A Day in Philadelphia

 

In light of it being Spring break week, Dad decided we were going to spend the day in Philadelphia. A couple of months ago, he had gone to Philadelphia for jury duty, so, at that time,  he was able to learn his way around there (for the most part ). Believe it or not, we had NEVER seen the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, or anything else in Philadelphia (besides the Philadelphia zoo and the Franklin Institute, of course….which EBA student hasn’t been to that place? ). Anywho, he thought it would be a neat experience for us to go there. We entered Philadephia by train which was much easier and relaxing than trying to drive there ourselves.  We had a GORGEOUS day to walk around and go sight-seeing. Make sure you check out all my pictures….I went a little "snap happy" which I am sure you all find sooooo hard to believe!  

Easter Weekend

 

We had a fun weekend filled with relaxing times at Grandma’s house, photo shoots on the way home from Grandma’s house, Mom and I singing in the choir, Andy playing in the handbell choir, going out to eat at Bob Evans, making our own ice cream sundaes, listening to Alayna play the piano, having another fun photo shoot with my family, etc. (You just have to see the pictures ) However, sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in all of this fun stuff, that we lose sight of the true meaning of Easter, which the choir sang about this morning….

 

"Alive! Alive! King Jesus is alive! The grave COULD NOT DEFEAT Him, we will SHOUT the news to the sky!!!!………..Forever more He reigneth on high!! King Jesus is ALIVE!!" 

 

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter too!!

Feeling the Love…..Finally!!!

 

For those of you who read my blog entitled "Rejection Hurts" about my woes of trying to get a credit card, I am happy to report that I have FINALLY succeeded!!!  After getting lots of advice, I decided to try out applying to my bank again, but this time I put my Dad as a co-applicant. I am guessing because he already has a credit card with them, and they know his name and credit history , they were more willing to give BOTH of us a credit card, instead of just me. So when I entered the house this evening, saw that piece of mail and felt the thickness of it, I had a feeling it was going to be good news. I was so used to being rejected that I still had to quickly open it up to make sure it wasn’t just advertisements or other disappointing stuff such as that. I was ecstatic to, indeed, find two credit cards awaiting me!!! Now, I just have to call to activate the card, and then I can start shopping!!!!  What a perfect week to get a credit card seeing how it’s Spring break and I have lots of time to shop!!! I think the "rejection pains" have finally left me now, and maybe buying stuff with my new credit card will make me forget all my past woes.  Uh, oh, I better be careful….don’t want to become one of these reckless credit card users who spend, spend, spend and get too far into debt!  I hope that with a credit card in hand, my "thrifty days" won’t end . Somehow, I doubt it….my parents have trained me well.  

 

But, anyway, I just want to say thanks to all of you who offered advice and "felt my pain" while it lasted!! I sure appreciate it!!

Field Trip Countdown

 

This whole school year has been a learning process for me.  However, one thing I should know by now is that kindergarteners don’t have much concept of time….they are getting there….but they aren’t quite there yet! Last Friday, one of my students asked me when we were going to have our next field trip. I then proceeded to tell the class that NEXT MONTH we will have a picnic at a park, go on a hike in the woods at this park, and THEN go to Miss Follett’s house for dessert (this park is really close to my house). Well, you should have seen these kids’ faces light up and their eyes pop out of their head.  Of course, for the rest of the day they could talk of little else, and when they got home I am sure their parents got an earful.  I hoped that they would forget about it over the weekend, but, of course, that wasn’t going to happen….duh!!! For the first few minutes of our day, I was bombarded with questions about this field trip, what we were going to do, what we were going to wear etc. However, this field trip isn’t until April 16  I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being asked for the next 30 days or so "Is today our field trip?" every single day. So my brain went to work trying to figure out a way to correct this problem I had created.  I remembered something that I had made for student teaching last year during our Spring theme. It was a green poster board with yellow flowers all over it. It had been meant for one year olds to develop fine motor skills as they pulled off the Velcro flowers, but I thought….hmmmmmmm…why not use this as a field trip countdown?? So yesterday, this poster was mounted on the wall in the back corner of the classroom. I am hoping that this will help the children visibly see how many days are left until the field trip, and they won’t pester their parents or me about it as much anymore  Hey, I am glad they are excited about this field trip though!! I just wish I had been more "wise" and not mentioned it till the day before or even the day of the field trip . Oh, well, you live and learn!! As you can see from the picture, two flowers have already been taken off and only white Velcro remains. The countdown has officially begun!!

