Week.....weak

What strange weather that Georgia has!! Last Saturday and Sunday I wore short sleeves because it was 70 degrees out!! And on Thursday it sleeted / snowed!! Although it did not stick, it was so weird. It may snow on Mon and Thur too, but I'm hoping school will not be out because my county (and surrounding counties) have used up all our snow days. We've had to cancel a Feb break in order to make those days up since the snow days were not put into the calendar (due to furlough days I think). Never thought I'd say that I didn't want a snow day to stay home from school! :-)

This week I taught more and next week I will be almost full time teaching. We had testing for an hour to 2 hours 3 days this week, so that was boring. One difficult thing this week has been that some of the kids want to come up and talk to me about things - whether it be something related to school / what they're learning, or something totally different - and I want to listen to them but I have to keep teaching, keeping the students on task, and discpline those who need it.

I think one of the favorite parts of the day for me is reading out loud to the class. It doesn't happen every day because of the busy schedule though. We are currently reading through a chapter book and they take a quiz on it every few chapters to be sure they're listening, but they like to listen. I used to think that was just a time filler and fun activity, but in college they told us it is much more than that. They are able to hear us read fluently, with fluxuation in our voice, and how we read more than just monotone. If they don't hear their peers or parents read with that, they don't know what it sounds like to read out loud properly. It is also a chance for me to stop and say, "Do you guys know what that word means?" and if they don't we use context clues to figure it out. We cover things like foreshadowng when I ask, "What do you think is going to happen next since it just said....." and I tell them it is foreshadowing. So any story elements we're teaching can be brought into the story.

I went to Target last night to buy a composition book to model a social studies notebook we'll be doing with the 13 colonies, and one thing I always want to buy are notebooks. Journals too. I admit, it's a weakness. :-) On my bookshelf I have an enitre shelf of just notebooks, not including my journals. I have notebooks for: poems I've written, quotes I like (although I haven't kept up with it in the past few years), quite time journals, notes I took when I was in high school conferences and youth group, those books that have "who am I" questions from different years, fictional stories I've written, things I've learned through helping out in classrooms for teaching, and more. I've kept a journal since i was 7, so those are somewhere else, but they are growing in number. I went through my middle school journals about 2 years ago and typed up just the stuff I wanted to keep and trashed the rest because there were so many negative things about middle school that I didn't want to remember or keep. So that made a little more space.

Another thing I have a hard time not buying - books! I read a good number over the break from the end of my fall semester until I started student teaching in January, but still have many unread books on my shelves. But I can't even begin to read them. Yet I feel the urge to go to the bookstore and buy some more. Rediculous!

And lastly, candy. Every holiday is heavy with candy! Isles upon isles of candy! Valentines Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas.... Besides that, have you noticed the isles in the gorcery stores or places like Target now have almost an entire row dedicate to candy? So much to choose from! So much temptation! And there's always some at the checkout isles. So, those three things are difficult for me not to buy. Target is a killer since it has all of those things! I did buy a giant chocolate and peanutbutter heart last night (Resee's) and can't wait to eat it. But I don't need to eat so many sweets!

Tomorrow night is the Superbowl. I won't be watching it. We're still having our young adult's worship service tomorrow night, but at halftime. Since we'll have Tivo on the big screens in the worship center, they'll be able to pause it until the service is over. Thursday night at bible study we meet at someone's house, and they have a newborn baby. Well, she's 8 weeks old now I think. I get to hold her almost every week and she's so cute! I have to leave bible study around 9 - 9:15 PM now since I have to go home and go to bed, so that kind of stinks, but I'm still glad to be there each week.