Friday in Disguise

It was so lovely to have a Thursday that was really Friday:)

Teaching:

I don’t feel like we got much done but we completed a fact sheet about the Yukon Territory. It has the highest Canadian mountain- Mount Logan. It’s largest city and capital is Whitehorse which also happens to be the third largest city in Canada in actual size. It has the most northern botanical garden. The gold rush hit Alaska in 1896 and it became part of Canada in 1897.

We also got a class book made about comparing measurements. It was super cute as the book goes, ” I am smaller than a *, but bigger than a *”. The children came up with some neat ideas!

The best part of the day May have been my lunch! On Thursdays I have lunch delivered from lunch lady and today it was tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich. The ultimate comfort food on a wet, rainy day:)

This afternoon my co teacher and I got really ambitious and dyed eggs with 40 children. We only had five broken eggs and one tipped dye pot. Not bad! I like doing these things as I’m sure those are the events the children will actually remember:)

Knitting:

I have been alternating between knitting and reading and have gotten 1/4 of the way through the lace band at the bottom of my tank top. I’m hoping to finish tomorrow, but we’ll see.

Reading:

I am reading The summer of Sunshine and Margot by Susan Mallory and am really enjoying it so far!

Exercise:

Still not really energetic so nothing but walking to and from work and 50 squats for me today. I’m hoping tomorrow to go back to normal!

That’s it for me tonight and I’m looking forward to lounging in bed tomorrow morning!

Have fun!

AJ

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Trivia Tuesday

The work day was long, but the night was fun!

Teaching:

Nothing too exciting- another day of being flexible because we had class photos interrupt us this morning. There went writer’s workshop:(

We got a math drill done and the children drew our tree in Spring while I was out doing track attack again this afternoon.

After school I ran around gathering all the supplies we need for Como Lake relays tomorrow. Looks like I’ll be standing in the rain for a few hours tomorrow:(

Knitting:

I tried the German short rows today and was doing fine, but I couldn’t do all the repeats because I ran out of stitches. The first row I had to knit to 15 stitches before the marker each way. On the second row would it says to knit to 14 stitches before the double stitch. Is that right or should it be 16 stitches before the market? Please help if you know about this!

Trivia:

We had a pretty good group for trivia tonight, but I was absolutely no help as it was an all-tv night and I don’t watch tv. I got a couple of the questions from shows I watched as a kid.

I got:

The actor who played the father on Growing Pains.

The last name of the family on the show Family Ties.

The name of the judge on Night Court.

The last name of the actor on Silver Spoons.

The name of the actor who played Roseanne’s husband.

The name of the character on Saved By the Bell who went on to Showgirls.

The country Lucy’s husband came from on I Love Lucy.

The creator of Fraggle Rock.

That was about it though. It seemed like a lot of the questions were about really old shows.

Next week it is back to being a variety of topics. I feel like I should read some non fiction so I can be more helpful as they never ask about Hallmark movies🤣🤪

Have fun!

AJ

Flexibility

It’s a good thing I’m a flexible person!! My day at work never seems to go according to plan!

Teaching:

My special helper was pulled for reading support first thing this morning, so Calendar was delayed, journals went out the window and we worked on finishing up stuff from last week.

At lunch I had a meeting where nothing was decided and I got to hear people complain about how track attack was going. Too bad no one had the guts to tell me these things to my face when I was planning track attack!

Track attack this afternoon seemed to go fine, but then, what do I know. When I’m with children I’m focused on them, not on what else is happening. Hopefully it was smooth everywhere else!

After doing a few laps for jog-a-long after school (yes I just walked today), I sat down to organize the drivers for Como Lake relays. It is a local race that I am taking 25 students to. I guess there was some drama last week as two other teachers sat down to do the drivers, decided there weren’t enough drivers, sent hinge another set of forms, and of course today I found we have too many drivers. I’m glad I won’t be there Wednesday afternoon when parents grumble because they’ve taken time off and only have to take their own child.

It is days like this that I would like to just teach in my classroom and nothing else!

Family:

My mom stopped by this evening to help me with a few things before they leave town in the morning. I don’t think she considered these to-do items when she prayed for a petite daughter. We got my chair moved, the lightbulbs replaced in the kitchen, my storage locker checked, and my bike repositioned in the back of my truck. It’s a pain that being so short none of these items are easy. We also figured out my SodaStream and it was user error.

