The View from Here

Too Much

What is wrong with people?

Honestly.

Christmas brings out the best and worst.

This week I’ve seen some of the latter and I don’t like it.

First off, let me just say that I’m not pleased with our food drive. I upsets me each year that there is a class prize (cookies) given to the class that collects the most cans. I’m personally opposed to teaching my students that every good deed will be rewarded. As a protest, I not only do not inform my students of the contest, but I don’t count our cans. Each year someone comes around and asks me how many cans we collected. When I say “I don’t know”, they stand there with a perplexed look and open mouth while I tell them gently that it doesn’t matter to us. But that is a minor detail compared to the worst part.

I noticed a rusted can in the bin so I checked the expiration date on it. Two years ago!!! Tossed it in the trash and then out of curiosity I have been checking cans each day as I do hall duty or wait for my children to return from special classes. More expired cans. Dented cans. Dirty cans. People!!! Do we think that because someone is poor they will want to eat tainted food? And before we jump on the Oklahoma wagon I’ve already checked and confirmed that this is happening in other states.

Please. Let’s not teach our children that charity is giving to others what we don’t want or wouldn’t eat!! As a lesson in giving, read Franklin's Christmas Gift . I read it to my students yesterday and we discussed it at length.

Now let us jump to the other extreme because Mrs. Maurer has also been writing letters to Santa as my students dictate them. I’ve only written six, but between them and the whispered secrets of parents, I know that some children are not only getting too much stuff this year, but totally inappropriate stuff!!! What five-year-old child who cannot remember to wash his hands, sit in his seat, or leave his classmate’s paper alone NEEDS his own television and DVD player in his bedroom? Or a BB gun? Or a four-wheel ATV? Or a cell phone? Or an i-Pod? Or a laptop? Besides that, I know some parents are bankrupting their household budgets to provide this stuff! Let’s try to keep a little perspective and remember that the kid will want to eat in January!

Oh, and I had my first request yesterday for “the internet”. A sweet-faced little girl said, “I want Santa to bring me the internet so I can play games!” Thank goodness she also wanted a doll and a real dog!

We just have a few short days until Christmas. Let’s get it together people. Straighten up and start thinking. You’re giving me a headache!

No Blog Today

This morning:

Made coffee.

Wrote out a little "to do" list for Gary. He works 10-7 today.

Fed the cats.

Fed the fish.

Uploaded photos to WalMart so I can pick them up after school. (Children are making photo frames for parents.)

Updated the Caddo website with a new business.

Posted Christmas Tree Center photos to my kindergarten blog.

Answered emails. Made a lunch date with a friend.

Gathered cans for food drive.

Called in a prescription for after school pickup.

Stuffed an envelope with recipes for Megan.

Five minutes on Facebook...okay ten minutes, honest.

Now it is 6am so I must have breakfast and get dressed! later...

Bad Elephant...Bad

It seemed like a good idea. I wanted my great nephew, Noah, to have an elephant for Christmas. He is such a little doll and he’s worked hard at perfecting his elephant sounds and he raises his chubby little arm up for a trunk. An elephant that moves and/or makes sounds would be perfect for him!

Off I went to WalMart to find one!

Fisher-Price came to the rescue with “Shake ‘n Go Elephant”. I wasn’t thrilled with the elephant sound, but close enough. I knew Noah would love the fact that it makes ANY noise and it moves. After each little trumpet squeal the wheels spin and it takes off. What fun!

 

I was pleased that the batteries were pre-installed. However, I was a little concerned that I couldn’t find an off switch. I suspected that a noisy elephant might pose a problem for the post office.

Then I figured it would be okay as long as the elephant was packed well and no one shook the box very much. I wrapped it in bubble wrap and then wrapping paper and then cushioned the inside of the packing box with more paper. It seemed okay, but just to be safe I wrote on the box, “This box contains a child’s toy that makes noise when shaken.” Good thinking. Patted myself on the back for that one!

Off to school yesterday morning. The elephant trumpeted his little song as I carried the box to the truck. Well, okay, I did have it upside down. Put it on the seat and it stopped, but I could still hear the wheels spinning for about 30 seconds.

Drove down the driveway and every time I hit a bump in the gravel…you guessed it…trumpeting and wheels spinning. Told myself it would stop on the highway and that most postal workers drive on the highway, not bumpy gravel driveways. Right?

That crazy elephant trumpeted all fifteen miles to school! I don’t think it shut up more than five minutes until I parked in the parking lot.

Well, I sat there in the truck for a minute and imagined a scenario at some far off post office in Utah where the authorities had the box surrounded by homeland security officers. Even after they tore it open and verified that it was indeed just a child’s toy they would probably still track me down at school and arrest me just for wasting their time!  I decided to take the thing home and take out the batteries.

After school I had to get some more paper and packing tape at WalMart so I stopped by the toy department and looked at the elephant’s brother on the shelf. Gave it a little shake and the sound wasn’t any better. Couldn’t find an off switch. No clue on the box.

