Apples Week

Wow, I now know why so many teacher blogs tend to disappear! With all the work of actually running a classroom, it is hard to find time to blog! I've been working sun up to sun down every single day, and still don't quite feel like I have a handle on things. But at least it is getting better... we're falling into some sort of a routine.

I like to do weekly themes, and during the first week of school I asked the kids to give me some ideas for future themes. But for the sake of being able to plan a little bit in advance, I had already chosen the first two themes. Last week we did Pete the Cat, and this week we did apples. Last week I was so rushed that I forgot to take any pictures and I barely even remember what we did. But this week was a little better, and I did get some pics to share.

Lets see... first of all, the ever important sensory bin. This week I poured in uncooked oatmeal, and added some apple pie spice to make it smell like apple pie! I had also bought these little apple erasers to use for a math game, and I added the extras to the sensory bin, Many of the kids love it! They get five minutes of free time at the end of our groups, and many of them choose to play with the sensory box.

For one of my math groups that is working on identifying numbers, I made a game called "Wormy Apple." It is played just like the game "Old Maid," but with a worm instead of an Old Maid. In case you've never played, players take turns blindly choosing a card from the hand of the person next to them, in hopes of getting a card that makes a match with one they already have. If they get a match, they set it aside. The Wormy Apple will exchange hands many times, and while the "winner" is the one who gets rid of all of their cards first, the good sport is the person who is left with the Wormy Apple when all of the other cards are gone. I made this with construction paper, but I might make a version for TPT if I get a minute. 

For my writing groups, I brought in a few actual apples, I made categories for each of the five senses on the white board. We went through and brainstormed words to describe the apples by sight, touch, sound, smell, and, finally, taste! This was harder than it sounds. They have a lot of trouble coming up with adjectives. Of course they all started off by saying "red" for the sight category, but then they couldn't get off the idea of color and kept naming random colors, such as blue. I had to really try to get them to look more closely at the apple. I was also trying to get them to veer away from using words like "good" as adjectives. But really, coming up with unique words to describe an apple is pretty tricky! Try it... we had a lot of trouble coming up with more than two or three words for each category.

Their favorite part of that activity was eating the slices of apples. Especially the golden apple, which they were convinced would give them extra energy. I think this is connected to Minecraft or something.

They then each chose a word from each category to describe the apple. We glued them onto apple shapes. At least they're supposed to look like apples. Some of the kids told me they didn't.

(This one says: My apple looks red. My apple feels light. My apple sounds loud. My apple smells flowery. My apple tastes sweet.)

On Fridays we always do a cooking project (and by always, I mean for the last two weeks, since that is how long we've been in school!) Last week we made Pete The Cat's Banana Pudding to go with the book Pete The Cat And The Bad Banana. It was basically just layering Nilla Wafers, vanilla pudding and banana slices in a cup, with a dollop of whip cream on top. This week we made mini apple pies. I found some packages of tiny graham cracker pie crusts at Safeway. The recipe was so simple, it was almost too quick... we just added a few scoops of apple pie filling to our pie crusts, sprinkled on some cinnamon and apple pie spice, and added our dollop of whip cream. (I enjoyed teaching them the word "dollop," because they like to add their own whip cream, and I didn't want them going crazy with it. I'm not sure dollop is an official unit of measurement, but it is a fun word, isn't it?)

Lets see... what else did we do?

I printed out this game from Kaylee's Education Studio. This is a game where you draw a card with an addition problem on it, and cover the answer on your worksheet. I colored the worksheets because I am a nerd like that, and I laminated them because I learned how to use the laminating machine and now I just need to laminate stuff all the time. We used the little erasers to cover our answers. I was actually afraid this game would go by too quickly for my short-attention-spanned math group. But it actually took us three days to play. THREE DAYS! Granted, each group session is just a half hour long, plus they always get there late and by the time I get them settled down we only have about twenty minutes left. But still... for three days, my math boys practiced addition happily. The reason we continued the game for three days is because they wanted to... they couldn't bear to leave the game unfinished. In fact, I'm pretty sure we're still not finished and we have to play it for at least ten minutes on Monday. 

With my 3td grade reading group, we read the book Apples, by Gail Gibbons. I love Gail Gibbons's books. They are so colorful and present such interesting information. Before reading it, we started a KWL chart, and then as we read we stopped so the kids could tell me facts they'd learned from each page. After we finished the book, I copied each fact down on a sentence strip. We sorted the strips into three categories: history, trees, and apples. I put magnet tape on the backs of the strips, so we could arrange them on the board in a sensible order. Then, for the next few days, the kids worked on copying the sentences and illustrating them. It was a lot of hard work for them, and I heard a lot of groans and grumbles, so I want them to see that their work created something pretty cool! 

Okay. I'm exhausted. I need to sleep. 

KABOOM! Game Variation

Hi everyone! Planning reading, writing and math lessons for six different groups with varying skill levels is a challenge. I like to have activities that engage the kids and let them have fun while learning and practicing, but sometimes all that thinking and making things is exhausting! Here is a game I sort of made up. It is actually a variation of the KABOOM! game that many teachers have used before (also sometimes known as BANG! and other loud noises)

The original KABOOM game goes like this: There are a bunch of craft sticks in a can. On most of the sticks, a number, letter, sight word, math problem, etc (whatever you want the students to practice) is written on the end of the stick that is at the bottom of the can and can't be seen. On a few of the sticks, the word KABOOM! is written, but also can't be seen. Without seeing what is on the sticks, players take turns drawing a stick. If they can say the letter or number, read the word, solve the problem, etc, they keep the stick. But if they get a KABOOM stick, they have to put back all of the sticks they've collected so far!

I actually first invented a variation of KABOOM while working with a first grader who would have gotten very upset and possibly violent if he had to put all his craft sticks back in the cup when he got a KABOOM stick. In my variation, the KABOOM sticks also say either -1, -2, -3, or -4, and that is how many sticks the player must put back if he draws the stick.

More recently, I added some more variations for some of my math groups.
For my first graders who are practicing number identification, tall players draw at the same time, and whoever has the highest number gets to keep all of the sticks... but if a player has KABOOM, he has to put back some of his sticks instead.

