Summer Summer Summer

This is what teachers live for really. Summers spent relaxing - ha! Not really. We've been off of school for a week and all I've done is household repairs that can't wait; clean; go shopping for needed supplies; try to get ready for the boys to go to camp next week; try to catch up with some old friends and a ton of other things. Plus, I've already started my lesson planning for next year. I want to do some work on classroom management and really get my plan and the 1st two weeks nailed down.

I go to training for the "Core Knowledge" sequence at the end of June and then I will spend all the rest of summer getting my lesson plans ready. Who says teachers have leisurely summers?????

I took a new job rather unexpectedly at the end of April. I had been teaching high school special education and I did something different every hour. I taught a pull out freshmen language arts class; team taught biology; taught pull out reading; team taught language arts and staffed the "academic center" (kind of like a tutoring room sort of). I am highly qualified in English so I'm not too sure how the biology thing happened. My co-teacher and I were an awesome team though and I'll miss her.

At my new school I'm teaching plain old 5th grade. But I'm extremely excited as I will take my two munchkins with me. Plus, the school is smaller and has excellent academics. But I will have my students all day vs. having them for only an hour or two. So the dynamics will be very interesting -- but very exciting:)

The Wonders of Webkinz

Some parents are not happy with Webkinz. It takes up a lot of time, it promotes an artificial community, it costs money. Those are just a few of the complaints I've heard about.

But, for my family, Webkinz has been great fun. My youngest son is just beginning to read. So it isn't unusual for my older son to help my younger one and I help both of them from time to time. They play with each other, send each other gifts and have fun. My younger son has also made a friend online and I'm happy because their chat is moderated by the program so they can only respond from scripted answers. I don't mind them making friends online when I know that no matter who is on the other end my child is safe.

So I like Webkinz and I plan on buying my kids some more pets. Will it still hold their attention in a year? Maybe not but it is drawing us together for now and that has to count for something.

Well, what now?

So today I'm thinking about so many things. But I don't know where to start. So I'll start with this....

I love to research my family history. I have gobs of information on both of my parents' families. So I like to read a lot of info about it. I discovered that there are several royal families who claim to be decsended from Adam. Really??? How could any royal family claim a line like that? And furthermore, they all come from the House of David so they are also Jewish. HA....

Pretty crazy. But no more crazy than realizing that if you went back to 1500 you would be decsended from something like a million people.

And these are the kinds of crazy things I think about!