Went home and unwrapped the box. Unwrapped the elephant. Took off the bubble wrap. The whole time the silly thing is trumpeting and spinning. Took it out of its packaging. Low and behold—the OFF switch!!--on the bottom, just out of reach because the elephant was tied so closely and tightly to its packaging. If I had known where it was I could have turned it off with pencil. Anyway, Hallelujah, I made it stop trumpeting and spinning!

I didn’t even bother to wrap him again. I just threw a little bubble wrap around him and put him back in the packing box. Off to Utah with you, naughty elephant!

So…Noah.  You are getting an elephant for Christmas. Don’t be fooled by how quiet he is when you take him out of the box. Once you turn that switch on, your mom may be saying bad things about your Aunt Mary. I just wanted you to have an elephant for Christmas. It seemed like a good idea.

 

P. S. Happy Birthday to Karen!! No baby pictures...at least not today. :)

Great Memories

What better way is there to really get into the Christmas spirit than to drag out old childhood photos to embarrass your adult children?

I love these! They are actually slides. Many are in terrible shape and I didn’t take the time to edit them a lot. I really need to do that during the break and try to get some decent photo copies made so my children can have these to treasure.

In the meantime I will share them with you and then listen to my kids say, “Honestly, Mom… why?” lol

 

Shopping

“I’m sorry, I thought this was my mother.”

That was Karen’s reaction yesterday when I answered her “what did you do today” question.

My answer was “I shopped all day”.

Anyone who knows me knows that shopping is on my amusement list somewhere between going to the dentist and getting the car serviced.

However, Christmas shopping is different. I don’t mind shopping for other people, especially children.  And holiday shopping is as close to enjoyable as it gets.  I just don’t want to drag it out. I’m good for a couple of days, early in the season, and one in December. Thankfully yesterday was our “shop ‘til we drop” day and we are finished. Wrapping and packing today and then a trip to the post office tomorrow. Done.

Gary is always a good shopping companion if I’m polite. He loves to shop!! We were in Books-A-Million yesterday and I picked out the one thing I went in search of, browsed through the clearance rack for a couple more items, and asked him if he was ready to go. “You’re always rushing me!” was his reply. “No, no,” I said, “I just wanted to know if you were waiting for me, or if you want to look some more.”  He just rolled his eyes! LOL Apparently I hadn’t used a convincing tone or perhaps he just knows me too well after thirty-seven years. He looked for about ten more minutes and then we moved on to the next destination on my list.

Yes, I carried my Christmas shopping list with me! Have to do that in order to keep track of gifts, batteries, wrapping paper, etc. I can’t keep everything in this old brain.

Oh, I must say that Gary’s shopping style did work to my advantage yesterday. That’s why we are such good friends and such a good team. Our differences complement each other. We went to Blockbuster to get a gift certificate and so of course I just headed straight to the counter and picked one off the little rack in front of it and handed it to the clerk. I looked around for Gary, who had the cash with him, and he was at the movie clearance rack! I asked the clerk to wait and I went over to see what he was doing. I was baffled because he had just been to Blockbuster on Friday to pick up a movie and I know for a fact he couldn’t have done that without looking through the clearance movies. Just as I asked him what he was looking for I spotted an old movie that I love and haven’t seen in years! I think Gary actually smirked, just a little, as I took it to clerk. Lol

We finished off our day with something I really do like- working with children! We handed out tickets at the annual CCA Children’s Party with Santa. You can read about it on my Caddo blog.

Have a great day!

 

Community Pride

I want you to see this report about  Craighead's . Be sure to watch the video. :)

Days of the Week

I’m sure someone reading this can recite the origins of the calendar, but I can’t. This morning I’m just feeling grateful for the person who decided to mark off the days of the week so we can count down until Friday. FRIDAY! It has never felt as good as it does today! This has been a long, cold, challenging week in kindergarten.

My only complaint about the calendar is with the names. Why couldn’t someone see into the future and realize that having two “s” words and two “t” words would be confusing to children? We are looking at the end of the semester here and I still have three children who cannot recite the days of the week and five children who cannot recognize the days of the week in isolation. It is always Tuesday vs. Thursday, and Saturday vs. Sunday, that creates a problem. I point out the differences in the words. I remind them to look for the “Th” and the “Sa”, but that isn’t helping. I even have cards in different colors and they haven’t picked up on the fact that Thursday is purple and Tuesday is pink!!! Yesterday one of my darlings had calendar duty and said it was Saturday, November 30!!!!  Why teachers get gray hair.

Next week we are giving a major standardized test. It’s one of those “open your booklet, fill in the bubbles” tests. I have to separate my students and cover their work areas so they don’t copy from each other. We will work in 15-20 minute increments with play/rest breaks in between. It takes at least three days to give the whole test. At least three children will undoubtedly be absent and I will have to spend Thursday and Friday trying to give them the test during odd moments.

