packet around all day and was constantly reading it to remember what I was doing. Even then, I forgot a couple things!

Oddly, even though I've not subbed in this class yet this year, nor did I sub in the kindergarten at this school last year, I knew a few of the kids already! Two went to kindergarten at other schools were I'd subbed in their classes, one was in a Head Start preschool class I subbed for 3 years ago, and another was in a different first grade class at the beginning of the year. I managed to learn the rest of their names pretty quickly (although I did have some trouble with 5 C/K names that all had 2 syllables).

I did not read Earthquack! again today, but I did read Piggie Pie! And now it's official, my Piggie Pie! book is falling apart - a page fell out today when I was reading it!

Lastly, my final story is the inspiration for today's title. During virtually every carpet time one of the girls I knew from last year was my best buddy. She sat right next to my chair and kept reaching out and hugging my right leg. Sometimes she'd just sit there with her arms around my leg and every so often hug it tight and say, "I'm never gonna let you go!" (In a sweet, "I really like you" sort of way, not a menacing one). Once she decided she was going to wrap her legs around my leg too, but I stopped her at that. She then settled for playing with my sparkly shoes and admiring my sparkly fingernails.

Day of Ailments and "Qwakes"

Today was busy, busy, busy!

First off, there were lots of ailments today! Here's a sampling:

"My head hurts."
"My stomach hurts."

"My arm itches."

"My leg hurts."

"My tooth hurts."

"My cut is bleeding."

"My knee hurts."

"My throat hurts."

These were followed by requests for band-aids, and trips to the office for ice packs, itch medicine, and cough drops. Many were denied. I do believe many requests were simply fabricated. Seriously, every 10 minutes or so someone was coming up to me with a complaint or an owie. Mostly I just responded with, "Oh, I'm sorry!" and asked them to go back to work. First graders are too dramatic with their injuries.

Late in the day, were about to take a recess break. It hadn't been raining for a while and I thought maybe we could actually go outside. Well, after I get them cleaned up I look outside and see a slightly ominous cloud in the distance. I decided not to risk it and let them play inside. Not 3 minutes later it starts pouring down rain so hard the noise of it got ever one's attention. Turned out it was a good decision to stay inside!

Lastly, at the end of the day I read the class a story I had been teasing about all day. They were eager to hear it because I told them it was funny and that it had some kid's name in it from their classroom. The book was called Earthquack! and it's an adaptation of Chicken Little. The main character in this one is named Chucky Ducky and instead of thinking the sky is falling, he thinks "the earth is crumbling!" and proclaims often, "It's a quake!" I read it Chucky Ducky's voice kind of like this: "The earth is cwumbling! It's a qwake!" After about a page or so of this I hear a couple girls comment to each other that Chucky Ducky is "so cute! And his voice is so cute too!" I think it's pretty adorable that they don't really realize it's just Miss Barnes making up voices and they really think that's his true, actual voice. As the kids were leaving the room after the bell rang I heard many of them repeating to each other, "The earth is cwumbling! It's a qwake!" :)

I Lose, Again

Back to the LRC today!

Seems I do this job in spurts, doesn't it?

Anyway, today was pretty normal. I helped kids with math and reading and writing in groups of 1, 2, or 3 and sometimes I let them stop 5 minutes early and play with the toys in the room.

I also got to play another card game with one of the older boys. We played Magic again, and despite me remembering some of what to do, he hasn't really taught me any strategies so I think I basically put my creature cards out there for him to destroy a turn or so later. There's some sort of attacking involved, but I never really got the lesson on that, so I pretty much just slowing lost my points. Then we played some other similar game. I can't remember what it was called. It wasn't Pokemon, but something like that I think. Partway through our game another boy came in to work on some writing and he knew the game. He looked at my cards while the one I was playing against was on the phone with his mom. He told me I had a good card. (Go figure!) However, we didn't finish this game as my opponent had to leave shortly after that. I will never realize my full potential at Magic card games! Perhaps I should read up on the rules before I sub for LRC again? :)