I have a ‘Free Hugs’ t-shirt and wore it to school a few weeks ago.  I didn’t think much of it.  My class loved it and over this last week, a few of them have been asking me to wear it again.  Yesterday, one little boy came out and just said, “Mr. ______, please wear [...]

Two random items from my day.  I thought about writing two posts, but decided to give you a two-fer. For Christmas, Santa brought me this cool little bracelet called an UP.  You wear it twenty-four hours a day and it tracks how much you move and sleep.  While I do exercise, today wasn’t a day [...]

Oh Eric – he always makes me smile and laugh everyday.  This afternoon, while assessing him on letter sounds, when I showed him the ‘A’, I was expecting him to say, ‘/A/, /A/, Apple’ as that’s the picture on the chart we use. Instead, when he saw the ‘A’, without missing a beat, he blurted [...]

Each morning, my entire school eats breakfast together.  Each classroom sits together and dines.  It’s something my principal spearheaded last year (before my arrival) to curb absenteeism.  After just one year of offering free breakfast to every child, it worked.  Not only were absences significantly down, but visits to the nurse were too. Kids ...

One of the things I love most about teaching kindergarten is the spontaneous nature of five-year-olds… and, well, me.  My brain works at a speed so fast, sometimes thoughts pass me by without ever truly garnering the attention they deserve.  Every once in awhile, one pops out of my mouth – and is a good [...]

As I prepare to start my new job so many emotions are swirling.  While I’m so excited about my new school (really the folks there have been so amazingly welcoming), it’s bittersweet because I’ll be leaving some very dear friends. One of my closest, dearest, friends, Ms. R., gave me a bag of goodies for [...]

This is the most ridiculous story I’ve ever written.  I’m almost embarrassed at how silly it is… almost.  Lucky for you, it takes an awful lot to ridicule me into sumbission. This week we learned all about beavers.  They really are fascinating animals. I found an IMAX documentary on Netflix about Beavers that was short (just under [...]

I’ve written about David’s infatuation with food before.  The kids just loves to eat.  When he’s not eating, he’s usually talking about food he’s eaten, will eat, or wants to eat. Today at snack time, David had a banana.  As I walked around his table, he was just finishing. “You know what would be a [...]

No, I haven’t resorted to putting collars on my students.  Today after Art, kids came in handing me this and that.  They often give me pictures, notes, and crafts from Art, but today, Randy handed me a thin black strip of paper taped together.  There was no ‘art’ on it, so I had to do [...]

Each year I’m amazed how many kids in my class love Star Wars.  As a child, my brother and I were totally ensconced in the Star Wars universe and I have to admit, even as an adult, I still watch the movies and have more than a few t-shirts with R2D2 on them. About a [...]