Knitting:

I have spent the evening knitting like crazy and have finally finished the stockinette body of the April Tank. Tomorrow I have to learn how to do German short rows😳

Movie:

Once again, Hallmark kept me company as I was knitting. I watched Matchmaker Santa which was cute and extremely unrealistic, even for a Christmas movie! I also watched Autumn Dreams which was quite cute!

Well I need sleep in the hopes of one day getting rid of this cold so I can run again!

Have fun!

AJ

Half Alive

Well I went back to work today though all I really wanted to do was sleep!

Teaching:

We had to do a lot of catch up as my TOC spent a lot of time singing with my class. Singing is great, but I really wish she had done what I had left first!!! My students were great though and we got through a lot!

Of course, first thing this morning I got the news I was getting a new international student today! It definitely made for a busy start and I’m nowhere near having everything ready for her:(

After school, I got home as quickly as I could so I could get a nap in. Totally necessary by that point!

Family:

I’ve had my nephew Gus tonight. We met up with my parents for dinner at Red Robin. I split a guacamole bacon burger with my mom, and it was okay. It was nice to see my parents finally since I was quarantined until this point

Gus and I continued on to play a couple of games of bowling. We were way better when we had them put the bumpers up🤣. I’m not sure bowling is ever going to be our game.

Finally we stopped for ice cream at Matteo’s and came home to veg. He is playing on his phone and I found a Hallmark movie:)

Movie:

The Sweetest Heart is about a bakery owner who wants to expand, but just as her business has the opportunity to grow, her old flame returns to town. This movie has two very cute men in it and makes me want to bake!!!

I’m back to enjoying the couch with this cutie!

Yay Friday

Well the highlights of my day were first thing and last thing. Pretty good bookends:)

Teaching:

In the month of April, our show and tell theme is “something you can read”. Each student practices a book to read to the class. It is one of my favourite months of sharing as it is so neat to see how far they have all come in their reading!

I changed up Friday journals again for last term to having the children write a newspaper. We still brainstormed all we had done this week and each student picked one topic to write about. I then shrunk the writing and pictures down, attached them to one 11×17 sheet I had folded in half and photocopied one for each student. I was super happy with how it turned out! This week I made the children correct their spelling, but the other teachers were suggesting that I don’t so parents can see how their child is doing. I’ll think about that and may alternate between the two as I think it’s also important for children to learn to edit for a good copy. The neatest thing was that they voted on a name and decided on Miss B’s Busy Bees at Work.

We also finally got to our word problems this morning, but had to give up running in order to do so.

Finally this afternoon we had flashlight Friday reading which the children love, buddy time with our older buddies and the Miss B draw. All in all, a pretty good Friday!

After school we had to stay and put the gymnastics equipment away:( At least it’s done now.

Exercise:

I met up with L for a workout and it was okay, though I already feel it.

We did a half hour rolling hills workout for cardio. I was on the bike so it definitely used different muscles than normal!

Then we did squat to military press, plank rows, hip swings and push-up to plank jacks -10 reps each with a minute of treadmill running in between.

Since that wasn’t enough we ended with static lunge with front raise, swing lunge to lateral raise and v ups- 3 sets.

I was definitely ready for the steam by the end!

Shopping:

I ran home and grabbed a quick shower then we hit Freshii for dinner (the kids Kung fu bowl is perfect for me), and then we did Costco.

It was great to do Costco as Lyndsay and I eat similarly so we could share a lot of things that normally come in too big of a quantity for me to buy. We got tomatoes, celery, beets, sole fillets, ground turkey, overnight oats, mushrooms, grapes, and Thai peanut coconut sauce. I can’t wait to try it on the fish!

We both felt a little unorganized tonight and figure we’ll do a better job of lists, etc next time:)

Have fun!

AJ

Chaos and Art

My day just felt very chaotic start to finish.

Teaching:

Half of my class seemed to be missing for different reasons this morning so we finished our project from yesterday. As part of Health and Career Education the students had to decorate a person like themselves and then surround the person with words that describe themselves. Some, of course, turned out better than others. Some had real trouble identifying characteristics of their personality rather than just what they like.

We finally accomplished Calendar and read the book The Recess Queen and brainstormed ways we can solve problems for a class book. I was super impressed with what the students came up with!

