A Day Full of Leaves and Haida Totems

Tuesday is my longest day. I get to school at 7:30 AM to organize materials for my school day. Then I teach math, writing, lead a mentoring activity (27 third graders, 13 seventh and eighth graders, 5 teachers), eat lunch with a group of girls, teach 3 groups of social studies, 2 groups of computer, dismissal, then math tutoring from 4 to 5.

This morning I was copying cards to use in a math game when I commented to a colleague, "Tom (our former principal) once compared teaching in the early grades with organizing a birthday party every  day. Today feels like one of those days!"

I wore a pair of oak leaf earrings for our mentoring project. The students spread out across the campus to draw their adopted trees in their art journals and to write acrostic poems using the names of their trees.

I bought these earrings at the Sawmill Center for the Arts in Cook Forest, PA. They were made by a Fimo clay artist whose company, Wood Thrush, seems to have disappeared. I've worn at least 8 pairs of her earrings this year. I wore them along with my Haida t-shirt, purchased at the National Museum of the American Indian about 6 years ago.

This afternoon in social studies, I shared Paul Owen Lewis' striking picture book, Frog Girl. As I read the story which I projected through a document camera onto our Smartboard, the children drew illustrations on a series of panels I had copied onto sheets of cardstock. When we finished the story, they folded the panels into a paper box which tells the story, inside and out. Like party favors, make it/take it!

I could write just as much about math and writing and computer (we're learning to type and making Halloween cards!), even recess and lunch and dismissal. It was a long day. Productive, fun, and long. Like a birthday party!