the things they say

Student (holding up a black crayon): "I don't want this Mrs. Hall."

Me: "Okay. Put it back in the crayon box."

Student: "Okay."

Student (3 seconds later): "Oooh, look, a black crayon. I want it."

***

I think I need to work on colors a little more.

the swing of things

We're back at it here in the high desert of New Mexico! Today marked the beginning of week three of teaching and I couldn't be happier (with some things, there are still those that are in need of a good overhaul, but I'll get to that later)!

In the past two years of my teaching, one area that I really struggled with was classroom management. While I happily made my way through each day, I knew that things were not their best, but I was never 100% sure what to do, or how to articulate what was going on to get help from outsiders. Well, this year I am feeling a million times better about what is going on in my classroom procedurally.

This year my school began implementing a behavior management strategy called 1-2-3 Magic. I must say, it is kind of magical. While I am still refining some of the ins and outs of the method, I am no longer putting energy into disciplining my students and explaining to them what was going on. Let's face it, they're five and they don't care. Now I can simply look at them and say 1 (or 2, or 3) and typically they'll mutter an "okay" and stop. Magic I tell you! This past Friday I didn't need to count for anyone! At the end of the day I am not musing over what went wrong, about whether or not my students hate me, or what I could have done differently (with regards to behavior). They're misbehaving, I say "one" and they typically stop.

In addition to our management magic I have some stellar routines going on. Last year I tried using chimes in my classroom as an attention getter, but I was horrible at being consistent with them. This year I ring the chimes, everyone stops what they are doing, they put their hands in their laps, and they look at me. I start counting down from 3 and by 0 they are silent and looking at me. I say rule check and they are silent and looking at me. When we use white boards if we are moving on to something else that does not require the boards they automatically sit on them and burry their markers in their laps (today I didn't even get to tell them what to do, I turned on the projector and they started cleaning their boards and sat on them right away!). So, management is coming along quite nicely. It only took me two years of bumbling around to figure this one out (at least for the time being).

Another area of struggle for me in the past has been teaching math. While there are numerous math teachers in my family, I have always struggled with finding ways to make math exciting when all we are doing is writing numbers, counting, naming shapes, etc. I think that this is coming along pretty well this year as well. I am much more cognizant of getting manipulatives into the hands of my kinders and using rhymes and story telling to keep them engaged in lessons. I think our grasp of routines has also helped with our math lessons. They know when manipulatives are tools and not toys, and they have learned that if they are playing they need to draw circles instead of using bears, cubes, or blocks. I still have some learning to do in this area, but I think we're coming along nicely!

The one area that got me today was center time. I had planned out my centers, but I had visions of my students from last year when I was doing this. I must elaborate, I had visions of my students from the END of the year last year when I was planning. Kinders at week three of school have very different abilities when compared to kinders at week 36 of school. Lesson learned, I will need to play around and finagle some, but we'll get there eventually.

All in all, I am very happy with where we are as a class this year. I cannot wait to see my kinders grow, learn, and excel this year. It is always so exciting to watch them as they grasp new skills and have aha moments. 

In addition to my new group of kinders, I have a new group of grade level teachers. So far they have made teaching so much more enjoyable! We work together very well and get along perhaps a little too well (it takes forever to lesson plan, but we have a great time doing it!)! They truly love their students and they are invested in their classrooms. We talk every day and share ideas. We are helping one another grow and become better teachers every day.

I have heard from friends that year three of teaching is the best, and at week three, I must say that I agree.

back to school

It is hard to believe that summer has come to an end (at least in teacher terms). Teachers started back on Thursday and our kiddos will show up bright eyed and bushy tailed (right?) on Monday. I personally started back about a week before it was mandated in an effort to get my classroom together. It isn't finished yet, there are some things that will require student involvement in order to get our walls filled up, others that will require teaching, and others still that simply require me to have more time. Until that time comes, take a look at my classroom as the students will see it on Monday morning (minus the changes that happened this afternoon when I stopped in for about an hour with the mister in tow).

missouri

We began our Missouri adventures at George Washington Carver National Monument. We went in expecting to learn more about the "Peanut Man" and were pleasantly surprised by the incredible life that this man led. From being raised as a slave at the end of the Civil War to teaching individuals how to become self-sustaining, G.W. Carver made a difference in the lives of others. It was simply by chance and an itch for adventure that we were able to learn more about his life, principles, and practice.

