Scrapperblog

Weather: 64 degrees, rainy and 74 today
Mood: Excited
Listening to: Quiet

I'm trying a new blog program called Qumana. My Windows Live Writer won't load and I don't like the way the pictures are handled at Typepad. I really miss WLW with its ability to put cute little frames around my pictures. This computer is really starting to bug me, but that's fodder for a whole other blog rant.

Today is the day of our fabulous field trip! We've been working on the curriculum and raising the money and now the day is here. Teachers love this field trip mainly because we don't get to do anything except observe. We do all the up front work and then the kids basically run the city. My job for today is to take the pictures. When we get back I'll write up an article for the school website and make up a cdrom of pics the yearbook group can use.

Afterwards my true reward awaits. If I can just make it through today I have a hair appointment up in the city tonight. I'm growing my hair longer, but I want to change up the color to a darker auburn. This may change depending on how I'm feeling when I get there, but I am really looking forward to some nice hair eventually. It's been (crossing myself) 10 weeks since my last coloring appointment.

Let's see... not much else was going on around here. We got our tie dyed tshirts back and Fave Kid was bent out of shape because he didn't have one. When I asked if he brought one he said he didn't so we waited until he was in the other room to put the rubber bands on. Later he said his mom gave him one, but I never saw it. Did he think the tie dye fairy came and did his while he wasn't looking?

Well, that was kind of underwhelming. The picture uploaded but the border is kind of blah. I've got to either get the WLW back or start putting my own bordes on these pics.

Until then, I'm out of here. I'm going to do some Blurfing (blog surfing) and answer some email and then it will be time to get the big boy up for school. Have a great day, everyone.

Putting on the Armor

Good morning! I'm wearing my red shirt and my makeup is on and my hair is styled. Yes, I'm wearing my armor because today will be a bit of a battle. We're having the meeting that I've been wishing for and dreading. We're having a big pow wow to discuss my Fave Kid and I'm just so tense that last night I was getting muscle cramps in my hands and feet. Crazy!

I spent much of the evening going over my data, trying to figure out how to present 23 weeks of data I'd entered into an Excel spreadsheet. I ended up settling on bar graphs which show the class average and this child's average on our classroom behavior charts. Each student earns a star in the morning and in the afternoon. They get the stars for bringing all their homework back and having good behavior throughout the day for a total of ten stars a week. My class average is 85%. Any given week a student may forget an assignment or have a behavior issue and they'll lose an a star or two a week. My Fave Kid's average is 23%. That means he's in trouble roughly 4 out of 5 days a week.

I also created a text document that listed the days he's been absent (3) and the days he'd been suspended (9 in school, 5 out of school) and the occurrence of "defiant" behavior as I'd noted it on his behavior charts. Defiant in this case means that he refuses to do his work or gives the "crazy" stare or growls at us or actually yells at us. I found that of the time he was actually in my class, he'd been noted to be "defiant" 60% of the time. Yes, it sounds like nit picking but I really want to go into the meeting with objective data because I want to sound assertive and professional, not hysterical and at the end of my rope. The special ed teacher made a graph showing the amount of time he's spent in the time out room (not suspended) and she found that he's currently on a ten-day streak of being in time out for part of every day for the last ten days. Please, let that streak end.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting to come out of this meeting. Whatever happens, things have to change for this child. He can't feel good coming to school every day just to get in trouble. I know he's a smart kid and that he's capable of doing the work. I think with the right conditions he could be so much happier and do so much better in school. The right conditions might me being in the SPED room full time or being in a special school for students like him, where he can get the full time help he needs. Of course I doubt he'll get either of these interventions, but a girl can hope.

Hope is not something that comes in my armor building kit, unfortunately.

The Weekend is Over?

Good morning, blog readers. Another weekend has come and gone. We had a pretty good time as a family this weekend. We took M to the video game place and did some shopping and got some things done around the house as well.

Saturday morning we had errands to run. DH had to stop by the tire place and get some tires for the boat trailer. So we stopped there to order the tires and then we headed to Dave and Buster's for lunch. The food was excellent, although overpriced. The three of us ate for about $30, plus we got $20 in game tokens to play with.

