Giving Thanks

I am so very thankful ...

I am thankful for a job that I love even when it is hard work with limited bathroom breaks.

I am thankful for a sweet, busy class.

I am thankful for supportive families.

I am thankful for time off to be human!  It's hard to believe that November is over.  I was gone for three days last week and so I feel like I lost a chunk of time with my class covering November.  Thanksgiving is my favorite, not the Pilgrims and Native Americans but the thought of teaching thankfulness in a world where society has forgotten how to be grateful. This is evidenced by stores opening up on Thanksgiving evening so that shoppers could get the best deal.

As I stated above, I was gone for three of the five days of the full week before the holiday.  Preparing for a sub is stressful and time consuming but three days of prep was time consuming and a nightmare but I did it and it was organized!  I did not realize the amount of stress related to this that ow as carrying around leading up to the trip.  

Before my trip, we finished learning about American symbols and while I was gone my class did a lot with coins with non-fiction literature and emergent readers.  One lesson that I could not leave for a substitute was King Bidgood's in the Bathtub.  I love that story!  We talked about facts and opinions and children graphed whether or not they would let King Bidgood lead them.  When they graphed their opinion, they had to give me a reason orally for their answer.  It was interesting to hear them state what their opinions were and why.  You can learn a lot about their maturity and thought process through a 

lesson like this.  It was a good start for beginning the process of teaching opinion.

We started reading Junie B., First Grader Turkeys We Have Loved and Eaten and Other Thankful Stuff during our quiet time a few weeks ago.  I had never read this one aloud before so I found myself laughing or giggling at a couple of things.  One was when Junie B. talks about the cranberry jelly keeping the shape of the can.  My kids asked why that was funny.  Most of them had no background knowledge of cranberry jelly!  They also asked what stuffing was.  I explained it but the conversation led to this...

On Monday, we cooked stove top and opened up a can of cranberry sauce.  Personally, I love home made dressing and stove top is not the same.  I also do not eat cranberry sauce.  They loved the cranberry sauce!  Looking back, I wish I would have done a tally chart for the snack to keep track of the likes and to work with the data.

I absolutely love coking with children.  It can be extremely stressful at times but I think my strong math skills (fractions specifically) come from early experiences with cooking in loved one's kitchens.  Children today do not have these same experiences.  One thing I do each year is cook individual pumpkin pies with my class.  The last two years, I have done it with my whole grade level.  We read the recipe, talked about the ingredients, and following directions! We even talked about the changes of the pies as they bake.  I loved it and enjoyed sharing one of my favorite things with so many children.  I love exposing children to concepts in the most natural way, hands on experiences.

We are still watching our pennies.  I am fascinated by the salt water.  Several children have commented about how it is freezing so again an opportunity to promote some discussion about the changes they are observing.

Then there is the rotting pumpkin.  One of my team mates pumpkin began rotting right away.  It must have been an older pumpkin because on day two or so of being in the container she had "juice".  Some of my kids had seen hers and so this week they noticed ours was beginning to turn to a liquid.  We are going to keep observing the changes and we will revisit our predictions of both these lessons before we leave for Winter Break.

I received this sweet gift from my families.  Everyone should be so fortunate.  One of my moms has interviewed some of the children and families and wrote down their words.  Teachers are amazing and we go above and beyond every day.  However, we do not always get to hear thank you because we are just doing our job.  Thank you'so go a long way.  I was blessed by the words they wrote and I wish that teachers everywhere could know how families are thankful for them, even when those families cannot always express it.