on the carver trail

on the carver trail

george washington carver

After leaving Diamond, we drove to Van Buren where we settled in for a couple of days at Ozark National Scenic Riverways. Our time in Van Buren was filled with trips to Big Spring, exploring the few trails that were available, riding our bikes, and floating on the Current River. We had a great campsite, even if a tree branch did find its way through our rainfly and tent one afternoon while we were out exploring. With a little bit of duct tape and seam sealer we made a patch that kept the rain out; with some packing tape we made a patch that kept the bugs out. It was a great couple of days and we fell in love with Missouri.

nothing a little duct tape won't fix

floating on the current

big spring 

big spring

big spring

butterflies were everywhere

big spring in action (13,000 liters per second)

everyone needs a good accidental photo

something in-between a trail run and a hike

Our time in Missouri did come at the end of our summer grad school course, and so we did need to spend one day putting adventure on hold (for the most part). We found a great little public library in Farmington where we wrote our final papers for the summer. Then we found that we could squeeze a little adventure into the day and drove up to St. Louis for a trip to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. We ended what began as a subdued day in the library with a trip 630 feet up into the arch and with a walk through the Museum of Westward Expansion.

the arch

us outside of the arch

a long way up

us inside of the arch

With nighttime upon us, we began our drive to the next adventure. Nighttime driving inevitably means a night in the car as opposed to the tent, but once again, it means we're up and moving first thing in the morning. Check back soon for our adventures in Ohio!

ack

Life has been beyond crazy since Spring Break. We enjoyed a nice week outside, camping, hiking, and playing by the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park. We finished up the week with a race in the Tijeras Mountains outside of Albuquerque and then jumped right back in to the remaining weeks of school.

Since that time, we have wrapped up all final projects for the spring semester of graduate school, finished our district mentoring binders, have been assigned new principals, and are gearing up for the final weeks of school. It has been a non-stop effort to keep things moving in the right direction. 

It is my hope that one day soon I will really be able to update things here and get everyone back in the loop of the adventures that make up my life in the classroom and our lives outside of the classroom. Until that moment however, enjoy the weather! Spring is here!

a spring break selfie until I am able to get a real post from those adventures written

bummer

Well, it is looking as if our summer off from grad school will be no more. Our beloved professors are both moving on in their lives - one is retiring, the other is moving north to be closer to family. As a satellite campus for WNMU, this means that we are unsure of what classes will be available to us in person in the coming year. As a result, it looks like the mister and I are going to jump on the opportunity to take one of our three remaining classes this summer while it is being offered online. It isn't ideal, but it will get things done. That means next school year we'll be looking at two remaining classes - how we'll earn those credits is to be determined. Hopefully they won't only be available online, but if they are, at least we tripled up this year so that we don't have so many classes to worry about in the future. The good news is that the University has stated that we will be able to finish our degrees. Thank goodness for that.

reality

Just before Valentine's Day I welcomed a new student to my classroom. While it may have caused a disruption to the class, we were working together to teach the rules and expectations that are the norm in my classroom. Then, he was gone for a week. I was told to wait. There was no notification from the family, so the standard is to wait for ten days before the district withdraws a student as a result of absences.

Then he came back. Once again, there was a disruption in my classroom. We started from scratch, working together to teach the rules and expectations for the classroom. Then, today he was withdrawn from our school because of the district requirement for official notes (such as a doctor's note or a printed obituary) to excuse absences. Our principal would not excuse absences without a note and the family was upset, so they took him out of our school altogether.

Unfortunately this is the reality for some children. They lack the consistency that is needed to learn the rules and expectations that come with being a part of a community. They jump from place to place, not on their own accord, and not necessarily because of family choices. We live in a world where children become the victims of policies that adults and politicians make. While there are rules in place to protect both children and adults, sometimes people fall through the cracks because of them.

Once again, I find myself in a position where I do not know what will come for this child and it breaks my heart. He is a very intelligent boy and has a lot of potential, I can only hope for the best and that the wind starts to blow in his favor so that he doesn't need to fight against so many obstacles at such a young age.

the things they say

This week we began studying measurement and comparisons in math class. Yesterday we did longer and shorter, today we focused on taller and shorter. I introduced the topic and the vocabulary words. I showed the students an example of measuring height to compare and then I had some students participate in a comparison activity. After that, they were set free to explore the classroom and find things that were taller and shorter than them.

