Winter Blues

It is not a big secret that the winter seems to suck the life out of me. I’m writing this with what I think it a sinus infection brewing. I can’t seem to shake the sinus issues I have been having this winter. I think it is a bad combination of weather, germy kids at school, and my general tendencies to end up with something every winter.

I’ve spent my weekend working through a codeSpark Ignite training, which they offered for free this weekend. It is regularly $250, so I felt like I got quite the steal. I’ve finished that and now I need to get my lesson plans together. It’s all together in my head, but I just need to get it on paper.

I also need to do laundry and start thinking about what to pack for this weekend. I’m going to be going home for my birthday, as long as the weather cooperates. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and going out to eat a few times for my birthday.

We have STEM night coming up at school on the 31st, so I have been planning for that. I’m looking forward to seeing the kids and having fun with the activities that evening.

I’m really mostly looking forward to a full week of school. With all of the weather, there hasn’t been as much time in school as we need. I’m looking forward to seeing my Monday classes tomorrow. I haven’t seen them in at least two weeks because of the weather.

I’ve mostly been having a lazy weekend. I did do some cooking today, if you want to call it that. It was essentially throwing the stuff in the pot for Instant Pot spaghetti and meatballs, which I feel like I finally have the recipe for that right. Some of the noodles were stuck together and not as cooked as I liked, but all in all this was so good in comparison to when I have made it before. It certainly wasn’t bad when I have made it before, but this one was about as close to perfect as I will get it.

We have gotten quite a few new books in at the library, so I’m excited to have kids reading. They have been so excited to see some of the new books that have come in and they are ready to read. I have limited the kids to one new book a piece. I was glad they came in during the middle of the week, since my kids later in the week often complain that “all the good books get taken by the Monday and Tuesday kids”.

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In addition to working through the codeSpark ignite curriculum, I have completed the Kahoot! certification curriculum. Super easy and it was good timing since I am going to include Kahoot! in my lesson plans this week. I have noticed that our kids have a strong weakness with ABC order, so I am going to use Kahoot! to make it fun. Hopefully, it works because we really need these skills for when our students are using reference books. We are tested on reference skills in our state standardized tests, so we need to tighten up in this area.

This week we covered Martin Luther King since we had celebrated his birthday Monday. I was kinda surprised at how little some of my students knew. I also felt really inadequate at times. I’m a white lady trying to discuss racial issues with a mix of white, black, and brown students. I just hope I was able to do a good job in explaining to them some of the issues that went on during the time period and some that occur now, without getting too political when discussing the modern day happenings. One of my second graders apologized because he kept asking so many questions when we were talking about some of the events from the story that we read. I told him not to apologize because if he doesn’t ask questions, how will he know? I’m glad that I am able to encourage an environment where they feel comfortable in asking questions.

When we read the story, we also talked about some of the things that Martin Luther King was. We mainly focused on using adjectives for this. One of my first graders told me that he was a good speaker. I told them that another word for a speaker is an orator. My vocabulary is large (courtesy of my degree in English) and it seems that I slide a big word into a conversation at least once a day. They were excited to tell their teacher their new word when she picked them up. I must admit that I did a little coaching on that one, but hopefully, they will remember it. One of my students told me that Dr. King followed the Wildcat Ways, which are our core values at school. Of course I had to write that one down!