Too Much Stuff...No Place to Put It

Geeze...I feel like I've been completely neglecting this blog. I've been working on getting a classroom blog ready for the parents and families of my preschoolers, and hopping over to this blog has slipped my mind.

The floors of my classroom are going to be waxed next week, which means I have to move everything out of the room and into the Sunday school rooms across the hall so this can happen. Ugh. I'm so not looking forward to it. Having just moved into a new house, I really want to be done with moving for a while....Oh well, we'll make it through.

I've been feeling pretty frustrated in my classroom recently. I know that I've already been able to spend more time in my classroom than most teachers get to spend in theirs over the summer, but I still don't feel like it's anywhere near ready for another year. I'd give anything for another room in which to store the toys and things I'm not using. There are too many cluttered shelves out in the open - they're ugly and disorganized and I'm cheap and really don't want to go out and buy a bunch of pretty totes to make them look pretty and organized. What to do? What to do?

What a disappointing entry. :( I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Vacation Recap!

We survived our vacation. We went back to our hometown for the weekend about an hour after we got home from vacation, so it felt like our vacation was five days instead of three. The five days were a bit of a whirlwind. We:

• hit up the amusement park/water park - I almost fainted (Seriously - I couldn't see anything because my vision clouded over. I was nauseous and sweating profusely.) from the heat while waiting in line for the amusement park rides, so we decided to spend most of the time in the water park. I'm incredibly glad we did, it was a blast! I love me a good water park!
• visited college friends - We finally got to meet our friend's son. We've known her for a year and a half and have heard plenty about him, but we didn't meet him until Thursday night. He's a cutie.
• shopped
• ate at our favorite restaurants
• walked across campus in the pouring rain under one umbrella
• went to a high school friend's wedding - The first wedding I've attended since Kyle and I got married. I never thought about how different a wedding would be when I'm experiencing it as a married person, but it is different. It's easier to see the small things don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
  
• went to one of Kyle's co-worker's son's birthday party - He turned two and loved every second of the attention. He was so excited by every present and even more excited about his cake.
  
• visited both of our families

So, now it's back to work. I'm, in general, feeling much better. Having a week to just be myself helped - I found my grounding again.

Today, while I was at the classroom, I found out about three more potential students for this year! I'm so excited! That puts us at 15 students, which is 3 more than last year, which is just awesome! It's easy to feel like there's no hope for us, but there are signs every once in a while that prove that feeling unnecessary.

I managed to create picture labels for toys and games and art today, so that just leaves me with discovery and dramatic play to take care of. Our open house is August 31, and our first day is September 6. I can get that all done before open house, I think!

Headin' For Vacation!

My husband and I are headed on a mini-vacation until Friday, and I am super excited! We're not going too far, only 120 miles from home, but it's a break none-the-less. We're headed back to the city where Kyle went to college. I fell in love with that town during my countless visits there during the four years we were in college. It's no:

(Maui!)

But it'll be fun. We're going to hit up a local amusement/water park, visit some friends in the area, walk around campus for old time's sake, and eat at our favorite restaurants. More importantly, we're going to sleep in and not feel bad about it and spend some quality time with the Food Network! I'm hoping we can stop at an outlet mall in the area too.

While I love my job, recently I have been feeling like I can't have a personal life because it interferes with my work life. I need to change that; I need to give myself some time to just be me - not be a preschool director/teacher. I'm looking forward to it.

What's That? A Productive Board Meeting? No Way!

We had one of the most productive board meetings of the year last night! It was phenomenal! Normally, I leave board meetings feeling like I have a million things to do and no time to do them, but last night I left feeling at peace with our goals and decisions. That's the key of it all - we actually made decisions. Usually, we fluctuate back and forth for a long time over basic decisions and our meetings have been known to last up to three hours. Last night, we were focused, we had an agenda, we made the necessary decisions, and we were out of there in an hour and a half! I was impressed.

Since registration didn't go as we had planned, we have teamed up with a marketing professor from a local college (she's a member of the congregation) to develop a marketing plan. We spent the last two months doing research - just trying to find out what the general perception of our preschool is and what the community wants us to offer. We looked over the research last night and did a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis based on what we discovered. When we finished the analysis, we created two solid objectives to be completed by next July.

Our objectives are:
1. Organize and complete at least 10 community events (field trips, charity fundraisers, public appearances, etc.) by July 31, 2012.
2. Apply for and receive a QRS rating by December 31, 2011

I think they are completely achievable objectives which will help us promote our preschool for the positive place it is.

In other news, my husband and I are getting ready to move to a house tomorrow! It's been a crazy week that way. We've been making daily trips up there to move truck-loads of stuff, so we only have to put furniture and big things in the U-haul. I have mixed feelings about the move. I'm excited because it's a house (we have a yard, laundry, a mailbox - all of those good things), it's closer to my job (same travel time for Kyle), and it's in a smaller town, but at the same time, I'm worried about how I'll be received there. I'm afraid of a negative response to my presence, but I'm taking a leap of faith and hoping those concerns aren't real.