M was quite overwhelmed at the video game place. I thought he'd just jump all over all the games, but no, he just wanted to watch us play. He clung to us like a vine. The only game he really wanted to play was the Claw game. You know, the one where you move the crane claw over and snatch the prize you want. He saw it on an episode of Spongebob, I think. "Be the crane. Be the crane!" was his mantra. We did get lucky on the first try and got a little stuffed bear. M named him "Berry" and spent the rest of his time trying to win a baby brother for Berry. Whatever.

SkeeBall is also not M's game. He threw the ball everywhere except his own lane. After two tries, he ended up with four tickets. And I was trying to help him. That's now lame I am at this game. He did have fun, so I'm glad we all went.

After the video games, we picked up the tires and then went to Wally World to spend some gift certificates. DH got some movies, M got a movie and some clothes (Spongebob, of course) and I got some goodies for my laptop. A pair of stereo headphones for my webcam, with a microphone. It's supposed to work with voip and skype as well. And a new chill pad since the fans on the old one didn't work anymore. Yeah, I'm a geek mama.

On Sunday morning I decided to get some work done. We did some dishes and housecleaning in the morning, followed by grocery shopping at noon. After lunch I went into work for a couple of hours to get things organized at work. I wrote lesson plans for the next two weeks and found the top of my desk. Woo hoo! It is still there. I have some papers to grade, but I'll get to them this week.

I had to get home because I wanted to make spaghetti with the deerburger we had in the fridge. It was really good. It is so much leaner than cow meat and does have a flavor of its own. Even M liked it. He's always telling me that his babysitter is a better cook than me. Of course spaghetti is one of her specialties. And he actually liked my spaghetti tonight. I am flattered. Whatever.

This should be a fun week. We're having an assembly on Wednesday. The Egyptian animals are coming! We've been trying to book this group for two years. They will come and present a show about animals that lived in ancient Egyptian times. Fun, fun, fun.

Hope everyone has a great Monday and a wonderful week. :-)

Sleep Overs Are So Cool

When my girls were little we lived next door to poor little Lindsay Barnett. Lindsay would come over to spend the night and around midnight she'd want to go home. After a while her parents would just leave their back door open so Lindsay could go home at will. She'd even tell Jill to go home when Jill was spending the night with her. It was cute in a bizarre kind of way.

M and his best friend have been having the best time. They were so excited about the spend the night and could not wait to get started. They played army and spies. They watched a couple of movies, although "watched" is not terribly precise. They were in and out of the room while the movies were on. Spiderman 3 was a bigger hit, maybe because the idea of time travel and the space/time continuum just didn't mean anything to them.

I set up the tend in M's room and got them all ready for bed. They played chess (they don't really know how to play chess yet) and read some of M's books. I read them four stories. Then I tucked them in and turned out the light. B conked out first, around 10:30. And M was asleep by 10:45. And then I couldn't sleep so I puttered around online for a while, which was probably not such a good idea.

It's Digital Scrapbooking Day. And I've really not been too impressed with it. The sales are generous, but I feel like I already have so much digi stash that I don't need anything right now. Plus I'm having trouble channeling my inner life artist with the boys playing rough and tumble around me. Eh, maybe later.

I did find a couple of new blogs to read. If you want to read about a really cool lady who is lucky enough to be married to a cowboy, check out Pioneer Woman. I've always had a soft spot for a cowboy, which has not always been a good thing. Ree has an awesome series telling how she met her man and how she ended up living in the country, cooking calf nuts. Seriously.

The other blog I've become a loyal reader of is Boo Mama. Boo Mama and Big Mama also have a podcast that comes out whenever they feel like it. This blogger is hysterical in the most southern way you can imagine. My favorite post is the one she wrote about her son's teacher: "When a Pronoun Antecedent Makes a World of Difference." You will be glad you read this one.

