My new addiction.

Please let me tell you about Pinterest.com. If you have never been there, go! It is full of amazing ideas for teachers! I just discovered it a few weeks ago, and I have already done quite a few classroom activities that I found on there. We made a 'parts of the plant' picture, some "Me on the Map" circles for Social Studies, and a cool landform and water map....that was edible! I am kind of addicted to Pinterest now. It is pretty much the coolest thing ever. So, go look at it. Now!

I will show you the plant pictures and the "Me on the Map" circles now. I'll add pictures of the edible physical maps a little later.

Parts of a Plant:

A straw for the stem and sunflower seeds in the middle of a cupcake liner flower

"Me on the Map" Activity:

MY CROOKED PLANET.

I guess they remembered that Earth is tilted on its axis..haha.

Next, I need someone to tell me how I can get this awesome necklace for less than $10,605. If you know someone who knows how to make cool globe necklaces, I will gladly substitute fake diamonds on the places I have been. I just love it....

                          heathermoorejewelry.com

Day 27
Quote of the Day: "Miss Harris, can I have a Band-aid?...because I don't want my finger to get disinfected."

Day 28
In our Reading story, the little Korean girl, Yoon, finds out that her name still has the same meaning in English. It looks different from how she wrote it in Korean, but it still means "Shining Wisdom". My kiddos wanted to know what their names meant, so I looked up the meanings and created a "Class Name Book".

I told Kamaria that her name meant "bright as the moon" or "like the moon". A few minutes later, she got super excited and said, "Now I know why the moon is always followin' me around when I go outside!"

You know I had to give it a little educational value...moon phases, continents, oceans, other bodies of water, sun rising and setting, other languages...the kids LOVE reading this book, so maybe I can trick 'em into learnin'.

Day 29
This is the day my classroom smelled like a rotting corpse. And I kept spraying air freshener all day long. As much as I love cinnamon apple febreze, when mixed with this horrid smell, it doesn’t quite do the trick. I kept looking all around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. I was scared I was going to find a dead animal or rotten food in some random place. I couldn’t figure out what it was! But whatever it was, I needed to find it. Because, if I didn’t, tomorrow would be worse. And then….when I sent my students to get their backpacks at the end of the day, a funny thing happened. One of my girls came up to me and said, “Miss Harris, my locker is making my backpack smell gross. Smell!” (..and she held it up to me. How kind!) It did smell gross. Very gross. So, I looked in her locker first. And. Nothing. So, I was a brave little teacher and unzipped the backpack, unsure of what was awaiting me. Let me interrupt myself to tell you another funny story that explains my fear at this very moment. You see, when I was student teaching, there was this little girl who was so excited to tell all of her friends what she had discovered that morning at the bus stop. She took out her backpack, reached in, and pulled out two birds. Baby birds. Dead, baby birds. Smelly, dead, baby birds. And I stood there in shock. See…teaching is never boring! Children are so unpredictable. So funny. So crazy. So odd. Well, anyway, back to my story….I reached in, pulled everything out, and…nothing! So I was so confused. Until! I noticed a sneaky side pocket. Which is where I found it…the mushy, smellyyyyy cauliflower that spent 5 whole days in a backpack. She had decided to take it home with her on the day of our veggie snack…which was Wednesday of the previous week. And, of course, she forgot about it. How her mother did not find it is beyond me. I was about to go mad sniffing around all day. Well, anyway, I put it in the trash can, the custodian emptied my trash can into a larger trash can that she rolls down the hall, and then the whole hallway smelled of nastiness.

The prior week was Labor Day week, the 4-day work week that somehow lasts longer than the 5-day work week. Every single time.
Me: "We got a little behind last week because we weren't here on Monday, so we're playing catch-up today."
Student: "Uhhhhhhh!!! Ketchup is sweet!"
I guess they have never heard about playin' catch-up before.

Student in the hallway: "Those lil' white girls in that line--are they from another country?"
Wait a minute. I'm white! Do they think I came from another country, too? Haha...probably so....nothing would surprise me now.

Student 1: "Miss Harris, he keeps sayin' the 'w' word."
Student 2: "I just said 'white'."
WHAT!??...My kids are crazyyyyyy.

On the news, I heard....researchers say watching Sponge Bob Square Pants is bad for your child’s brain. They say it poses a threat to your child’s attention span. Yes, that is why we have a bunch of A.D.D. children running around. Thank you, Sponge Bob. Silly little porous ocean-dweller who has an annoying voice and doesn’t know he is the wrong kind of sponge to live in salt water.

Now that all the children (and teachers like me) are A.D.D., we need yoga ball chairs. I heard a long time ago on the news that some schools were using yoga balls as chairs. It is supposed to help students with A.D.D. because they can bounce to get their energy out...instead of tapping pencils, kicking chairs, cutting erasers, and talking. So...I would like to do a pilot study to see if it really works. Who wants to donate 20 yoga balls to my classroom? No, wait...21! I want one, too!!


Funny integrated Social Studies and English:
Me: "Please make sure you capitalize Pacific Ocean because Pacific Ocean is the name of a specific ocean." haha...yeah, sometimes I crack myself up.

Day 30
Random Quote of the Day: "Miss Harris look like she's calm. And violent."