For my first graders who are starting addition, each player draws two sticks, and add the two numbers together, Whichever player has the highest sum gets all the sticks. Again, if a player has KABOOM, he has to put back some of his sticks. To help the kids who are struggling with addition, I added dots on the other side of the stick, so that they can count if they have to.

Just wanted to share that with you, in case anyone is looking for a last minute activity to throw together for a group!

A Sea Of White

As the first week of school comes to an end, here is something interesting to think about.
In the past, I have usually worked in school districts in low-income communities. The school I worked at in the state where I'm from had probably 75% of their students on free breakfasts and lunches. I've also had a lot of experience working with children who have been through trauma. So, when I first got hired, I asked the principal if the school had many children who were dealing with trauma.

The principal shook his head. He told me, "On the first day of school, what you will see is a sea of white. We are a very high income community."

I silently noted that I had not asked about race or income, but I didn't ask any more questions

Now that I've started getting familiar with the children on my caseload, I've heard about...

Three siblings who come to school dirty, tired and hungry each day and are often too listless to participate in class.
A student who comes to school tired because his family lost their home and he's been sleeping on the floor of his parents' friend's living room.
Two separate students who have witnessed domestic violence in their families.
Several students who are either in foster care or living with relatives because of a parent's drug addiction.
Several students who were adopted and experienced significant trauma as young children before their adoption.

The lesson I've seen here is that it may be easy to look into a "sea of white" and assume that every child there comes from a privileged background. But we really have no idea what any kid experiences once the school day ended, or what they went through before they came to us. One of my goals is to learn more about trauma sensitive teaching, so that I can be prepared to help any of my students who may have gone through these types of things.

What do you do in your classroom to help students who've experienced poverty, abuse, or other trauma?

Easy DIY Light Up Hanging Cloud Decorations

Hi everyone! You may or may not know that I love to do crafts. But I am not Martha Stewart by any stretch of the imagination. The crafts I love to do are simple and fun. They don't come out looking perfect, and may not be Pinterest-worthy, but they do tend to be pretty cool.

A while ago I decided to make my classroom have a sky theme. I love looking at the sky because there are always cool things up there, like rainbows and clouds and stars. Plus, so many inspirational quotes are based on the sky, like "The sky is the limit," and "Reach for the sky." Wait, no. I think that is what Woody from Toy Story says. "Reach for the stars!" That's better!

I was having trouble coming up with cool decorations for a sky themed classroom, and then I saw an idea on how to make hanging light-up cloud lights. I simplified the original idea until it was something even I could do. And now, I will show you! 

Just to let you know, I will mention a few brand names and even post a link to a product, but these are not sponsored links or anything. I'm just sharing what I used. You might know of a product that works better.

What you need: an empty pop bottle, some string, cotton or polyfill, duck tape, spray adhesive, and a string of battery operated lights.

I started by tying a string around an empty pop bottle, like so.

I added a little duck tape to keep the string from sliding around. I only had fireworks duck tape. It doesn't matter what sort of tape you use, because it is going to be covered up anyways.

Now it was time to start gluing the cotton onto the bottle. I experimented a little with this. I started out using regular Elmer's School Glue, by squirting some lines and dots onto the bottle and then sticking the cotton on. But I found that a more effective type of glue is spray adhesive. The kind I had was Elmer's Craft Bond.

I sprayed a small area of the bottle, and then stuck some cotton on.

I kept doing this, little by little, until the entire bottle was covered. I made sure the string was still hanging out, not getting stuck underneath all of the cotton, Then, I sprayed a layer of adhesive over the entire thing. This was to keep wads of cotton from falling off at inoportune times. It still might fall off, but the adhesive layer makes it a little sturdier.

The next step is the lights! I bought a set of Lings Moment Fairy Lights on Amazon. They are tiny white lights on a wire, and they are battery operated. I was able to loosely and randomly wrap the wire of lights around the fluffy cloud shape. I wrapped the battery compartment a few times around one of the wires, to keep it in place. I wanted it to stick out so that I'd be able to turn the light on and off easily, but I didn't want it hanging down too far.

To hang it, I simply put a 3M hook on the ceiling, and tied the other end of the string around it!

There you have it! Not exactly mindblowing, but quick, easy, and fun! I made four of these and I will probably make two more, since I have two more strings of lights.

The rest of my classroom is still a work in progress, but I can show you a few interesting areas, if you'd like. Remember, this is mostly a room where kids will take breaks and come to deescalate when they are upset, so I don't have a lot of academic stuff around.
This is the sensory box area. It will have more eventually, but right now it just has a sensory bin on a table, and some smaller sensory bins on the shelves. There is also a play-doh set and a box of fidgets.

Here is my little reading nook. In the academic room there are tons of leveled readers and stuff, but I wanted this to be just a relaxing area to kick back and  read. I found a bean bag chair, and I made another seat by tying a seat cushion to a milk crate. The big shelf is full of curriculum guides, so I covered it with a bed sheet. I'd like to fill the shelf up with kids' books. But this classroom used to be a storage room, and there is a bunch of junk in there that I have no idea what to do with, so I just cover it up.

Finally, here is what I call "The Cloud," following my sky theme. I bought a white duvet cover, and stuffed it with body pillows and some scrap foam I got for free at an upholstery store. It is just an area where kids can go when they are overwhelmed and need some quiet time.

That is my humble abode, everyone. I hope you like it!

Reach For The Stars

A few weeks ago I was having trouble even believing that l really did have a teaching job. Now it is becoming more real... I've gotten to read my kids' IEPs, and have been busy decorating my classroom and planning lessons.

Most of my readers are teachers, but those who aren't teachers might be surprised to learn that we have to use a lot of our own money to buy things we might need. The school supplies the basics... text books and tables and construction paper and stuff... but everything else, from classroom decorations to books to special supplies... we have to get ourselves. There is a finite amount that they will reimburse us for, but we are encouraged to spend that allotment on professional development.

So I was really happy that the people from "Get Childish" sent me a free set of The Glowers 2.0 to review. They are glow in the dark stars and planets that you can stick to your walls and ceiling. The description said that they would glow brighter and longer than other glow in the dark sets. My theme for my classroom is the sky, so stars fit right into my motif.

They came in the mail the other day, in a package that looked like this.

When I opened the box, here is what I found: A bag with tons of stars, and lots of sticky tack!