After 4 minutes I called them back to the group. We sat down and each student had the chance to share about something that they had found. The students went around saying, "the door is taller than me," and, "the bookshelf is shorter than me," and, "Mrs. S's table is shorter than me." That's when I got my winner.

Me: What did you find?

Student: Ummm... the green tub.

Me: What can you tell us about the green tub?

Student: [blank stare]

Me: The green tub is sh.....

Student: The green tub is sh...maller?

I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. I love my kinders. While it may not be a real word, I think it deserves acknowledgement for being an accurate descriptor. 

 

 

 

 

 

for the love of seuss

In preparation for Dr. Seuss's birthday, I led my first ever author study. We began on Monday by looking at the a timeline of Dr. Seuss's life on seussville.com. This fantastic website has everything Seuss that you could possibly want to share with a classroom full of kinders. They loved the animations and we followed it up by reading Dr. Seuss's first children's book, Dr. Seuss's ABC.

Throughout the remainder of the week we continued to learn about the many components of Dr. Seuss's creations. We learned about the characters, about settings, and most importantly, about rhymes and word families. This author study doubled as my introduction to word families. Perhaps this is a little later than some kinder teachers' introduction of word families, but I think the foundations that have been laid led to a quick mastery and a topic that will now be a part of our weekly word work. 

Yesterday we wrapped up the week by reading Bartholomew and the Oobleck. If you haven't read this Seuss classic, you really should. It is a lot of fun and you can extend the reading by making oobleck! Yesterday we had an entertaining reading, full of silly voices and then we did "science" and made our own oobleck. It was amazing how many of my kiddos kept saying, "my mom will get so mad at my mess." I assured them that science was supposed to be messy, and that their moms would not get mad because I was the one cleaning up the mess, not them.

When I look back at the week, I think there was a tie between Bartholomew and the Oobleck  and Wacky Wednesday for the book of choice. The kiddos loved looking through Wacky Wednesday for all of the silly pictures that didn't make sense. Unfortunately, I only had one copy of the book so the kiddos were crawling over one another to see the pages. Next year I'll get a couple of copies from the library and have them work in small groups.

All in all, I think our Dr. Seuss study was a success. Happy Birthday to you (tomorrow) Dr. Seuss! And, thank you for sharing your imagination with so many generations and inspiring young readers. My class was asking all week if they could look at Dr. Seuss books whenever they had free time. Reading success!

Our March bulletin board, a small selection of Dr. Seuss stories, word family hats, and oobleck!

beyond crazy

Wow. Last week was C-R-A-Z-Y. 

Most three day weeks are a little crazy. They start out well for me because I have a long weekend. I enjoyed some nice runs and a short hike with my mister. I knocked out a lot of work that had been piling up, and I relaxed some. It was nice.

On Tuesday, I was able to get 14 out of 18 parents through the parent teacher conference process. In the meantime, Mrs. S and I managed to tear all of the pages out of student workbooks and get them organized by week for the remainder of the school year. I hate tearing and sorting the pages, so this was amazing. I usually do it all by myself, now I don't need to worry about it again until next year. Oh yeah. Awesome.

Then the kinders came back on Wednesday. We started out exceptionally well. Then an announcement was made, "Attention teachers and staff. We might have an assembly at 9:00. We'll let you know." Then the health assistant came into the classroom, "The nurse is at our school today, she needs to do a hand washing presentation with the students." When 9:00 rolled around we were called to the auditorium. For a laser light show. It is science, sure, but on a short week? Apparently our old principal scheduled it before she left and didn't tell anyone. So, we lost an hour of instruction on an already short week. Then we were called to the nurse's office for the hand washing presentation. Needless to say, kindergarten cancelled our morning recess so that we could get a little bit of learning in. The rest of the day went pretty well, thankfully.

We squeezed a whole lot of learning into Thursday to make up for lost time, and in order to be ready for Friday assessments. The kiddos did a great job, they loved our story of the week, they picked up on the basics of base ten relatively well, and we had computer lab. My students love computer lab. It was a success. Unfortunately, I also had to come up with sub plans for Friday because this lucky teacher was called for jury duty. 

