Change is in the Air

You may have noticed one teeny tiny change to the blog.

This teeny tiny change to the blog means big changes in my life!

Can you spot this teeny tiny change?

Alright, I'm just going to tell you.  On Thursday I landed myself a little full time, full year job!  It's very exciting and super overwhelming!

So big changes are coming my way this school year.

Which means some changes for my blog as well.

BUT...

Since I landed this job last minute (tomorrow is meet the teacher and school starts on Wednesday!) you can assume that I am just super busy and swamped to the max right about now.  Which means that until I feel like I am at least keeping my head above water the blog is staying as a substitute teaching blog.

Oh, and because I am sure you are dying to know....

I'll be teaching Grade 4 in the morning (mostly math and science).  Then in the afternoons I'll be teaching grade 8 ELA and grade 5 French.

Perhaps once I have some work up on the walls I'll post a picture or 2.  Don't expect any classrooms themes (unless the theme is tidy).

Telephone Pictionary

Games. Kids love them, adults love them, and sometimes they require little more than some paper and pens... this is one of those games. 

I'm willing to bet most of us have heard (and likely played) the game Pictionary. It is pretty simple. You pick a word or phrase to draw, you draw it, and your team (hopefully) guesses what you are drawing. Telephone is similar to this game but (in this substitutes opinion) way more entertaining. 

First I would like to say that Pictionary is a great game to play with students. Write down a bunch of words or phrases on pieces of paper and let the kids use a class (because they were really good and deserve a free period) to play it. But that might get old fast. Why not spice it up a little by including everyone's favourite childhood game... Telephone! 

This game is best played with a small class. As in a REALLY small class. 

Was it -50 outside and the school buses weren't running so you have a class of only the brave souls who walked (or got a ride with their parents)? Perfect. 

Is half the school out with the flu? Perfect. 

Is it senior skip day and you only have the 5 students who no one bothered to tell? Really perfect. 

Whatever the case may be you have the smallest class known to man and since you aren't teaching anything and have already watched 2 movies you need something to fill the after lunch lull. 

How it works: 

1. Cut a bunch of pieces of paper in half. 

2. Every student will need a certain amount of pieces of paper. There is a really simple formula to figure this out. How many students are participating? Cut that number in half and that is how many papers everyone needs. So if 10 of you are participating then everyone will need 5 pieces of paper. 

3. Everyone starts by drawing a picture on one side of a piece of paper. The picture can be anything but since you are playing this at a school you should make sure they keep it PG. I would say set time limits otherwise you might have an artist in the crowd who holds up the process. 

4. Once everyone has drawn a picture everyone passes their entire stack of papers (including the one they drew on) one person to the left. 

5. Once the papers have been passed the new person will look at what you drew and write out what it was on the back of the piece of paper with the picture. They can use as much description as they want. 

*sidenote: This could also be a great lesson on using descriptive words* 

6. Once they are done writing they pass everything one more person to the left. 

7. Now this person is only allowed to look at what the person before them wrote. They are not allowed to look at the picture on the other side. Based on what they read they are to now take a new piece of paper and draw what they have read. 

8. Everyone passes it the left again once they are done drawing. 

9. And once again, after only looking at what the person before them drew on the back of that piece of paper they write what the picture is. 

10. You keep passing the papers and drawing or writing depending on the round until you end up with your original stack of papers in your hand. 

11. When you get your original papers back everyone takes time to share the progression of the drawings and the writings. Usually laughs are had and someone has to take an emergency trip to the bathroom because they almost pee their pants. 

Now I know you are dying to see an example of this... here is a set of the drawings and writings from the last time I played the game. 

ENJOY!

Weird Things Kids Do

I'm going to let you in on a fun fact about myself. My feet tan extremely fast. By mid June I will be sporting a flip flop tan line that is unlike any other. But the weird thing is the rest of me doesn't tan that fast (especially my face).

Anywho, here is the actual story (and yes the above statement is important to the story)

I have these cheap white flats that I bought at Wal-Mart years ago. I love them for 3 reasons 1) they are comfortable, 2) they go with just about anything and 3) they make my feet look about 3 times darker.

I usually wear these flats with pants though because I don't like the way they look with shorts or even a skirt or dress. So I'm wearing pants with these flats and I'm assuming I also decided to pull on a shirt that day as well.

I'm subbing in a grade 1 class this day and we are doing calendar time. I'm sitting in a chair and the rest of the class is on the carpet in front of me. Nothing is out of the ordinary, we are having a great start to the day.

Then all of a sudden one child asks me what I have on my foot.

"umm... nothing is on my foot, unless you are referring to my shoe little child" I obviously attempt to respond but before I can get the words out the child is grabbing at my skin on my foot and pulling it (assuming I'm wearing those tanned coloured tights or nylons).

But since it really is just how dark my feet are nothing separates.

And what was almost a normal start to the day turned out to be the oddest one yet.

Sidenote: My cousins who are much older than a grade 1 student have also been perplexed by the skin on my feet also assuming that I was wearing some kind of nylons under my pants.

Parking

This is not a tip for substitute teaching in the classroom. This is a tip for when you first arrive at the school. Sometimes you will get a parking stall number, other times you will see that there is abundance of visitor parking and both of these are very tempting. You get to park your car nice and close to the school in the safety of the parking lot where surely no harm can come to your car.

But I park in neither of those spots*.

You see the thing about the school parking lot is that at the end of the day it gets more congested than a nose during cold and flu season. I've actually sat in my car a good 20 minutes at the end of the day because I couldn't back out of my space to exit the parking lot because of all the extra cars picking up their lovely children at the end of the day.

If you refuse to park your precious, precious car on the street (or maybe you can't because there is parking restrictions of the street) then I suggest doing the pull through method or backing into your spot. This way you do not have to reverse out of your spot at the end of the day and can be a little more aggressive about getting the nose of your car out into the flow of things instead of making a 37 point turn to get yourself backed out and into the flow.

* ok, I do occasionally park in those spots. If it is -30°C (or -50°C) then I'll park in the parking lot so that I'm able to plug in my car and don't have to run outside at lunch time and sit in my car for 10 minutes in the ice cold to run it.