I started sticking them up on my ceiling right away. I have one of those ceilings with tiles that pop out easily, so I decided to stick the stars to the grid because I was afraid of touching the tiles. The first thing I noticed was that the stars seemed to stick really well. They didn't fall off after I stuck them up there.

After a while I tried shutting all the shades and turning off the lights. Unfortunately, the stars didn't start to glow. I think the main reason was because it was not really dark enough in the room. Even with the shades shut, sunlight was still able to get in through the narrow window on the door, keeping it from getting dark. I think I will bring some of the stars home and try them at night.

But that brings up another good quality. I've bought glow stars before, and usually they are very light colored, so that they cannot be seen at all during the day. I wanted my kids to be able to look up and see the stars, even during the day. I was glad that these stars are brightly colored, and can easily be enjoyed all of the time. I'm thinking of trying to find a way to hang some of them from strings from the ceiling.

I am going to finish decorating my classroom on Monday, just in time for Open House. I will post pictures of the whole thing then. I can't wait!

(#GetchildishGlowinthedarkstars)

You Know That Dream Where You're In School...

Do you ever have a dream where you're back in high school, or maybe elementary school even, and you suddenly realize you can't remember where any of your classes are? Maybe you lost your schedule, or you have it but when you look at it it makes no sense? I've had it a bunch of times, and other people have told me they've had versions of the same dream, so I guess it is not uncommon.

Today I felt like I was stuck in that dream!

Here is what happened. Today was my first day of new school year meetings at the new district I'll be teaching in. I had been sent several emails with the dates, times and locations of different meetings that will take place all this week. Today's meeting was supposed to be at the High School. I made sure to leave home early so I'd get there with plenty of time. I hate being the new person and having to walk in and find a seat in a sea of strangers, so my plan was that if I was one of the first people there, I'd have my choice of empty seats.

Just as planned, I arrived 15 minutes early at the high school, and found the room where the meeting was supposed to take place. But nobody was in there! Thinking I must be really early, I pulled out my phone to check my email in my spare time. I found that one of my new bosses had called me, and emailed me, saying that they hoped I was coming to the meeting. I replied to the email saying, "I'm at the room, but nobody is here. Did I get the info wrong?" I also tried calling her back, but it went to her office voicemail.

When there was no reply, I panicked. The name of the elementary school is similar to the high school, and although the info I had said "HS" pretty clearly, I thought maybe it didn't mean what I assumed it meant! So I left the high school, and drove to the elementary school. The doors were locked and the office was closed. Next, I drove to the district office. (This is a really small town, so all of these places are within about one minute driving distance from each other, luckily!) I went in and asked if the supervisor was around. I was told, "No, she's at a meeting." Trying not to get frustrated, I said that I was supposed to be at the meeting also, but that I'd gone to the room I was supposed to go to, and nobody had been there. The ladies in the district office assured me that the meeting was at the high school but that they did not know what room it was in.

Back to the high school I drove. This time I went into the office and asked someone there if they knew where the meeting was supposed to be. They told me it was in the room that I'd already been to. I walked down there again, just to make sure. Again, it was empty. I walked back to the office, at this point about ready to cry! It was half an hour past the meeting's start time!

The lady in the office spoke to someone else, and then said, "Oh, sorry, they changed the room number." She then walked me to the correct room, on the opposite side of the building, where the meeting was in full swing.

Doesn't it seem like someone would have notified me that the room was going to be different? Or put a sign on the door of the original room? And how did everyone else somehow know where they were supposed to be? My only theory is that, since most of the other people knew each other well already, the news had spread pretty quickly when the room number was changed. I, being out of the loop, didn't get the updates that everyone else did!

It was definitely not the first day I was hoping for. The rest of the meeting went okay, though. All of the people were very nice. But I hope I don't spend the rest of the school year frantically trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be!

8 Quick and SImple Classroom Carnival Games

Hi everyone! Our summer rec program has finally come to an end. I say "finally," but it feels like it went by extremely fast this year! I still can't believe it is over!

We usually go on field trips on Fridays, but for our last day of the program we had a carnival at the building instead. We have done that for the last few years... it is always a really nice, casual, fun day. We have a catered lunch for kids and staff, rent a few bouncy houses, and just party the day away!

I was so busy all summer that I pretty much had to whip up these carnival games at the last minute. I thought I'd show them to you, because a lot of the carnival game ideas I found online were really elaborate, things that looked cool but would take a lot of time, effort and money to put together, even for a backyard carnival party or something. But my carnival games were super simple, yet fun. They'd also be easy to turn into a "Carnival of Learning," which is something I used to do during the week of Independence Day when I taught ESY.

Here's what I had.

1. "Bozo Buckets." I came to the realization that most people who didn't grow up in Chicago don't have any idea what "Bozo Buckets" means. Since I grew up in Chicago but no longer live there, I had to explain this to a lot of people... you've probably played the game but called it something else. "The Bozo Show" was a kids' show that used to be on in the mornings, where they did a bunch of different skits and stuff. One of the things was Bozo Buckets, where two kids from the audience got picked to play. You had to start by throwing a ball into Bucket 1, and then Bucket 2, all the way up to the last bucket. If you missed a bucket, the game was over. For each bucket you got, you'd get a prize, and the prizes got progressively bigger until the "Grand Prize" which was in the last bucket.
My version was simplified. I only had four buckets, and the player could toss the ball into any bucket they wanted to. If the ball went in, the player won the number of tickets that was on the bucket! If you wanted to turn it into a learning game, you could write words or math problems on the ping pong balls and have the player read the word or solve the problem before they threw it.

2. Ring Toss.  I made rings out of glow sticks. I usually use a plunger as a target, but I couldn't find it this year. The one I have was bought new for the purpose of the game, and I decorated it so it looked more like a festive game and less like something meant to unclog toilets. Since I couldn't find it, I just used a roll of cling wrap. It worked quite well! The player threw the four rings, and however many rings they got around the target, that was how many tickets they got.

3. Jokers Are Wild, which was really just a bunch of playing cards taped face-down to a poster board. Players had to take a random card. If it was a Joker, they got 5 tickets. Any other card was 1 ticket.

4. Ball Toss. This just involved tossing balls into holes. The smaller the hole, the more tickets the player won!

5. Airplane Throw. Here we have a fun game, the object of which was to toss a paper airplane through the ring. You could use a hula hoop as a ring, but since our gym equipment had already been packed up, I just twisted a pool noodle into a circle and duct taped the ends together. This game is trickier than you might think. My airplanes kept going over the fence! To win a ticket you had to get it through the hoop.  To make it more fun, you could have the kids make their own paper airplanes to throw through.