What an end to the week. Not only was I called, I was selected. So while my kinders were working away on their assessments, I was listening to a new attorney defend what was possibly his first case. It was somewhat interesting, but the lawyers unfortunately used what us jurors came to call turtle talk. They spoke more slowly than I do with my kinders. Now, that's saying something. All in all, we spent 12 hours in the courtroom. At 8:15 we decided that the defense had presented enough information to make us reasonably doubt the guilt of his client and wham-o, said lawyer won what was possibly his first trial. (I will say that a positive result of the experience was that I was able to crochet during every break we were given and finished half of a case to organize my crochet hooks!)

The court was nice enough to bring us dinner while we were in deliberations. At that point we were all okay with a burger and fries. However, a couple of hours later either the stomach flu that has been going around school caught up with me or the burger just didn't sit right. Either way, I spent the night on the bathroom floor. Super awesome end to a super awesome week.

Now we have arrived at Monday. Sweet, sweet Monday. A day of new beginnings and fresh starts. Some kiddos did end up in the office, but I'm positive that this week can't be any crazier than last. Here's hoping!

explosion

Not to worry, there haven't been any literal explosions. But, figuratively, my life has exploded. This semester is taking over my life with the addition of 20 hours of service work added to my graduate course load. Additionally, the school district has decided that all of the teachers should take an online course in assessment. I'll mention only briefly that I took a three hour graduate course in assessment this summer. So yes, it is easy (as my principal said it should be if I have just taken a class), but it takes up that little bit of free time that was nonexistent to begin with.

While life has taken a turn for crazier, I will say that I enjoyed my first afternoon/evening of volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club on Friday. I was immediately roped into painting nails and I was able to talk to a lot of fourth and fifth grade girls about what they like to do. Surprisingly (or not), it's not that different from what my kindergarteners like to do - with the exception of liking boys. As much as I'm dreading the loss of a little bit of me time, I am looking forward to getting to know this different group of students. Life will resume again in a couple of months - but until then, blogs may come at a very limited rate.

plans

Sometimes plans don't go as you would like. Some things take longer than you would expect. Sometimes there are delayed starts due to weather. Sometimes students just aren't getting the point. The whole day, as a teacher, is about adjusting your plans to meet the students' needs. And still, we make plans, over and over again, hoping that one day everything will click and we'll be able to teach everything that we actually need to.

Next week I am administering tests to determine the levels of English Language Learners in the kindergarten grade level. Thanks to the awesome budgeting of my district, a sub is not funded for the time that I am out testing, which leaves my assistant on her own for a couple of days. Granted, she has her teaching degree, but our regular schedule involves us both teaching at different points during the day through centers and small group activities. With this in mind, I have had to completely revamp several of my days next week to account for her being on her own.

In this planning, I get a little more freedom than usual. I have been able to create worksheets and have fun with my plans. The unfortunate thing about sub planning is that you don't actually get to do all of the fun things that you are leaving behind for someone else. So, as frustrating as creating sub plans can be, I relish the opportunity to be a little more creative, even if I am not the one to benefit from all of the work that goes into it.

On top of my being out for testing next week, I have other fun things to accommodate for in my planning. On Thursday the Albuquerque Zoo is coming in to do a presentation of "Zoo to You." Through this our students will be able to meet some of the cool animals at the zoo. We also have that beloved day, Valentine's Day, on Friday. Yay for hyped up kiddos. At least it falls on a Friday this year so I don't need to deal with the sugar coma following their sweet indulgences on the holiday.

Here's a peek at one of my fun creations for next week - sight word graphing!

february

It is hard to believe that February is already here. January sure did fly, it makes me a little nervous about how quickly the rest of the school year will go. Especially since we have one half day and two days off this month. I'm not sure how I'm going to go about squeezing all of the necessary learning in, but I'll find a way.

Our February bulletin board: We love to read!

Yesterday my kiddos created "book valentines." They each chose a book that they could read and wrote the sentence, "I can read ______!" Then they drew a little picture about the story. Now we have a beautiful bulletin board to show of their awesome reading skills. 

centers

Word Work, Free Writing, Letter Focus, and Free Reading

Centers. It's just how we roll in Room 1 Kindergarten. Sometimes it is a stretch to find time to actually do our centers, but I try to make it work three days a week. As the end of the year crunch comes though, I may need to cut back to two days a week. For now though, we spend one hour rotating through four different centers to help with pre-reading and emergent reader skills. Today, my little learners worked on stamping their sight words for the week, using proper sentence structure, completing a letter Gg mini-book, and independent reading. 

