This Week At School

It was another week of indoor recess' up here in my part of Canada (including one snowy for some divisions outside of the city - I was scheduled to work inside the city that day though).

grade 1/2 classroom

On Monday I was covering for a bunch of teachers at one of the schools I frequent as they went to meetings. This is always kind of nice because it means if you have one rougher class that you likely are only actually with them for about an hour. Unfortunately, myself and that one "rougher" class kept bumping into each other throughout the day (I ended up having them 3 times throughout the day). Otherwise the day was good... I even got a bunch of reading in of the novel that I brought along with me.

On Tuesday I was at the colony school which is usually a fairly easy day. This time I was in the middle years room which meant they were on their computers for a good amount of the time and I was reminding them to stay on the websites they were supposed to be on.

On Wednesday I was back at one of the schools I frequent. We did a math Valentine's Day activity that likely could have taken up 4 hours of the day (no one actually got the whole thing completed). They also did a WWI Instagram activity and reading (amongst other things).

The last 2 days of the week I was in the same classroom (which lucky for me was actually a wonderful class - so I obviously left my name and number in the hopes that I might get to return one day soon). It was a 1/2 split and they were some of the smartest grade 1's and 2's that I've had the pleasure of subbing for. BUT, these days were extra special because I got to go back to my old elementary school. Since it was indoor recess one of the students insisted on taking me on a tour of the school so we could see if anything had changed since I was there. The staff is all different, there no longer is a computer lab (it's a bike lab now?? - no one was sure what that meant), and the classrooms have all been changed around (my kindergarten classroom is no longer a kindergarten class). They also have a dance room and elevator now. They loved watching some Storyline Online and Sid The Science Kid.

Something nice that they did at this school was they had a basket of fresh fruit in each of the classrooms. This way if a student didn't bring a snack or wanted something more to eat they had a healthy option to eat at school (and a lot of them did eat something from the basket)

healthy school snack basket

All in all it was a busy but good week!

Valentine's Day Art

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had done a quick Valentine's Day art activity with the grade 2/3 class I was in (I know it was a bit before Valentine's Day but the teacher had requested it... maybe she put the art work up in the hall or something).

It was super easy to do and I pretty much started by showing them the sample pictures from this website.

After I showed them what we would be doing we talked about some of the things we noticed about the pictures (the trees took up the whole space on the page, there were lots of hearts in the tree and some were on the ground, etc).  

I kept the picture up on the projector for them to refer back to when they wanted and of course there were a few that just copied the example but I also encouraged them to be creative as well.

Here is what that grade 2/3 class came up with

one of the branches on this one (or the nose?) is sticking out of the paper!

To keep them from wasting a bunch of paper I cut the brown construction paper in half (the long way... so that they could make as long of branches as they wanted) and the pink and red construction paper in half the other way.  The kids could come up and ask for more but most didn't so I felt like it was likely a good amount of paper for them to be using.

Psst...

Here's another Valentine's Day related art lesson

And if you are still looking for a good Valentine Day card to hand out to your students this year when I taught grade 5/6 I used these mustache cards and put a sucker through each one (they were a big hit!)

Valentine Boxes

An entire year ago I was working at a school where the entire school (ok, it may have had only 2 classes and about 30 students) made valentine boxes... Valentine's day has to be one of  my least favourite holidays... I must admit I'm lacking the creativity to plan something grand for my students to do on this day... but then I saw these kids being so creative with their valentine boxes and I thought to myself... "Hmm... why not have kids plan their own craft to make on this day and have it also serve the purpose of holding all their valentines".  So, I'm posting this a bit before Valentine's Day just in case you are also lacking the creativity for Valentine's Day and need some ideas!

I would have students plan their box out a week or so before we made them and have them gather up the supplies (for the most part) that they will be needing for it.  

unicorn valentine box

tractor valentine box

panda valentine box

Lego valentine box

The whole schools valentine boxes

And just a warning... we cut the slots in the top with a box cutter which I always kept out of reach of all the children... and who ended up getting cut with it in the end?  I did... so be careful!

This Week At School

Our deep freeze continued into this week with temperatures reaching below -50 with the windchill! Of course this was also the week that I had booked Monday-Thursday outside of the city for work and of course school was cancelled on both Tuesday and Wednesday due to it being too cold.

On Monday I was at the school of 9 so it was a fairly easy day (especially since they had guitar lessons in the afternoon which meant I got to read a book for a while.

Tuesday I was only supposed to work in the afternoon so I waited until 11am before making myself available to work in the city for that afternoon (because my rural job was cancelled). I was pretty sure there would be an abundance of jobs but I guess by 11 most schools had decided they could manage with the teachers that made it in and the students that were there that day. Surprisingly, I did see some jobs still available to be worked at in the morning but I decided they likely didn't actually want someone to show up for 45min of work and get paid for the entire half day so I didn't take any of them. Instead I stayed inside where it was warm and made some cookies.

I found out Tuesday evening that the PD that the teacher I was suppose to go in for on Wednesday was getting cancelled and so I was able to make myself available in the city Tuesday evening. It was probably about 30 seconds after I made myself available that I started getting phone calls for where I could work and I accepted a job that was close to where I live in a grade 1/2/3 classroom.

It was the right job to accept as I got to go on a field trip with the class. We went to see a Julie B. Jones musical at a high school nearby. This ended up taking most of our morning and they had gym and choice time in the afternoon which meant the only class they had to really do work in was when we did some printing practice. The musical was great and I got to see it for work which I think is pretty cool.

By Thursday it had warmed up enough that school was [just barely] back in session for the rural division I sub in so it was off to the colony for me for the day. I wish I could say that after 2 days off the kids were all eager to learn... they were alright.

Friday was the only day this week I hadn't booked in advance. One of the divisions I work in didn't actually have classes which meant there were only 2 divisions that I had left to work in... I ended up having the day off.