6. Pick a Duck. I wrote numbers on the bottoms of the rubber ducks. The players had to randomly choose a duck, and win that number of tickets. Unfortunately the Oriental Trading Co. ducks I had kept tipping over. The Dollar Tree ducks had better luck.

7. Stone Drop. This game involved dropping a stone into a bin of water, with the hope of getting it to land inside a tiny cup at the bottom of the bin. Harder than it sounds!

8. Sucker Tree. This was a popular one! The players would choose a sucker, and if the bottom of the stick was colored green, they got a ticket. But if not, they still got a sucker out of the deal, which was why they enjoyed this game so much!

I was also going to have a water balloon basketball toss, but I ran out of time. I'll have to save that idea for next year.

Anyways, the kids got to turn in their tickets for prizes, just like at the arcade. I only had two categories of prizes... the bigger prizes were 10 tickets, and the smaller prizes were 5. Of course you could make it more complicalted by having more levels of prizes, so kids would have to spend more time figuring out what they could "afford."

Anyway, that is the end of our carnival, and the end of our summer rec program! Next week I start training for my teaching position. I can't wait! I'm still going to try to enjoy whatever is left of the summer, though!

'Tis a Gift To Be Simple

Sometimes, I tend to get a little too into things. When I plan an activity, I want the children to have everything. I just want to give them the best. So, I go overboard. That isn't necessarily a bad thing... because it isn't bad to want the kids to be happy and have fun at the rec program! But it can turn into a lot of work, which results in me being exhausted, and also leaves me more disappointed and discouraged if things don't work out exactly the way I hoped.

Here is a great example. Last year, we had a Bubble Day at the rec program. I wanted it to be the best Bubble Day ever! So I scoured the Internet and found every single Bubble Day idea I could find.

And then I tried to do them all. Inside, I had playdough that was made out of bath soap, a craft where kids could make their own bubble wands, and another craft where kids could make a "bubble trumpet" out of a wash cloth, an empty bottle, and a rubberband. Outside, we had lots of different stations where kids could blow bubbles using different household objects, try standing inside a giant bubble made with a hula hoop and a swimming pool full of bubble solution, and an area where they could test different types of bubble solutions. It was a lot of fun, and everyone enjoyed it... especially the little boy who jumped into the pool full of bubble solution with all his clothes on and used it as a giant bubble bath. He had bubbles in his hair and on his cheeks and chin,, and a big smile on his face!

This year, one of my co-leaders was in charge of Bubble Day. She kept it simple. She picked up a new bubble machine (ours didn't work so well last year) and a bunch of those long, thin tubes of bubbles with the giant bubble wands inside. I brought out my iPod and speakers. The kids played for an hour! They ran around with the bubble wands, they danced in front of the bubble machine, and they all laughed and had fun. Even the kids who rarely participate in activities came and enjoyed it. One boy, who spends most of his time at the rec program either crying or staring into space, was dancing and laughing and jumping up and down!

Nobody complained that there weren't lots of different stations for them to move through, or that there wasn't bubble dough inside, In fact, I think they had a better time than they did for last year's Bubble Day!

As the summer comes to an end, I want to do so much for the kids. I want them to have scrapbooks commemorating every single moment they spent at the program, every single smile and touching moment and silly antic. I want to give them a last week that they will never forget. I want it to be perfect. And I have to try and remind myself that sometimes, "just enough" turns out to be perfect after all! '

Rainforest Week

Our summer recreation program is coming to an end... this coming week will be our last. We had Rainforest Week. We were a little short staffed and so I didn't get the chance to take many pictures, but I can still tell you what we did. We had some exciting things this week!

On Tuesday, we had a local guy come in who does a reptile show. He brought several lizards, frogs and snakes, and brought them around for each kid to look at and pet (if they wanted to.) The kids who came to it were amazed and loved it...It was awesome to see big smiles on the faces of some of the kids who usually aren't very engaged in the activities. One girl who is afraid of everything actually petted every reptile, while exclaiming, "I'm brave, right?" One of the best things about our rec program is when we're able to see kids stretch out of their comfort zones and try new things... especially when they actually find out that they enjoy the new things they try!

Meanwhile, in PE, I'd put together another obstacle course, since the Astronaut Training Course from last week was so popular. I took a narrow cardboard box that one of our utility fans had been packed in, cut out some bat shapes from black paper, added string to the bats, and taped the strings to the "ceiling" of the box so that they hung down like they were flying. The kids had to crawl through the "bat cave" as one obstacle. I laid down a blue gym mat and dropped some long, rubbery, bendy fidget sticks onto it, so they had to jump over the snake pit. I piled up all of our parachutes, and the kids had to swim through crocodile infested waters. I put out a bunch of polydots and dropped bean bags around them, and the kids had to hop from stone to stone to avoid the pirahnas. I taped four pool noodles to the ground, two by two, and the kids had to walk across the "narrow bridge." My co-leader made a big poster of a monkey's face with an open mouth, which we attached to our small basketball hoop, so the kids had to toss crumpled paper "fruit" into the monkey's mouth. The obstacles were pretty similar to last week, but with a new theme. The kids really enjoyed it. They seem to like activities that are more or less self-directed, rather than team games.

On our Cooking day, the kids made monkey cookies. My co-leader made large sugar cookies. The kids spread chocolate frosting over them and then attached vanilla wafers as ears and a muzzle, and used tubes of black icing to draw eyes, nostrils and a mouth.

The kids also made rainforest terrariums. I bought plastic jars from the Dollar Tree, and got some Rainforest Animal Toobs from Amazon. The kids had to fill the jar with a scoop of aquarium gravel, a scoop of activated charcoal (also called activated carbon, and available at Wal-Mart in the fish supply section), and several scoops of potting soil. They then added a succulent plant clipping, and chose a Rainforest Toob animal. Finally they sprayed water onto it. I made each step a station for them to go through at their own pace. I didn't get to see the results, because I was running our other activity for the day.

Our other activity was something I put a ton of planning into, and it turned out to be a pretty popular activity, It was called "Sights, Tastes and Smells of the Rainforest." The easiest step was to print out lots of pictures of rainforest animals, along with their names.

