Applelooza!

Wow. Just wow. What a week. It started off with some amazing training on Differentiated Instruction, some science experiments, and then Johnny Appleseed madness with the kiddos. Where oh where to begin? How about Monday...I went to a two day training with a Kindergarten teacher friend of mine and we learned all about the amazing world of Differentiated Instruction. Since I am an alternate certification teacher, I did not have endless courses on how to differentiate. Therefore, I was very excited about this amazing training. It is so nice to go to a training where you actually take away a lot of knowledge instead of doodling on a notepad and daydreaming about what you could be doing with your students instead of sweating out sub plans and sitting through a painfully boring lecture....what a waste of makeup! That about sums up Monday and Tuesday. Winning!

Wednesday...oh Wednesday...I was welcomed back with 18 hugs and lots of love. I just love my kiddos! Well we did some fun Apple-themed experiments on Wednesday & Thursday. (I will load some pictures later since I'm still figuring out this blogging thing.) We watched an apple brown and then we figured out what keeps them from browning (lemon juice!). We also did a Sink or Float experiment...guess what? It floated! They really really wanted me to throw the water on them. They were very disappointed when I wouldn't douse them like they just coached the winning team of the Super Bowl. They shall survive.

Today was Johnny Appleseed Day. I remember when I was teaching fifth grade and I thought, oh that looks like so much fun! Well, I was half right! Lets just say that I was only slightly prepared for what would happen when you put 18 six year olds in a room and tell them that we are going to have a party and craft all afternoon. Ok, lets be real, I had no clue what I was in for. BUT, I did stay up late cutting out all of the crafty things their hearts desired. We had Johnny Appleseed pots on our heads thanks to some blueish gray construction paper, and half of a sentence strip. Then we made a Johnny Appleseed of our very own. Followed by an apple wreath...I will post pictures of what they were supposed to look like, followed by what they actually looked like. I had a total Pinterest fail moment with those bad boys...but hey, what the kids don't know won't hurt them...well in this case anyway! THEN we made a foldable book about the life cycle of an apple. THEN we made a diagram of an apple and labeled the parts. Yes, yes, I can hear your gasps now. Well we did all of this in less than two hours. Thankfully I had two parent volunteers show up, bless their sweet souls. One had to leave early, but the other stayed until they were scurried out the door.  At one point, as I stood looking out at the craft bomb that had just exploded in my room and thinking that I would probably do things differently next time, I hear hysterical laughter. This startled me and I looked at my amazing volunteer and she is just staring at me and laughing. She quickly apologized and told me that the look on my face was priceless. I am so grateful that she has a sense of humor, since I'm pretty sure that I looked horrified. So we crafted, we fed them apples galore, then we packed 'em up and paraded them out of the door. I had to go to duty and thanked her profusely on my way out. Well, she showed up at the end of duty and said, "Hey, by the way I just cleaned up everything from the crafts, I put some things away and I'm not sure if I put them in the right place, but all that is left is the floor needs to be vacuumed." I hugged her. I love that woman! When I walked in, you could not tell that I had just had a crafting explosion in my room. At that point I could have cared less that one day I might open a cabinet and be showered in construction paper...for the moment, my room was CLEAN again! Woo hoo! We will worry about the cabinet that could be stuffed with God-knows-what later. All in all, my kids spent the day singing (to the tune of Frère Jacques) "Mrs. Malcolm, Mrs. Malcolm, we love you, we love you, today is amazing, today is amazing"....I wish I could remember the rest, but I don't. They walked out telling me that they wished the day would never end. That made my exhausted heart smile....and made every gray hair worth it.

Oh and don't think for one minute that I actually knew how to spell Frère Jacques! Thankfully Google knew exactly what I meant when I typed "Frara Jaka" and helped this poor lil southern belle out. Mmmmhmm...keepin it real here folks. Keepin it real.