Now to get all of this packing done...:(

Break Out the Champagne!

I FINISHED MY ENDORSEMENT!!!!!!!

I just turned in the final assignments (read: six five-page papers....yuck!) tonight! If all goes well and I pass those last two classes, I will now have three endorsements on my teaching license! I feel like every sentence tonight needs to end with an exclamation point - that's how excited I am!

Now to fill out all the lovely paperwork that goes along with asking the state to add a few words to my license...

Last First Time

Because I am a teacher - a teacher who loves reading and has a passion for instilling that love in every student who enters my classroom - and because I'm particularly emotional today, I feel the need to express what is going on in my heart today, as I prepare myself for the end of the Harry Potter era.

I grew up with Harry Potter - so much so that I feel like he is my fifth brother. People bring up the argument all the time demanding to know why I see him as such a hero. He lies, cheats, steals, disobeys authority, and many other horrible things I'm sure I'm forgetting. That's what makes him so special to me, though; he's human. Nothing about him is incredible, and he makes mistakes. He's an average/slightly above average wizard, who knows a little more about the dark arts than the others simply because of who he is. BUT he has a passion, a heart, big enough to conquer all evil. He takes on problems that are much bigger than he is, and because of this passion, because of the love and loyalty he feels for those around him, he is able to succeed. He epitomizes all the values I hope to instill in my students and my own children: friendship, loyalty, family, care, strength, endurance, bouncing back.

At midnight tonight, theaters all over will be showing the last movie in the Harry Potter saga, and I'm devastated. I know, there's nothing new in the movies - I've read the book. I've been clinging to these movies though. They kept the story alive. I know I can reread the books and watch any of the movies anytime I'd like, but there's something about the first time. There will be no more first times.

I cried when I finished the last book (which I devoured in one day - just because I couldn't stand to not know what was going to happen - now I wish I had taken some time and really cherished that last first time).

I'll probably cry tonight.

To Harry Potter! To everything he taught me and to everything he'll teach people who continue to read the books!

Making Improvements: One Day at a Time

I spent the last two days in my classroom organizing some centers and cleaning up the mess left over from Saturday's festivities. I'm pretty excited about the progress I've made. I feel like I have a much better understanding The Creative Curriculum, and that is helping me design my classroom with more clarity.

My biggest concern about my classroom last year was about how much open space I had. Now, I didn't mind this too much, but I did notice the kids seemed to wander a lot. This often lead to running and all sorts of craziness. By itself it wasn't horrible, but when other kids were trying to build tall towers or focus on a quieter activity, these crazy running bursts were distracting and often destructive.

I managed to turn my classroom into decent centers today! I've rearranged the room two times now this summer, and I think I've finally discovered an arrangement I like.

I started by organizing my Toys and Games center. After reading the chapter on it in The Creative Curriculum, I took everything off my shelves and put them into four piles: self-correcting toys (toys with a clear-cut way to go together), open-ended toys (toys with no right or wrong way to use them), collections (items that are open-ended and share commonalities), and cooperative toys (games children play together).

I realized I had about a million toys in that center! Way too much - no wonder the center was always a mess! I ended up choosing only 4-5 toys from each category to put back on the shelf. When I head back up there next week, I plan to label the shelves and the baskets like I did in the block center to make clean up easy for the kids.

Here's the finished center:

I'm loving that I have a table in the center this year. Last year, the kids took the toys wherever they wanted...It was a mess.

On the top of this side of the shelf are my collections. (Although, really, I think these collections belong in Discovery. It's all I have right now though.) Below are the open-ended toys - teddy bears, pegs and pegboards, links, beads, alphabet blocks, and magnetic letters. The self-help frames on the bottom right are actually self-correcting toys, but this was the only place I could fit them.

On this side of the shelf are my self-correcting toys and my cooperative games. The self-correcting toys are on the top - nesting cups, shape stackers, shape box, puzzles, and color pegboard. The cooperative games are on the bottom.

Pretty cool, huh? I'm not sure how well I'm meeting the requirements of The Creative Curriculum, but I feel better about it now than I did.

I moved to my art center after I finished Toys and Games. Last year, I planned art activities for the kids. They were normally process art projects, but I told them what supplies they could use and most of the kids were working on the same project at the same time. I want to have a more open-ended art center next year: a place where kids can go to exhibit their creativity whatever way they choose.

Here's what my art center looked like before (please don't laugh....):

Pretty awful... No wonder the kids never used it the way I wanted them to. After studying the chapter on Art in The Creative Curriculum and a quick trip to the dollar store in town, this is what my art center looks like now:
I added painting supplies (paint shirts, paintbrushes, paint, tins to put paint on, and sponges), play dough and play dough tools, collage materials, glue, markers, crayons, colored pencils, pencils, paper, and yarn.

I'm pretty excited about the possibilities here! Allowing the kids the freedom to do art at their own will - so exciting!