I can tell you right now that one of my students will scribble all over the pictures in the test. Another one will fill out at least two bubbles for each answer- just because the bubbles are there. Another one will circle the answers instead of filling in the bubbles.  Several of them will skip at least half of the answers because they will be watching their peers, looking out the window, adjusting their shirt sleeves, and tapping their pencils. One will get an almost perfect score, except for the last section of the test. Three others will have difficulty with the second section of the test. The rest will muddle through. Why do I have such wonderful ESP? Because I’ve given this test twice each year for six years.  And I know my students.

So…today is Friday. Jeans day. Centers instead of tutoring. Good weekly reports for most of my class. No testing today. It has to be a good day, right?

It's not Christmas...

 

until I hang the wreath that Aunt Clariece made for me eight years ago. It has a Styrofoam base and she punched little squares of cloth into it to create this colorful design. I love the colors and it reminds me of Aunt Clariece’s many talents. She was a wonderful neighbor and friend. She loved to sing and sew and visit with her family.

until I unpack Gran’s cookie press. She made dozens of cute cookies for Christmas with this Mirro press which is still in remarkable shape. I usually make at least one batch of cookies with it each year just keep the tradition alive. The recipe booklet is getting fragile and I think I will scan it this year.

 

until I mail my Christmas cards. Did that yesterday! I didn’t mail as many as I have in past years, simply because we now have email, Facebook, and blogs. But I still love to see those little cards and I’m hoping my friends do, too.

I also photographed a bit of color along Caddo’s Buffalo Street. The Town Restoration Association of Caddo (TRAC) placed wooden candy canes on each lamp post. The business owners are also decorating for our December contest. A yard and a business will be chosen in December for recognition and prizes. Always fun to be a part of that process! (If you live in Caddo be sure to go to Craighead’s and vote for your choices.)

 

 

It was stuck in my mind...

I’ve often wished I had kept a notebook of the cute things my students say. I would probably be rich and famous by now, living off the royalties of my book, “Thoughts from the Minds of Children”. I have a few notes here and there, scribbled on bits of paper or written in the margins of school calendars. But the great gems of ideas seem to have vanished. Or at least I can’t recall them.

Yesterday one of my students showed me that he can finally, after much practice and effort, write an “m”. He told me he had been working on it but, “It was stuck in my mind.” What an amazing flash of insight.

I’ve read before that our minds are like cameras or computers, recording anything and everything. It is all there in storage somewhere. Only our retrieval system gives us difficulty. I was trying to recall the name of someone yesterday and it was indeed, stuck in my mind.

That’s what happens as you get older. There is so much stored in the old brain that much of it gets stuck. I need notes and clues and prompts in order to find it. Perhaps it is my filing system that needs an overhaul. lol

Anyway, I’ve decided to try to take notes on a few of the wonderful things my students say. Perhaps in ten years I will have that book ready for my retirement years!  

Have a great day! And don’t worry if your mind gets stuck. My little genius says it will be okay.

Sleeping Beauty

 

Last night I managed to watch “House” and then read for about thirty minutes. Next thing I knew, Gary was waking me up and the late news was on. Now, I realize that I get up at 4:30am, but honestly, you’d think I could stay awake until 10pm. I can, but only if I’m moving around. If I sit down to watch television or read or even use the computer the brain shuts down and the eyes close. That’s one of the things I hate about winter. My energy level is worse than ever!! It’s like I’m trying my best to hibernate!

I’ve spent very little time in cold climates. While in CA we made annual treks to the mountains so our children could play in the snow, and we lived in the high desert for a year. Our nine months in Iowa was tantamount to an eternity for me. Probably one of the major reasons why we didn’t stay! And while we have cold weather here, as I’ve said before, it is so erratic that it makes it bearable. We might have snow tonight and 70 degrees next week.

What fascinates me is how those of you in truly cold climates survive the day to day struggles of life while trudging through snow and ice.  I guess what got me to thinking about it was looking at the L.L. Bean catalog that came in the mail yesterday. We have flannel sheets and winter coats and a few sweaters, but I can’t imagine wearing half the stuff in the catalog. I’d have to walk to school to need a down coat, or even a down vest. I wore a sweater and coat to school yesterday. Wore both to the first recess. Only needed my sweater for the second recess.  Didn’t need either in my classroom because I have the thermostat set at 70.

And I can’t imagine driving in snow every day. It makes me tense to even think about the few days that I might have to do it here. What usually happens is that school closes and I get to stay home. One year when I was working an hour away I left in the middle of a storm and almost didn’t make it home.

I guess what I really want to know is how you stay awake. How do you manage to have the energy to do anything besides go to work and eat dinner? How do you keep your spirits up during days and days of gloomy weather? My daughter bought one of those lamps that simulate sunlight. I hope it helps her energy and her mood. I know she is not excited about another long Vermont winter.

I have friends in cold climates who love the snow and seem to thrive in the cold. I love them, but they’re just weird. Lol  Most of them were raised in the cold and don’t know any other lifestyle.

I don’t want to love the cold…I just want to stay awake!