Today was the first day that I broke out my letter stamp collection and the kiddos loved it. I had gotten a set at the beginning of the year, but with only two stamps for each letter, I was unsure of how to prevent arguments over different letters. A month or so ago though, my problem was solved. I found alphabet stamp sets for 97 cents a piece! With six copies of each letter the stamping was smooth sailing (with the exception of actually locating the letters that were needed in the jumble of 156 stamps).

I was impressed by my kiddos in their free writing center. Most remembered the basic sentence structures that we have been practicing all year - a capital letter first, finger space between words, and punctuation at the end. Some wrote multiple sentences and most remembered how to spell their sight words. Since we have been working on sounding out words, I was also excited to see what everyone came up with on their own in terms of letter sound recognition.

Our letter focus and independent reading centers happen almost daily. My students are getting better at remaining focused on their reading for the whole 15-minute center rotation, and most are self motivating enough to remain on task. 

I know I've said it before, but I really do have a pretty impressive group of kiddos this year. They have made a lot of progress. While I may forget it sometimes in moments of frustration, they always end up surprising me in the end.

one hundred

I have survived the first one hundred days of the school year! So have my kinders. We've had our highs and lows, but I like to think that we're kicking this year's behind.

Counting 100 Objects (They were a little off, but we got it sorted out in the end!)

Aside from being the hundredth day of school, we also had the pleasure of having Explora, a pretty awesome science exploration organization, come and lead some experiments in reflection and symmetry for the kindergarten and first grade students. The kiddos loved it, and I think that anyone in the hallway where they were working knew it. If you want to entertain a kindergartener for an hour or so, give them two small mirrors taped together and let them explore.

Friends Playing With Mirrors 

I See You!

How Many Do You See?

Symmetrical Wormy Reflections

I personally enjoyed closing out my hundredth day with setting a PR on the Pyramid Trail (55 minutes,woohoo). I had had to leave school early to check in at the Boys and Girls Club about volunteer opportunities (yes, volunteer opportunities...). One of our grad classes this semester requires 20 hours of community service work, so the mister and I decided that reconnecting with our After School roots would be fun. Once I got that squared away though, I went and did a little trail running. And it felt great.

A Quick View From the Top, Before Running Back Down (to beat the sunset of course)

breathe

Sometimes, we just need to breathe. I have been noticing lately that I have been getting frustrated with my kinders that just aren't getting it. I think that the reason I am getting so frustrated is because so many of my little learners do get it. Yet, there are three that just baffle me. I keep trying and trying, and still, nothing.

One of my grad classes this semester is on the psychology of learning. I really do try to employ best practices every day, during every lesson that I teach. I keep things moving, I try to keep the kiddos involved, there are hands on activities. I try to create lessons that appeal to different learning styles and abilities. And, for 14 out of my 17 students, they get it. And, they get it fast. And then there are those three that just do not get it. Not through regular instruction, not with modifications, not with additional small group instruction, not with guided practice, not with intervention work. And I get frustrated. I shake my head. And then I ask myself why.

Yesterday I was reflecting on the week. I thought about how my emerging students (those that are just above my struggling learners) and about how we laughed in small group when they were working on figuring out consonant blends. They made silly comments, I laughed at their reasoning and corrected them, and then, when they had their reading assessment on Friday, they were all proficient.

This got me thinking that maybe I just need to breathe. I need to relax. I need to have fun. While they may not be getting the instruction that I am providing, maybe if my kinders have a personal connection to the material through laughter something will click. And, laughter is a much better response in education than frustrated head shakes.

sentences

My kinders are gradually getting the hang of the idea that letters make up word and that words make up sentences. Then, I had to go and throw number sentences into the mix.

Today we began to move beyond basic addition stories to interpreting the stories into number sentences. We began our lesson by reading a basic sentence, "I have a little cat." Then we put some magnets up on the board to compare to the sentence. We talked about how our numbers were like words and the mathematical symbols were like punctuation. Granted, the symbols are a little out of place, but seeing as my kinders are super smart, they got a hang of it pretty quickly.

Once I put the magnets on the board, my students used their previous knowledge to compose a number story about what they saw. Four magnets plus five more magnets equals nine magnets. Then we transferred that information into number sentence form. This is where things got a little tricky. While their stories were good, the idea of symbols and punctuation being the same made them want to put all of the symbols at the end of the sentence.

