i just saw on Mo Willems’ blog that he’s got a new Elephant and Piggie book coming out in October!  I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

It’s Friday night, I’ve got three days of teaching left, and I’m one glass of chardonnay down so far.  In my role as mentor teacher, I did an observation cycle (pre-observation conference, observation, post-observation conference) with a teacher who didn’t want me in her room all year, so it came down to the last minute.  ...

We’ve finished learning the whole alphabet, and some of my little friends actually know the whole damn thing, so we’ve been celebrating our accomplishments with some spirited readings of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  On Monday we made a mural, and each child did his or her own little chicka tree, using templates I found here. Now [...]

Now that we’re in the home stretch, our theme is “Ready for Kindergarten,” and all the books on our shelf are about kindergarten and school.  Z. commented that some of them looked familiar, and I told her that we’d had a bunch of them out at the start of the year.  I was impressed, but [...]

We had the best time today. The entire school and almost the entire staff went to a big celebration in a park, and we had the school to ourselves. Three kids were absent today, as was Ali, so it was me, Jan (my para), and 12 preschoolers. We went on an exploration adventure, starting with the [...]

On a walk to the local library for preschool storytime, we saw a robin.  D., who speaks very little English and has some special needs to boot, pointed, and said, “chicken!” At first I told him it was a robin, and then decided to simplify, so I taught him the word “bird.” Then today when the principal [...]