We did get a tiny bit of math done which centered around addition and subtraction word problems. I had to slow the children down as they just wanted to blurt the answer, but I need them to learn the steps!

Finally we did some rainy day art, even though it turned out to be a spectacular sunny day. It was simple and yet quite cute!

After school we had the kids Bookclub which went really well today!

Exercise:

I walked home with sore feet, but still had to go out for a run to finish my Squad Runner mission and to get going towards my yearly goal. My slowest km was the first and it was the only one where I got to go downhill. I’m sure you can figure out my run wasn’t super great today, but I did what I had planned to do!

It was definitely my music that got me through the run! I sometimes run without, but prefer to have music. I know some people stick to s certain genre, but I’m all over the place. Some of the ones that got me going today were:

Rockin Robin by Bobby Day

Singles You Up by Jordan Davis

Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson

Downtown by Macklemore

Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard

Stick Like Glue- Sugarland

Don’t Stop Believin- Journey

Hit Me With Your Best Shot- Pat Benatar

Stronger- Kelly Clarkson

I have hundreds of songs on my playlist, but maybe I’ll share some regularly in case anyone is looking for some new running music. I have to warn you that I don’t pay attention to how fast the music is though.

Knitting:

Still working on the April Tank Top…

Reading:

I’m working hard on getting some books off my TBR and tonight I was reading Definitely Not Mr. Darcy. It is about a broke single mom who goes to England to participate in a Regency era reality dating show. So far, it’s okay, but not amazing, but maybe it will improve dramatically.

If my mixed up day was t enough I had both my laundry detergent and my fan fall over this evening. They both startled me as they made quite the racket!

Well I have an early day tomorrow so I’m going to sleep early!

Have fun!

AJ

Better

Well I put more polysporin drops in this morning and I noticed this afternoon that my eye felt better. Hopefully that will continue!

Teaching:

We had a quiet morning with printing. We tackled fact families after recess and this afternoon we worked on describing ourselves and learned about British Columbia. The children have ran 671km so far so we have made it to Kitimat. The students did great at remembering facts about British Columbia, such as we have 1/4 of the freshwater in Canada, our tallest waterfall is on Vancouver Island, 4% is the land is farms and we have about 5 million people in population.

We have even already answered some of their questions.

Exercise:

After a quick meeting with a parent I walked a few laps for jog-a-long with Lyndsay and then went to boot camp. It was tough to get going when I haven’t been working out much. We did: iso squat front walk/ lateral walk, banded toe reach/ squat to lateral leg raise, banded overhead press/ banded plank in-outs, 1/2 get up/ high knees, push-up to plank jack/ static crunch heel touch, bench lunge, stepdown to bicep curl, burpee with a bench hop over.

I was definitely tired by the end! However, I still had to finish my Squad Runner mission so went out for a 4km run this evening. I passed the learn to run group I took when I started running. It made me realize I still have some of the habits they taught me, such as having my thumbs brush my thighs.

Knitting:

I have been working on my April Tank some more. It’s going pretty good, though it takes a long time to make progress with fingering weight yarn.

Movie:

I’ve been watching the movie Ed. It’s a cute movie about a baseball playing chimp. It has some bathroom humor so I think 8-10 year old boys would love it!

Well I’m off to sleep!

Have fun!

AJ

Back to the Grindstone

Boy was it tough to get my head into the game today!

Reading:

Last night I finished Smitten with the Brit by Melonie Johnson. This was the second book in the series and I very much enjoyed it.

This is the story of Bonnie and Theo that we were introduced to in book one of the series. This was a enjoyable read and quite different from the first book,but the changes matched the characters well.

I really enjoyed this book even though I saw some events coming for a while!

The characters were interesting and multi-faceted with issues, but no unnecessary drama. The hero was perfect- dimples and an accent, need I say more?!?!

I also really liked how the friend group played as big a role in this second book as in the first!

I am now on the hunt for a new classic book to listen to. If anyone has a suggestion, I’d love to hear it!

Teaching:

My students were relatively well behaved for the first day back. We’ll see how long this lasts. We shared about our Sprint Break and then wrote about it in our journals. We explored fact families and practiced as a class and this afternoon we started our new Socials unit on Canada. We of course, started with a list of wonders. They had some good questions and I’ll take a picture when I get them put up tomorrow. We are doing something similar to our Santa exploration, but the children will be participating in jog-a-long, a school wide running program, and we will use their mileage to move across Canada, learning about places as we go. Today they did their first running and managed to run the equivalent of 68km! I’ll just have to figure out where is 71 km away from us.