I also got a set of mini snack containers from Dollar Tree. In each one I put a spice that came from the rainforest. We had Vanilla, Coconut, Cinnamon, Tumeric, Nutmeg, Allspice, black pepper, chili pepper, cayenne pepper, ginger, cloves, and paprika. I printed off a small picture of each spice and glued it to the lid of the correct container.

The last part was the best. I picked up a bunch of foods (mostly fruits) that come from the rainforest, and put them out on plates for kids to try. We had pineapple, oranges, avocados, papaya, lemons, and dragonfruit, as well as some tapioca pudding and sections of a Hershey bar.

Each picture, scent and food had an index card taped in front of it. Each kid got a strip of smiley face stickers, and they were supposed to put a sticker on their favorite picture, their favorite smell, and their favorite food. That was a way that we voted on our favorites! I was not really surprised that chocolate was the favorite of most of the kids, although some also chose pineapple and oranges. Nobody even tried the tapioca. I don't know why people don't like tapioca! I ended up eating it all myself!

I had also planned on playing a soundtrack of the rainforest on my computer, but it was too chaotic right before the activity, and I ended up not getting the computer. But I don't think anyone minded.

It was sort of an exhausting week! But we sure had a lot of fun!

Then Again, Maybe I Don't

"I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!" Those were my ironic closing words from my last post. 

Don't get me wrong... I still do feel that way... but when I wrote that it was on Friday evening when I was feeling light-hearted about the upcoming weekend stretching in front of me. How fast Monday comes! And today was not a good Monday. 

The day started off with me getting up early so I could go to see my supervisor and get this week's list of children participating in the program. Some kids sign up for the whole summer, and others sign up by the week, so every week we may or may not have new kids. It would be awesome if we could get the week-by-week list for the whole summer ahead of time, but some families wait until Sunday night to sign their kids up for the week that starts on Monday morning, apparently. So each Monday someone has to drive down and get the list. Why doesn't the supervisor just email me the list each week? I HAVE NO IDEA, REALLY!

I got all the way there, only to have the supervisor tell me, she had sent the list to our building via one of our staff members... but she didn't remember who she gave it to. So I had to go back to our building, where of course the list was no where to be found. Who did she send it with? We never found out. I asked all of the staff members but nobody had even seen our supervisor on Friday, let alone gotten a list from her. We had to call her and ask her to email the list, which she took her time about doing, and by the time we got the list there was only a few minutes before the kids would arrive. Each kid in our program gets a 1:1 mentor, and the big problem was, we like to have the mentors already matched with the kids before they arrive on Monday morning, so they can go out and meet the parents and the child and start the week out right. But without knowing who was coming, it was impossible to get things ready ahead of time. We were scrambling... only to realize, just as the kids were arriving, that we were short-staffed. My co-leader and I each had to be in charge of a kid for the morning. And usually, I'd enjoy spending some 1:1 time with one of our children... except I usually use the first hour or so in the morning to prepare all of the activities for the day and make name labels for the new kids. By 2 hours into the day, I had gotten nothing done, and it was time for our morning circle. Of course I hadn't gotten Greeting Meeting prepared at all because I'd had to be 1:1 with a child, so everything was in disarray. But we carried on. I skipped half of our Meeting activities because half of the kids were screaming by the end of the first ten minutes. 

Immediately after Greeting Meeting, I had to run a music group. Usually another one of my co-leaders does it, but she was out. It isn't very hard... we have a CD with a bunch of movement songs, and it just involves playing the CD and doing the activities and dances with the kids. It is actually a lot of fun. Except... our large CD player was broken and wouldn't play. We have a smaller CD player but the speakers are really quiet, so the kids could barely hear the music, so most of them were just sitting in their seats looking oddly at me as I tried to encourage them to do the music activities. Then the CD started skipping badly. Luckily children with special needs are really good at dealing with sudden changes and disruptions in their daily routine, so they were not bothered at all when I tried to improvise... 

Do you believe me? (I hope not, because I'm lying.) 

I eventually solved the problem by getting our laptop, hooking up it's portable speakers, and playing the CD on it. It still skipped a little, but we managed to get through Music at least. 

The next hour went okay, as I was working with my co-leader on planning our upcoming field trip. But then three of our staff members came in, towing a 10-year-old along with them. We have a few staff members... pretty much the same ones I mentioned in this post... that are frequently getting into power struggles with kids. We really encourage natural consequences, Love and Logic, and that sort of thing... but these staff members still, no matter what, end up getting in situations where they feel like the goal is to force the child to obey, or else the child "wins." 

So now we have this 10-year-old, Tobias, who is energetic but has never really showed serious behavior problems during the rec program. Yet here he is being hauled into the Calm Down Room, where he pretty much implodes. He's spitting and hitting and screaming, and these two staff members are in his face saying, "That's not nice. If you do that again you're going to lose (insert random activity here.)" 

We suggested, and then insisted, that the two staff members take a break from Tobias and let us take over. Usually when a kid is losing control, our tactic is to tell him we need him to have a safe body, and then calmly wait him out. We don't have an actual time-out room with a door, so we have to physically stay in the room with him to keep him from running off. This means we end up taking a lot of punches and other abuse. And you have to try really hard not to show any reaction, because that can make things escalate fast. You have to completely disengage, keep your face blank, and just try to step out of the way or block his punches. Of course some punches get through. And Tobias, apparently, likes to spit. So despite my best efforts, I ended up getting some loogies right in my face... and just calmly wiping them away. 

Usually when the child starts to calm down... because when they're imploding like that you almost just have to keep them safe and ride it out until they're able to hear you and process things... we will start doing things like helping them name their emotion and identify the level, try to talk them through some calming down steps, get them to talk about what happened to trigger it, problem solve to remedy the situation in some way, and eventually get them back into the flow of their day. But this time, that simmering-down process just wasn't coming. Tobias kept coming with the punches and the screams and the kicks and the spit wads and the projectiles (which, luckily at least, were just pillows) and seemed to be trying to get a reaction from us, willing us to fight back. This went on all the way up until it was time for the parents to pick the children up. Meanwhile, other staff members had cheerfully taken over the activities that I was supposed to be running at that time. 