This is where my sentence came into play. We put the number sentence directly under the language sentence. I rearranged the words according to how the students tried to write their initial number sentences. This resulted in our original sentence reading, "I a cat have little." We talked about whether or not this made sense. All of my kinders were laughing because we have been talking a lot about sentences that make sense. This sentence did not. We talked about how the number sentence needs to be written in the right order, just like a language sentence, otherwise it wouldn't make sense.

By the end of the lesson, number sentences were making more sense to most of my kinders, but it will take some more practice for sure. At the very least, the foundation has been laid, and I think that it was a pretty good one (if I do say so myself).

figured out

Well, yesterday afternoon I worked on getting all of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) junk cleared up. It turns out that the district office had lost all of my paperwork for everything - my application for working toward my TESOL endorsement (meaning they also didn't have me in the system for a TESOL stipend) and my application for TESOL course reimbursement. As a teacher I don't make much money, and as a grad student, the money that I do make is spent on tuition. Hopefully having these issues straightened out will help out a little bit.

As for now, it's back to the grind. Another grad school class tonight. This week is feeling really long already. I'll be thankful for our day off on Monday, from both teaching and grad school (it will mean I can do work for teaching and/or grad school).

back to reality

Last night grad school started back up. It will be so nice when we finish up our program next year. The mister and I have once again tripled up on classes, which will mean a busy semester. However, it also means that we will not have to take classes this summer. It also means that we will have a comparably light year next year. Our capstone course will require a lot of work, for sure, but we only have nine credit hours to complete over the course of the year. We just may be able to breathe a little bit.

Reality this semester also includes the implementation of the school district's turn around plan. While my principal is retiring at the end of the week, our interim principal will only be here through April. The superintendent announced yesterday at a staff meeting that the changing of principals throughout the district will take place in April, following the culmination of state testing. This way, principals will be a part of the decision making when new hires are made for next year, when goals are submitted to the district and state for next school year, and when budgets are made. It all makes sense to me, but it will also mean a lot of change for a lot of schools at the end of the school year. I guess it also means teachers will be able to decide if they want to stay at their current school with a new principal or if they want to move elsewhere prior to next school year.

With the coming of the new semester, I was also reminded of how disjointed things in our district are. One of the programs in the district provides tuition assistance for teachers seeking TESOL endorsement. I applied for this assistance in November. Yesterday, the mister received notice of a purchase order being placed for his tuition assistance, my name was not on the list. I emailed the director of this program today and she said that she must have misplaced it. I will take copies of my application over to the office today, but she cannot make any guarantees that I will receive those funds because she lost my original paperwork. Needless to say, I went to bed a little angry last night.

My anger was calmed a little though based on the fact that I received a nice little check from Target yesterday as a result of their Field Trip Grants program. In the fall I applied and our trip to the Albuquerque Zoo is now 70% funded. Yay!

six is six

When it all comes down to it, six year olds are simply that - six years old. It does not matter where they are from, what their background is, or what language they speak. They all want to have fun, make new friends, and explore everything in front of them. 

Today my new Nepali friend joined my classroom and my above statement fits her perfectly. The day started with two of my kinders coming in and saying "We're going to have a new student!" I had not told anyone yesterday about our incoming classmate because you just never know for sure if someone is going to show up. It turns out that my newest kinder's grandparents live next door to one of my students and they had spent some time jumping around on the trampoline together. Friends were made before my classroom even came into play.

My new kinder is simply amazing. She is a sweetheart and is excited to learn. She has lived in the United States for a whole 23 days and despite any worries about culture shock, she seems to be adapting quite well. While she has a thick accent, she has a solid base in spoken English and her written understanding of the language is quite phenomenal. While she may not be reading yet, she knows a lot of her letters and some of the sounds. She knows a lot of basic three letter words though and shocked Mrs. S today during centers by writing the entire word for each image on a worksheet when all that was needed was the first letter. I think we'll be getting along quite well.

As I mentioned earlier, friends were made rather quickly so my only real concern now is keeping the chit-chatting of new best friends to a minimum and to squelch the constant hand holding among said friends (the group reached six today) as it makes forming a line and walking through the hall rather difficult. If these are my biggest concerns right now, I'll take it.