I survived the staff meeting after school, but ate way too much junk food! Does anyone else resort to eating when stuck in an interminable meeting? I need to find something else to do!

Knitting:

This morning I got one row of my April Tank done, but thankfully after I got home from work I got another ten done. I’m on the never-ending stockinette now. There are about 14 stitches of interest each round, but it’s not quite enough to make it interesting.

I have been doing well at using up skeins this year-38 to date, but unfortunately I just added 37 more to the stash. I think I may have to sell some!

Exercise:

I got out for a quick run tonight. I had planned on going all around the inlet trail with Sarah but her back is bothering her. I didn’t even make it the whole way as I felt like I was going to be sick after eating all that junk! I got something done towards my April mileage and it was below 7min/km so I need to be happy!

Well that’s it for me! I’m off to bed as this going to work thing is tiring! 🤪

Have fun!

AJ

T-19 Hours

I am so close to a holiday, I can almost taste it!

Teaching:

Today was as crazy as ever with trying to tie up loose ends. We had a visit from an operating room nurse this morning that was informative and interesting. I didn’t realize the hospital near me provided so many services!

It was also the wrap up of our community unit today so we had the students dress up as a career. There were some super good ideas- arborist, lacrosse player, vet, dance teacher, hockey player, mom, teacher, coach, etc.

We wrote about the parent visits. I can’t say they was any great writing- mostly just lists of which parents came.

We also did some catch-up before the students took their books home.

After school I had the fun of meeting with eight different parents. The last one showed up out of the blue:(. I survived, but that’s about all I can say about the meetings.

Exercise:

My stomach wasn’t very happy so my run was not great and definitely not as fast as yesterday. I feel like I weigh about a hundred pounds extra right now, so I’m just glad I went and that I’m still on track to make my 100 kilometers this month:)

Knitting/ Reading:

I have discovered a way to read a hard cover while I knit endlessly in the round so it’s been a nice, quiet evening by the fire:)

Have fun!

AJ

Finally Wednesday

This week seems to be taking forever though I know it just feels that way because I get to be on holidays at the end of it.

Teaching:

My students came in very productive this morning and got their five pieces of art glued into their scrapbooks first thing. I do love it when the children get independent enough to follow a list on the board:) lol however only five art projects in a term is a dismal failure!

We had a car sales manager come in this morning. It was fine and I definitely learned that Honda doesn’t just make cars, but is an engineering firm.

This afternoon we had a second aren’t come talk who is the head wrestling coach at a university and a former Olympic wrestler himself. I learned so much and he is definitely the best parent presenter we’ve had this year- just so charismatic! He taught the children a wrestling stance and then flipped one of the boys! Unfortunately all of my photos show faces so you’ll just have to take my word for it:)

We finished the day with gymnastics. I am impressed with my class this year as they have started going around and checking the mats and repositioning the hoops once they have their shoes and socks off. I guess they really want to do gymnastics as they aren’t allowed to touch equipment until this has been done and I’ve never asked them to do it. Kids taking initiative is so wonderful! ( and yes I do check everything myself too)

Exercise:

After chatting with some colleagues after school, I headed home for a run. I managed just over 4km and I actually hit a 6:10km. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before! I just hope it wasn’t a mistake!

Such a gorgeous day for a run! I may need to retire the down jacket soon🤣

Reading:

I finally finished Lunch In Paris by Elizabeth Bard last night. I added this book to my Goodreads TBR in March 2012!

The book was fine. It was about an American woman who meets a French man and ends up moving to Paris and her transition into this culture.

The book was interesting but I found it disjointed and tough to follow. I hadn’t realized eight years had passed until I got to the end of the book and that was stated in the epilogue.

I also found I wasn’t really invested in the characters. I didn’t feel as though I got to know them.

I did like how the book centered around food, but quickly realized the recipes weren’t for me with my food allergies. The parts of the book at the market were some of my favorites.

of course, being done my book meant I headed to the library this evening with my mom. I only came home with 14 books, not bad for me!!🤣

Well I’m leaving you now so I can go read!

Have fun!

AJ