 

A is for Ant; B is for Butterfly

 

I always liked watching ants scurrying about outside when I was younger, and I was always curious to see what the INSIDE of an ant hill looked like. These ants would disappear into this little black hole, and the rest would be left to my imagination as to what went on down there. So when I was ordering school stuff in the catalog at the beginning of the year, I came across an ant farm in the science section, and I knew I HAD to get it. I was so excited when I finally sent away for the ants by mail (for the children’s sake of course ). I made sure the ant farm was all ready, the sand was put in etc. Well, when these HUGE and UGLY ants arrived by mail in this little tube, I was a little grossed out and got the "heeby jeebies." I had to put these ants in the refrigerator for about 2 minutes so they would calm down, and I’d be able to dump them into the ant farm without them crawling all over the place…..not a pleasant thought . So I got them into the ant farm with hardly any trouble. The instructions said to put them in a dark place, so they could have time to adjust to their new home and start building tunnels. So I did just that. The next morning I arrived, wildly anticipating seeing tunnels from one end of the farm to the other. Well, needless to say, I was rather disappointed to see that NOTHING had happened…not even a piece of sand had seemed to move overnight . Every day I would come into the classroom, hope building up inside me, only to have it crushed when I saw nothing was happening. Not only was I disappointed, but my children were like "Why aren’t the ants building tunnels?" I would have to admit that I had no idea. One of the students would come to the conclusion, "Maybe they are too tired to build tunnels!" and we would basically just leave it at that . I finally went on this website to see what could possibly be the issue with these stubborn ants of mine. Their suggestion was instead of just putting regular water in there, that I should add some sugar to it to encourage them to start digging tunnels in sugary sand instead of regular sand, I guess.  Well, lo and behold, it eventually worked! I was overcome with excitement when I saw this little tunnel being formed!! This was about 3 weeks after the ants had arrived so I had begun to lose hope. So for a time, all went well. I was happy, the ants were happy, the children were happy….we were all happy . Then one day I entered the classroom and went to check on my ants like I always did. My eyes widened and my mouth gaped open when I discovered that there were at least 50 tiny ants scurrying in and out of the ant farm, up and down the file cabinet that the ant farm was on, and all over the floor.  Apparently, my room has ant infestation issues  See, the ant farm was especially made for rather LARGE ants…not these tiny little "cute" ants. So they were free to roam in and out of the farm as they pleased, annoying MY ants. So, I grabbed the tissue box and started squishing these little squirmy creatures  I know there are a lot worse things in life, but this was pretty hard for me as the ants would crawl up my hand and arm if I wasn’t successful trapping them in the tissue. Finally, my trash can was overflowing with ant guts and tissues  and STILL they appeared from seemingly nowhere. What to do? Sooooo I went into the utility room and got the handy dandy ant killer spray. I went crazy spraying that stuff all around the bottom of the file cabinet and even around the ant farm. I was hoping the fumes wouldn’t kill the ants I actually WANTED. Well, thankfully, it seemed to work. The ants I DIDN’T want either died or went away never to return (I hope ) The ants I WANTED stayed strong admist this horrible experience  So after that fiasco was over, my ants continued to make tunnels and make me happy. This process all started a couple of months ago. They have survived lots of neglect (on my part…oops) for many months. Now, they are starting to die.  The corner of the ant farm is filling up with curled up, shrivelled up ants  Apparently, ants believe in burying their own cause the one day we would see the ant laying there, and the next day he would be covered with sand. At the moment, I think there may only be 2 or 3 ants alive admist the initial 20. So it is time to move on to something else. After this WONDERFUL experience, I go to the next experience with some fear and trepidation. As you can see from the title, our next experience will be with butterflies….caterpillars initally of course  I gave the children a choice. I gave them the choice of "Ladybug Land" or "Butterly Pavillion". The vote was unanimously "Butterfly Pavillion." So after spring break, I will be sending away for these darling little caterpillars. Can’t wait!  Have any of you ever done this type of experience before? Any pieces of advice would be most helpful and appreciated!!  

 The Ant Farm

Our Next Experiment

The Brochure

 

The other day my mom took a bunch of pictures of my children and I in the classroom reading books and having phonics review. You can view these pictures in my photo section, if you haven’t already . The whole purpose of that photo shoot was to get a picture to put on a brochure for potential kindergarten students next year. I can’t believe it is time already to be thinking about NEXT year.  Time is just flying by fast!! Next month, next year’s potential students will get to visit the classroom and get to "explore" kindergarten for a couple of hours. It should be fun!! I can’t wait to hear what my current students are going to "warn" my future students about "kindergarten life"!

 

LVBC Youth Group Independent Baptist Student Convention Program

 

What a nice LONG title for a short little blog entry!  Last night’s program went very well. The only down side for our family was that Andy was sick so we couldn’t see him do the trumpet solo or the senior guys sing in their quartet.  However, I was pretty impressed with how well everyone did. It makes me feel so old at times when looking at the youth group! To think that the seniors this year were in 8th grade when I graduated.  Wow! It was neat to see teens getting involved and doing new and different things. I just wish Andy would have been there and then I really would have been going wild with sisterly pride.  I better stop now or Andy will start throwing pens at me again when he reads this.  

Box Top Icecream Party

 

This afternoon the elementary children had a box top icrecream party. There had been a competition from the beginning of the year how many box tops each team could bring in. The teams were split up by grades (K-3 and 4-6). It was a close competition from the beginning. At first, it looked like the K-3 grade won by 25 box tops, but then another bag was discovered for the other team which contained 24 box tops!! So because the 4-6th grade only lost by one box top, they were able to participate in the icecream party today. However, they didn’t get as many toppings as the K – 3rd grade to make it a little more special for the winning team.  With the whole school collecting, we have collected 3,409 box tops in all. Each box top is worth 10 cents, so that means we have earned $340.90 for the school!!!!

 

In case you don’t kow what a box top is, here is a picture! You can find these on basically every General Mills products. Start collecting for next year!!!