Finally the day was over, Tobias's mom came, the other children's parents came, and things were calm. I felt like crying. Not really about Tobias, specifically, because all that is par for the course, but just about how the rest of the day had gone. The thing with the participant list and the thing with music and being understaffed and a bunch of other random, small things that had occurred throughout the day. 

I must have looked spent, because one staff member came up to me and said, "You did a great job today, Angel," and another staff member randomly came up and hugged me and said, "Thanks for everything." Because, aside from a few people who really bug me, I really do work with the most amazing people. They are kind and patient and flexible. And as I thought about this, I realized...

"I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!"

Fly Me To The Moon

This past week we had an outerspace theme at the summer rec program. This is always a favorite week, and a theme that we keep from year to year even when we change some of the other themes. It can be hard coming up with new ideas for activities for the same theme each year, which we try to do because many of the kids come back every year. They could feasibly be in the rec program every summer from the year they are 5 to the year they are 13, so doing the same projects and games every single year could get old!

First off, here are the sensory bins I added to our sensory area. I know a lot of people make their sensory bins really elaborate, and turn them into a realistic scene with animals and stuff. However, our kids tend to just want to dig in, rather than do a lot of pretend playing, so we keep it pretty simple.

This first one is just aquarium gravel that I found at WalMart. It is black with some flourescent stones thrown in, to represent planets. The gravel actually came that way so I didn't have to mix it myself.
Later I added some glow stars that I found.













The next one is full of confetti stars that I found at Dollar Tree.

We made Alien Slime. You've probably made Alien Slime, but called it something else. It is usually called Gak or Flubber. My favorite slime recipe involves adding equal parts of Elmer's Glue and liquid laundry starch. I saw an idea on another blog that you could add stars to your slime, so I put out the stars from the sensory bin at first. But it turned out that these particular stars are really spikey and made the slime a little painful to play with. I gave every kid a 4 ounce bottle of glue, and a cup with four ounces of starch, so all they had to do was follow the directions to mix food coloring into the glue and add the starch. Most of them loved it! A few thought it was disgusting.

For a snack, we made Moon Munchies. This involves simply spreading cream cheese over a rice cake, and then adding Cheerios as craters. I originally found the idea at Things To Share And Remember. They also used bananas, but since the kids used bananas last week for their cooking project, I didn't want to do it again. I really wanted to use round pretzels, but I couldn't find any at Safeway! It didn't end up mattering. The kids loved these. The adults loved them too! Plus they have barely any calories, so even our kids with diabetes, who have to keep careful track of calories, could eat them with no worries. Here's the example one I made... and then I ate it because I didn't bring a lunch that day!

What we do at the program is have two activities running at once, twice in a row, so half of the kids go to Activity A and half to Activity B, and then they switch. I usually run one of the activities, so there are two activities that I didn't get any pictures of, unfortunately. The first one was the stomp rockets. We had wanted to have some sort of rocket launch, I remembered watching some kids at a special ed school do a rocket launch involving a bike pump, and there was also a way to make a water rocket, and a few other ways that involved actual explosives. But they all seemed hard to do, and I wanted something that was basically fool proof so we wouldn't have a bunch of disappointed kids on our hands if we made something that didn't work. I ended up ordering a Stomp Rocket, and also a Jump Rocket, which is basically a different brand of the same product. Both sets include a stand, an air pump, and foam rockets. You stick a rocket on the stand, then the kids stomp or jump on the air pump, and the rocket goes flying up in the air. The kids had a blast (no pun intended) watching and chasing after the flying rockets. We kept them out all week at recess for the kids to play with, and we'll most likely keep them around for the rest of the summer just because they are fun.

The other activity the kids enjoyed was an Astronaut Training Course, which we did in the gym. It was basically an obstacle course. Here were the stations...
1. I had a duvet cover that I stuffed with pillows and stuffed animals. I called it the Surface Of The Moon, and the kids had to clamber over it.
2. We had two different tunnels... just the regular kind you can buy and pop up.
3. We put polydots out, and called them asteroids. The kids had to jump from asteroid to asteroid.
4. I taped some pool noodles to the ground, and the kids used them as a balance beam.
5. We have a set of Moon Shoes, so the kids had to put those on and walk to a designated line and back.
6. I dragged in our mini trampoline from the sensory room. The kids had to jump ten times to experience "zero gravity."
7. I put some wiffle balls in a bucket. We have a little pop-up basketball hoop set, so the kids had to throw the wiffle balls (or Moon Rocks, as we called them) into the basket.
8. There was a spinning office chair. The kids had to sit on it and get spinned around ten times, and we called it our Rocket Seat.
9. We had some small stuffed animals that we called aliens. We also have a claw grabber toy. The kids had to use the claw grabber toy to pick up the aliens and toss them into the hula hoop of protection.
10. The last one I just thought of at the spur of the moment. We have a box fan in the gym because we have no air conditioning. I told the kids to say their name into the box fan, and called it our Astronaut Message Transmitter, because they could hear their voices sounding weird through the fan.

We used this as a structured activity, but also left it out for the rest of the day so the kids could play in it during their free time if they wanted.

That pretty much brought our Outerspace Week to a close! We're taking a field trip to the planetarium tomorrow, and that will take up the whole day.

I really love the summer rec program! I wish it could go all year!

The Most Frustrating Part

I love my summer job running a recreation program for kids with special needs. I love it! It is exhausting... it is the kind of job that takes over your whole life. If you're a staff member you can go to work and then leave at 3:00 and go home, but if you are one of the program leaders, your life consists pretty much of working, thinking about work, planning for work, shopping for supplies for work, or sleeping. But it really is fun... the kids are awesome, and I love the challenge of finding new and fun things for them to do.

If someone asked me what is my least favorite part of my job, I would probably have to say it is not the children at all, but the other adults. Not all of them. Some of the staff members I supervise are wonderful. Surprisingly, some of our best staff members are the ones who are still in high school themselves! They grew up doing volunteer work with kids with special needs, either alongside their parents or as part of school. They just have great levels of patience and love for the kids. You'd be amazed to see it.

Then there are the handful of staff members who think they are God's Gift to Special Recreation. They are the ones who are constantly criticizing us as program leaders, pointing out the things that we should, in their opinion, be doing differently. They are the ones who will scowl or glare at you because they don't like the activity you're leading, who have to question everything, and who seem to love one-upping each other at all times. You could say, "Last night a helicopter crashed through the roof of my house," and they'd say, "Well, I know all about that, because I was a helicopter pilot for ten years, so I crashed through roofs all the time, and I know that blah blah blah..."