School was interesting yesterday. My Fave Student was notable for his lack of notoriety. He didn't do any thing worth reporting. That in itself was interesting. My other Fave, the Runner Boy, has the wanderlust again. He spent time at home and doesn't really want to be back in school these days. His latest tactic is to be sick.

We had a scare the other day when one of our little guys started having a racing heart and chest pain. He's a little slip of a boy so it was kind of unusual. His parents took him to the doctor to get his heart looked at and it turned out to be muscle spasms. In his chest. Yikes.

Anyway, now heart trouble seems to be an epidemic in my room. The Runner Boy walked up to me and said, "I'm not feeling well. I think my heart is hurting." And then he pointed to an area to the right of his belly button. Um, yeah, we don't teach anatomy until sixth grade in our district. I had to stifle a giggle, wondering how his heart had meandered over towards his appendix.

But after sitting down for a little while, his heart apparently started to feel better. And he was totally recovered by the time the end of the day rolled around. Thank goodness.

I got some new Abby pictures this week. Jill sent me pics of Abby in her Halloween costume. I really need to scrap those. Maybe I'll do that before the boys get up and start demanding pancakes and bacon.

Hope everyone has as good a weekend as I'm having. :-)

My New Classroom

So this is my new classroom. This was what it looked like when I got there yesterday morning. Note the boxes in the corner. I went through all of them and put things away. Note the computer on my desk. I moved that. More about that later. Note the nice empty chalkboard. It won't look like that next month. And note the playground outside. I was just imagining Mikey through that window. That's the pre-school playground and my little guy will be having recess out there next month. I am so NOT in school mode yet.

I really overdid it.  What part of Major Surgery did I not remember? Yes, I didn't want to bother anyone so I moved the computers myself. And I hefted boxes onto high shelves. And generally pretended I was my normal self. Now I'm feeling it.

You know what happens when you have Major Surgery on your abdomen? You get weak, sissy stomach muscles. And I already have the bad disc in my back. I was relying on my stomach muscles to protect my back. Yep, I stressed my back. My stomach muscles are pretty achy too. That's not the worst of it. No, I won't go into the worst of it. I'm just really wiped out.  Arghh!!! Not much is going to get done today, unless it involves moving very slowly or sitting in a chair.

One more day

Woah, Nellie!  Get me off this roller coaster!  It's been a crazy start to the week and it doesn't help that my allergies are way out of control and my hormones are the same.  I'm envious that Donna is done with her year.  I wanna be done!  And I want it right now.

Yesterday.  I promised myself I was going to be nice and enjoy my kids and not stress about things.  Then my students showed up.  We had a nice morning, attending the musical program in the gym. My kids sang two songs and watched the other grades sing and play music.  K's mom brought her twins with her so they could watch their big brother sing.  These guys are about 2 years old and very mobile. They were everywhere. It was kind of cute when they wanted to sit with big brother or dance, but when they both ended up on stage with mom trying to wrangle them, one heading into the percussion section, the other running towards the audience, it just got painful to watch.  Maybe it's the Desperate Housewives mentality, but when is it funny, really, to show the world that you have no parenting skills at all? Is it too much to ask that a parent control their child or remove them?

Okay, on that note, let's talk about ball practice.  My kid is the worst baseball player I've ever seen.  He throws the ball at the ground. He knocks the ball off the tee.  He runs the bases in a random fashion, sometimes tagging the pitcher's mound to mix things up a little. And he takes water breaks haphazardly, often leaving the field as the ball rolls by him. Most of the time he was either drinking water or kicking dirt.  Welcome to T-Ball. 

Back to school- this afternoon is the Reading Rally where we recognize the gains our students have made in reading.  We play games and get the kids  excited about reading.  This year we're adding the 5th grade/faculty basketball game. I don't know why I agreed to do this. I'm supposed to wear a blue shirt and sports shoes. By golly, I'll look the part (no pictures, please). The secretary says water and oxygen will be provided for the staff.  I'll need both, plus a good psychiatrist and chiropractor when I'm done.  Due to my herniated disk, I can't run, I can't jump and I can't shoot the ball. I'll just stand where I am and pass, if that is okay. 

Are we done yet???