Stretching

Yesterday was a PD day. That meant that instead of a slow start to my week with only three classes (ie, lots of time to get things done!) I was thrust into my busy day without the warm-up round. It's a bummer. I probably should have stayed late after wrapping up PD, because there was, in fact, a lot I needed to get done today, but I was falling asleep, and I just couldn't do it. Also, we've been trying to take care of a colleague who's going through some mental anguish, so I wanted to get home to check on her. This colleague is the same one we've been trying for the last two days to get into school, and that meant going in at 7 instead of 6:15 like I usually do. It's not like I'm the most organized, well-prepared person in the world, but I get by...or at least I do until a week like this.

Then I scramble.

I got to my classroom at 7:30, two hours before my first class. My materials were not prepped, which meant tracing lines for the KG2's to cut (to make their UAE flags for the upcoming National Day), and drawing grids for Year 2 to use to plan out their mosaics. I got everything pulled together JUST IN TIME for my first class - then realized the projector was disconnected somewhere. So I winged it without the pictures I was going to show them. I feel like the mosaic lesson went fairly well. I let the children handle the foam squares we will be using for tesserae (and only one tore theirs up the whole day. The hardest part for me was letting the children do the planning. A lot of them didn't understand the idea of making a pattern with the colors within the 6x6 square. I think before tomorrow's lesson with them I'll try to make up templates for them to choose the pattern they want to use and fill in the colors that they like. Although I want to give the kids some freedom of choice, I also want the projects to really turn out nice, and be something that knocks people's socks off, because so far I haven't done so. Admittedly, it's early in the year, but still.

The Emirati flags with KG2 went really well. It was simple cut and paste, with three kids working together and each sharing one-third of the paper they cut with their tablemates to give everyone the colors they need, but it still took me the entire 40 minutes to get through 12 kids, and there are more to go. It made me glad that I went ahead and started this week, because with me only seeing them every two weeks, it may take me up until the celebration to get them done.