There are the staff members who come ask you, "Would you like us to stack those chairs up, or leave them there?" with a smile on their face... but then there are the handful that will say, "Don't you think these chairs should be stacked up?" or "Shouldn't you have done that by now?" with an eye roll.

Usually these same staff members are the ones who are the roughest on the kids. With the special recreation program, the other leaders and I have stressed, from the beginning, that the kids are here for recreation and socialization. They are not here for school, or therapy. They get plenty of that. They are here to have a wonderful summer, with plenty of fresh air and exercise and new experiences and new buddies. We still want to have expectations for the kids, but we prefer to use natural consequences, or Love and Logic, rather than punishments and scolding.

Because some of the children would rather spend their entire days sitting in one spot playing with a water bottle, many of the staff members make a deal with the kids that they have to try every activity for five minutes, and if they don't like it they can choose something else. They'll even give the kid a sticker for each activity they try. It works like a charm... kids often end up enjoying themselves and staying for the entire activity, so they expand their horizons and get the most out of their rec program. But we always say, if the kids absolutely refuse to do an activity, don't force them. There is no point in restraining a child while hand-over-handing an art project with him. The child gets nothing out of it.

We ask the staff to avoid control battles. I once explained that if you find yourself saying, "I have to make him do this, at least for a second, because otherwise he wins," then you are in a control battle.

Here's an example for you to ponder. Let's say little Johnny is supposed to be getting ready to go swimming, but instead he's flopped down in the middle of the hallway and refusing to move.

A natural consequence would be something like, "If we go get ready quick, we'll have lots of time to swim. If we stay here, we'll run out of time!"

Or you could say, "Oh, you're choosing to spend your swimming time sitting in the hallway. That sounds kind of boring, but okay..." and then pretend to be very busy looking at a picture on the wall, until Johnny suddenly gets up and marches to the bathroom to change into his bathing suit.

Or maybe Johnny doesn't even like swimming, and you could say, "Johnny, do you want swimming, or do you want arts and crafts?" Because do we really need to force someone to go swimming? This is their recreation program, and part of recreation is getting to choose what you do.

Now here is how a few particular staff members handle it: "Johnny, get up, right now. I'm going to count to three, and if you don't get up, you lose snack time. One... two... three. Okay, no snack. Do you hear me, Johnny? I mean it! Get up! If you don't get up, I am going to call your mom and tell her you can't go on the field trip tomorrow. Okay, no field trip..." All of this said in a very angry, irritated voice. Of course, Johnny doesn't get up. And by the time five minutes has passed, Johnny has lost snack, the field trip, recess for the next three days, and every activity he enjoys other than lunch.

Anyways... I love my summer job so much, and I love most of the people I work with so much, that I often wish I could do this year round! But in order to do it full time, I'd have to get a law passed saying kids no longer have to go to school and can just do recreation day in and day out. I like it in some ways even more than teaching, because we get to do all fun things without any assessments or meetings or paperwork. And I think I am a pretty good supervisor to the staff members I supervise. I listen to them and am accommodating whenever they have special circumstances, like if they want to leave early to go to a job interview for a different job or if they want a break from working with the kid they've been assigned to. In return, they are hard workers, have great attitudes, and rarely miss work unexpectedly. At least, 98% of them are. But it is that irritable, eye-rolling, sighing, complaining 2% that make everyone's day a little more difficult than it needs to be.

I guess it is like that at any job, though, huh.

Snow In July

Trying to come up with some new themes for our recreation program this summer, I had the idea for a Winter Wonderland Week. I got the idea from the old "Christmas In July" parties that people sometimes used to have. Usually we have to stay away from holidays that are connected to specific religions, so I thought, what about doing winter-themed things? Last summer it was extremely hot, and our program is housed in a 1940's era building with no air conditioning, so I thought maybe doing wintery things would cool us off a little. Luckily it hasn't been that hot this summer... but we still had lots of fun!

How do you celebrate winter in July? Here are the things we did. (I even have pictures for some of them!)

Sensory activities... always important in a program for kids with special needs! I made several different sensory bins that we kept out all of the time. I filled one with Epson salt, and added some clear gems from Dollar Tree and some snowflake-shaped gems I found on Amazon. (It looked much better at the beginning of the week, but by the time I took this picture some of the kids had mixed some other random sensory things into it!)

We had two more bins that were filled with instant snow. I bought one package of "Grow Snow" for one, and it came out really nice... much softer and more powdery than most instant snows I've used. There wasn't a lot of it in the package, though, and I didn't have time to order another package. But I read that you could make a similar instant snow from the stuff that is found inside diapers! You just have to cut open the padding of a diaper and shake out the powdery stuff that is inside it. We opened up about 24 diapers to make this box of snow... after shaking the powder out, you add water and stir it up until it becomes white and fluffy. Who knew diapers could do that? Some of the staff didn't like this as much as the Grow Snow stuff, because it was a little more gelatiny. 

On one of the days, I also used the old sensory stand-by, shaving cream! I just called it snow cream. The kids loved it. Two of them actually got onto the table and tried to make snow angels in it. Luckily shaving cream is basically soap, so it didn't stain their clothes or anything! 

Activities: We did many throughout the week. Some I have photos of, and some I don't.
Snowman Bowling... I taped snowman faces to some water bottles that were filled with rice, taped a white table cloth down on the floor to represent snow, and used pool noodles to separate the lanes.

We played Pin The Nose On The Snowman! I think one kid cheated.

We played "Cold Snowball." I don't have a picture of that, but it is played exactly like Hot Potato, but we used a fabric snowball instead of a potato. I even got the snowball wet and put it in the freezer for a while before we played, so it was cold like a real snowball!

We had an indoor snowball fight. I shelled out nearly $30.00 for a set of Snowtime Anytime snowballs. It was worth it! They are soft but have a texture similar to real snow, We used one for the Cold Snowball Game also. I was a little worried that my kids, many of whom have autism spectrum disorders. wouldn't be too enthused about the snowball fight. I envisioned kids standing there looking lost, with snowballs in their hands. But most of the kids really loved it! I also added a rule that, if they got hit by a snowball, they had to turn around three times while saying "Snowman, snowman, snowman," which would get them back into the game. That way there were no "losers" or "winners," and everyone got to play for as long as they wanted to. 

