Jen's Notebook

While I have been snowed in for a few days now. No school, no shopping, and lots of time. SO I have finally added some new pictures to several of my pages. I also added a new page, X-tra Fun! I have put a few art projects on the page so far, I will add more after I can finally get back into my classroom when the snow melts! Hope where ever you are, you are enjoying your winter weather and staying safe!

Well, it’s the last day of my winter vacation and I am running around like a mad person trying to put away my Christmas decorations and get ready all the little things I need done for my classroom of kiddos tomorrow! Why is it in my nature to wait until the last minute???? Oh well, I seem to do my best work then. Enjoy your first week back at school with your students!

I am always on the look out for great websites and places to find ideas to help me in the classroom. This one is great. Pinterest.com If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. You do need to to ask for an invitation, and it took about four to five days for them to invite me on to their website, but it was while worth it. You can find ideas for all kinds of charts, art projects, book ideas, etc. And you not only get to share your favorite ideas from the web but you have a great venue to save your ideas for future use as well. Hope you enjoy it!

Happy New Year! Every year on January 1st I start to get a little bit nervous. Half of the school year is now over, have I taught them enough? How can I get even more information into their Kindergarten brains? What could I have done differently this year to develop better understanding for my students? And so on, and so on. . . I wonder if every teacher out there feels this way. The stakes are so high in our profession.  Gone are the days when  students could come to school as little blank slates and we filled in all the gaps. Yet many of them still show up on that first day of Kindergarten without  knowing all their colors, any letters or numbers. Filling in the blanks while pushing the students who come into Kindergarten ready has become the name of the game for education.

So I will go back this week as I do each year in January worried about if I have pushed enough this year so far and how I can push them to learn even more in the second half of the  school year. I hope each of you will have a wonderful second half of the year. Be proud of what you do, we are shaping the future and we are darn good at it!!!!