survivor

This is not a post about a TV show. This is a post to inform you, my faithful readers, that I survived my first 1st grade art project. A project that involved paint. Paint that stains. Kids with paint always scares me, but I'm happy to report we only ended up with four or five spots on the carpet, none on the teacher's clothes! After careful demonstration by yours truly, they set out painting their harvest scenes. Seeing them all lined up made me want to break out in a chorus of "I'd like to teach the world to paint in perfect harmony. . ." May I just say, I have a class full of little Monets and Renoirs. Our hallway bulletin board is going to look great despite the fact that one of the suns has a big ol' spot of blue on it. We'll get there. We've just got to make our little scarecrows to put on them first and in order to do that, the teacher needs to dig through her endless supply of scrapbook papers.

I have also survived my first trip to the computer lab with ten little first graders. My dear sweet friend Glenda reminded me of a website called spellingcity.com - wherein teachers/parents can type in the spelling list and then the kids can do tests, play games, and have all sorts of fun. There is no computer teacher at our school, but we have a lab and I think we need to use it. The kids were all having a blast today with the unscramble game. I overheard one of the girls say, "First grade is so much better than kindergarten. We get to do cool stuff like play on computers!"

I've survived the first fire drill of the year. You never quite know what to anticipate when that bell goes off. When I was teaching fifth grade a few years back, there were certain times the local fire department would be there hiding and they'd hijack kids who were on their way out of the building - just to make sure the teachers were really keeping track of all the kids. That never happened to me, but it still freaks me out thinking about it.

I've survived being called Mom and Mrs. Pitzer (the kindergarten teacher) all in the same day. Funny thing is, I don't look a thing like either one of them.

I survived the excitement of Zero the Hero coming on the 10th day. It was too bad he missed us when we were outside at recess, but he left us envelopes of goodies for math. And maybe we'll get to see him on day 20.

This week I've survived girls splashing water all over the bathroom, great big hair bows, non-stop thumb sucking, shoestrings that won't stay tied, ants in a lunchbox, and chickalada sauce. Ya, the same kid that called me mom got a little confused with his Mexican dishes. We all know he meant enchilada sauce, but now it's all about the chickaladas.