The kids went "ice skating" in the gym. They stood with a paper plate under each foot and just slid around the gym. I wasn't there, but the person leading the activity said the kids enjoyed it... although they got exhausted fast!

We also went sledding indoors. Although I duck taped towels to the bottoms of sleds so that they wouldn't scratch the gym floors, they somehow scratched the gym floors anyways. Be warned. We had to move that activity to the hallways. 

We usually do a cooking activity once a week. This week, the kids made banana snowmen. This was a quick and simple activity. You just take three thick slices of banana and put them on a skewer, the long way so that if you looked at it from the front you would see three circles on top of each other, like a snowman. Pretzel rods served as arms. The kids decorated their snowmen with M&Ms and chocolate chips. I even found candy eyeballs at the grocery store! The kids seemed to like this activity, AND they ate the banana slices as well as the candy! If you are a stickler for healthy foods, you could substitute raisins for M&Ms.

During many of the activities, we listened to snow-themed songs, to get into the mood. It was a challenge finding winter songs that weren't actually about Christmas, but I managed to come up with a decent playlist. It included classics like Jingle Bells, Suzy Snowflake, Sleigh Ride, Walking In A Winter Wonderland, Let It Snow, Baby Its Cold Outside, and Frosty the Snowman, plus some newer songs I found on Amazon like Ingrid Michaelson's "Winter Song." 

I think that is pretty much it for our Winter Wonderland Week! I usually love planning arts and crafts, but there are two high school girls in charge of the arts and crafts aspect of our program. They tend to choose projects that involve adding some embellishments to an already-nearly-finished project (like gluing on eyes and sequins to snowmen that were put together for them ahead of time) whereas I prefer more open-ended projects that allow for creativity. 

Anyways, I think I will probably use at least a few of these activities during the actual winter season of my school year teaching job. Of course I will put a learning spin on them. For instance you could put sight words on the snowman bowling pins and have kids read the words they knock down, or have kids ice skate around as they "read the room." 

Time for me to take a nap now... for the rest of the night! 

Nature Sounds Guessing Game

As I mentioned before in my Obligatory Introduction Post, until school starts at the end of August, I am leading a recreational program for children with special needs. I wanted to share some of the activities with you, because they might come in handy, and because I don't want this blog to have to just sit quietly and wait for me for the next six weeks.

At the program, this week is our Nature Week. One of the activities I came up with is a Nature Sounds Guessing Game. I used SoundBible to download 16 sounds that people might here in nature. Since we live in the Pacific Northwest, I concentrated specifically on sounds the children might hear around their homes, or while hiking or camping. I then printed and cut out pictures representing each of the nature sounds, and glued them onto a board.

Next, I taped an index card over each picture, making it like a flap that I could lift up to see the picture underneath. I numbered the cards.

I also printed out a sheet of paper with small versions of all of the pictures, which I didn't take a photo of.

To play, the kids will be divided into teams. When it is their turn, a team will choose a number. I will play the corresponding recording for them, and they'll try to guess what it is. If they get it right, I uncover the picture and that team gets a point. If they get it wrong, it is the next team's turn.

To differentiate it, I will have the sheet of paper with smaller pictures on it, so the kids can point to the picture they think it is. We don't have any kids with hearing impairments, but we do have a bunch who are nonverbal.

It is a simple game. We'll see how well it goes. They're also going to play Four Corners, but instead of numbering the corners, the corners will be labeled "forest, field, river, mountain." Stay tuned for more exciting ideas for amusing a group of children!

The Obligatory Introduction Post

Hi! My name is Angel, and I have just gotten my first actual teaching position as a special ed learning support teacher. 

Not that I am a spring chicken of any sort. I am actually in my thirties (although nobody would guess it from looking at me) and have had a lot of random experience with children already. I started out working in child care centers when I was just a teenager. I served in AmeriCorps as a fulltime volunteer working with very young children with severe behavioral and emotional disabilities... these were preschoolers who could not be around scissors because they'd try to stab you. After completing a year of AmeriCorps, I worked for a few years as a teacher's assistant in a special education school, before deciding to go to college to become a special education teacher myself. 

I had a lot of obstacles that got in my way of actually becoming a teacher, once I made up my mind to do it. First of all, I was already in my twenties by then, and living on my own, which made it a little harder than it would probably be for your typical nineteen-year-old college student. Second of all, my own ADHD and autism spectrum disorder made it harder for me to keep both oars in the water while going to school full time and working part time. I ended up going to school part time while working part time, which doubled the amount of time it took me to graduate. But I persevered, despite some people suggesting that I choose an easier career or look for a job that wouldn't require a college education. When I finished student teaching, graduated, and got a teaching degree, it was a huge accomplishment for me!

Unfortunately, I didn't find a teaching job right away. My convoluted transcript, which showed me making my way through school at the pace of a snail for over eight years, probably discouraged school districts from taking me seriously. I worked as a paraprofessional for a year, but was really frustrated and discouraged when the "old school" teachers and principal I worked with didn't allow me to use the techniques I'd learned in college. I'd learned about differentiating instruction, universal design for learning, and positive behavior management techniques for working with children with ADHD and sensory processing disorders. At the school I worked at, they thought all that was stuff and nonsense, and scolded me for being too "gentle" with the children. 

After that I worked as a substitute teacher for a while. My mother's cancer diagnosis caused me to postpone my search for a teaching job, because I wanted to be able to take time off at the drop of a hat if I had to. Substitute teaching is great for that. Eventually I met a little boy with serious behavioral challenges who needed a one-to-one assistant, and I gave up substitute teaching in order to take a full time job working with him. It was that job with that little boy, a job that was challenging, exhausting, fulfilling, heartbreaking and joyful all at once, that helped me to get my first "real" teaching position. I start at the end of August, and I can't wait! I started this blog as a way of reflecting on my experiences and also learning from other teachers all over the USA and even the world. 

For now, I am leading a summer recreational program for children with special needs. I thought I'd use this blog to share some of the activities I've been putting together for that program. Otherwise, this blog would be pretty boring for the next few weeks!

I hope you will come back and read more as I tackle this new adventure.