Teacher Secret: Cinnamon Toast Crunch

I can't believe we only have about 72 days of school left! We have offically been in school for longer than we still have to go, which is a milestone I cannot believe I made it to already!

So I've found amazing ideas on Pinterest and my Google reader for so many amazing lessons, it's hard to even try and cram them into the day. For January there were so many cute ideas, I had such great aspirations for our snowmen projects and new year's resolutions. But then...

I have been sick for about an entire month! Thank you, weak immune system and gross first graders. At first I thought it was a regular cold, and would quickly get over it. When I could barely swallow and was packing for my family's vacation to Las Vegas the next day, we decided to go to the emergency room. After a four hour nap and a positive strep throat test, I went home with antibiotics and decided to go to school the next day anyway. Yep, I went to school. And yep, I felt so nauseous in school I slept on our bean bag chair during my prep, laid on the floor for half of reading, and ran out to the hallway to throw up when I tried to start our writing lesson. My aide, mentor teacher, and principal all kicked me out of school early.

I thought after that I would be back to normal, but apparently I caught a 2 week long cold after that. I now officially can speak loud enough so my firsties can hear me, and I do not need to have a coughing fit when saying good morning!

So now it is February and I have no cute snow related activities. Luckily, there are a trillion holidays in February! Groundhog's Day, Valentine's, our 100th day of school (we're all dressing up like we're 100!), President's Day, and Leap Year! This week we are kicking off our Valentine's unit with Abby Mullins' Sweetheart Snatcher activity to go with our introduction to inferencing. Amazingly, my firsties are so so so smart nowadays and love being detectives.

I'm really proud of myself for some of the things that I've been doing in the classroom lately. We have our own Twitter, where stuents can tweet what we're learning everyday. I've created Studycasts based on the blog entry on Techy Teacher blog, and the director of curriculum even asked me to teach people how to do it at our next professional development day. Now I just have to survive my second observation (guided reading the day before Valentine's), V-day party, budget submissions, and completely revamping my Word Work and Work on Writing stations in my room. Ahh! I do feel like I'm getting the hang of it, now, though!

My favorite firstie moments lately have been the hilarious things that they say:

-Student (while rolling dice, playing math game with me): Come on, baby, Miss Smith needs a new pair of boots!

-Me: WOW! You are a super star this week! What's different?
-Student: Hmmm... Well I did eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. That's probably it.

I only realize how often I say things when the following exchanges happen in the room: (explanation- when a student asks me for clarification on directions, I must apparently "That's a really good question!" and then go on to explain)
-(Cinnamon Toast Crunch) Student: Miss Smith! I have a really good question. Are we supposed to...

While walking down hallway, passing MLK pictures:
-Student: Oh, look, Barack Obama.

When asked what they were going to do after school:
-Student 1: I'm going to play with my dog!
-Student 2: I'm going to my grandmom's!
-Student 3: I'm going to watch a movie! And dig up my dead bird's grave.

Happy February from room 131!