Ho, Ho, Holidays

Argh, so I know it's been a while since I last posted. Time has been getting away from me lately...quite a bit more than it already had been. As if working full-time as a teacher, taking two graduate courses at the university, and being involved in a plethora of activities on my work job campus (i.e. being Technology Facilitator, being on School Site Council and our Instructional Leadership Team, and being Waterford Coordinator) wasn't enough, I have gone back to tutoring part-time for a tutoring agency, working an additional 10-15 hours per week. Add to that the stresses, challenges and intricacies of being a special education teacher and you get an idea of what life has been like for me the last few weeks.

So to say that I have been busy would be quite the understatement. But I did want to post something - especially with the holidays coming up and all the hustle and bustle that brings with it!

Christmas is my most favorite holiday! Not only do I get two weeks off from the little "angels" I teach, but it also means that I get to spend some much needed time with my family. My mother's side of the family has a tradition of getting together every Christmas Eve and having a nice dinner. Our Christmas Eve is spent entertaining the younger kids, eating my mother's yummy meatballs and lasagna, and exchanging gifts with my mother, sister, and grandmother.

Here are some photos from Christmases past...

A Christmas gift from my mother, wrapped like a teacher's desk - ruler, post-its, apple and all!

My Christmas break this year will be spent doing a little less relaxing and a bit more working. Although I am off from work, my tutoring continues throughout break. Boo.

Anyway, I've been getting into the Christmas mood at work, as well. We started Christmas decorating in mid-November...before Thanksgiving even hit. Here are some photos of crafts and holiday decor that has been seen strewn all over my classroom...

I will try and post some of our Christmas crafts during the next week. My students are getting so excited about Christmas! We are doing a Secret Santa gift exchange and even having our PTA dad come in, dressed as Santa, for our Christmas party. I'm probably just as exited as my kiddos!

Until then friends!

The Aftermath

I know, I know...I'm behind on my posting schedule but I swear I have a legitimate excuse. I've been up to my eyeballs busy with parent-teacher conferences, field trips, classroom Halloween party plans, and getting sick. 

Our kindergarten and transitional kindergarten (TK) classrooms have an annual Halloween parade and this year we actually had it on Halloween...rather than the Friday after or the Friday before. Most of my students showed up - I had one stay home because he does not celebrate it, and another student was sick. I loved seeing my students so excited at getting the opportunity to walk around and parade with their kindergarten peers. 

I even dressed up. Can you guess what I was? (I apologize for the picture quality - the picture was taken with a cell phone!) 

My class got to go over to one of my colleagues classroom's and spent an hour participating in Halloween activities; they kids were making popcorn hands, cereal necklaces and bracelets, decorating Halloween cookies, and making ghost pops. My aide also had a station where the general education students could make ghosts out of paper plates...and that turned out to be a hit.

After that, my students came back to our classroom and our parent volunteers showed up for our classroom pizza party. The students had fun eating pizza, enjoying Halloween treats, and grooving to the Halloween music we had playing on my iPhone. 

After our party, the parents decided to take their kids home (because we had a short dismissal day), and so I had no students by 1:00. My aides helped clean up the classroom and put away all the Halloween decorations we had strewn up. (I TOTALLY forgot to take pictures for y'all to see!) Here is just one of the things we had up...

For Halloween Night, I ended up staying home with a date and my dog. Not wanting to waste my Halloween spirit, I had my dog dress up and we took her for a walk for all to see. She was quite popular as a bee.

Since Halloween, I haven't had much down time. We had a field trip to the farm yesterday and although I am sick, I still went. (I didn't trust my kids on their first field trip with a substitute.) That probably was not the smartest thing for my health, as I woke up this morning feeling worse than I did yesterday.

However, I don't have much time to be sick - I've also been planning our class reunion, which is this coming week. I invited all our students from my class last year to come back to our school for a reunion and pizza party. I can't wait to see all my kiddos from last year and see how they are doing in their first grade classrooms! I have so much planning and prepping though before our reunion on Friday.

So, for now...I leave you with a picture from last Halloween and my older sister's Halloween party. Note my costume (I'm big on recycling) and my younger sister's make-up - I did it! Until next time...