Gadgets

Just in case anyone is actually reading this, I am playing around with the gadgets at the side of this blog, not for your benefit but so I can add them to my student blogs without making mistakes!

No offense but I'd rather make a mistake on this blog than my school blogs.

New blog below.

First Full Week Done

It's been a while, but I'm running 5 different blogs now. This one and one for each of my computer classes. I post their daily activities and choose the date of the class for my title. This way students can get to class, log on to their accounts, go on the internet (I think I quit calling it the interweb!) and then begin working.

School is going fairly well. Of course, it has its good and bad moments, which I will not spew all over the internet because that kind of mess cannot be cleaned up!

The little grade oners, to whom I teach health and library, told their parents how excited they are that I am their teacher. One called my name and waved to me from the bus. I couldn't teach it full time but I am so happy to have a break in my schedule for these young ones.

The other classes work fairly well when the technology is functioning properly. (Ha, ha!)

So far I am keeping up fairly well. Not perfect but fairly well, though I've less and less time for myself. This is okay. I liken this back to work business to having a new baby. When my children were born I learned to set aside my hobbies for a while until I grew accustomed to the extra person in the house and they grew accustomed to life in the real world. School is my new baby.

I should go. Jason will be here to pick me up soon.

ttfn to my bffs (OH I hate these acronyms!!!!)

What Have I Done?

. . . stomach in knots . . . procrastinating for a few minutes before getting down to work . . . wish this stupidspacebar would work without me jumpingonit!

Teachers start tomorrow. I had a great but busy summer! I hope that anyone reading this did too!

I told you so!

Blog. I have a blog?

School is soon in full swing. The order is (roughly) decided for each unit and each lesson for the first semester in each class, though I haven't formally written up all the lessons. I have a good idea how to break down my assessment/evaluation to derive a mark. I just have to finish a syllabus for each class but the information is ready to go!

I've just tackled a little bit every day for most of the summer. It really doesn't seem like I've done much, and I know that, come the start of school, I will have to kick it in gear a lot more. I just hope that I've done enough this summer!

I can see already that this blog is going to fall by the wayside, especially since I feel it is very unprofessional to complain about student behaviour on the internet. I guess I could brag a little, which will hopefully be the case some of the time. Furthermore, I could complain about how stupid computers are when they don't work because we all know that I will be frustrated with the computers at least some of the time!

Speaking of computers, I made the cutest movies on Windows Movie Maker with pictures and video clips of the kids I used to babysit; well, I think that they are cute anyway! I'd upload them but I'm not comfortable putting too much information on the internet about other people's kids, or even my own. In fact. I don't think that I've put many pictures up, even on facebook.

I'm just going on and on about nothing so I might as well get down to some real work.

Nice wedding pictures Sheryl-Ann!

Working Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down

Oops! I actually posted this one without any information included! Apparently, I am not supposed to press "return" that many times.

Really, I'm not so down, just sometimes overwhelmed when I think of the work that is going to go into this fall. I am so glad to be back in the classroom but I am so not looking forward to the additional work involved! Really, I should write a very short blog!

One read suggested that I should blog about acronyms used in texting which might be sort of interesting if I knew any. I don't even own a cell phone. While some consider us to be in the stone ages, I just truly don't want to let other people have the ability to contact me that often. I am one the few who will glory when my gmail account has no messages or my telephone message manager is empty. Crazy? Perhaps!

Truthfully, the dedicated Mac user in our home would like to get an iphone but we'll see.

Anyway, if any people who read this want to clue me in re: a few texting acronyms, feel free.

Oh yeah, Jen, if you're reading this, I must let you and all other English people know that I sometimes feel a little intimidated when I know that those reading could also be critiquing my work. This is probably because I do the same when I read other people's compositions. I am somewhat irritated by incorrect capitalization, punctuation, word usage and the like.

And, I also thought I'd respond here, in my blog, regarding potty training. I didn't want the thread to be sent to all my facebook friends when I comment on potty training. We started putting all the kids on the potty at 18 months. With my mom's help, my first was trained by 2 years, 4 months, night time and everything. I mostly looked after my second and the same thing happened. I used to think that people who didn't have their kids trained by 3 yrs were lazy.

Then, I potty trained a child for the third time. I began the same way but with different results. Four months before she turned four, one week before her friends would go to prekindergarten without her, she finally relented and decided to put her #2 in the potty instead of diapers or underwear. There was a very long time when I thought my house would constantly smell like a poop factory.

Lately, in talking with friends, I found out that other kids who get "bunged up" have trouble potty training. They are so afraid to go to the potty because they are afraid they might have a bowel movement, even if they only intend to go #1. So, with this child I've learned not to sweat potty training because begging, punishments or even bribes (she got a mini-computer the other kids didn't get) would not work. We are still working on night-time training with this child and I am just "going with the flow," most literally!

Thankfully, my final potty training experience has been much easier! The fourth and final potty trainer decided one day that she would potty train. One morning, at about 2 years, 4 months, I put her into panties and she had about 3 accidents. (Oh yeah, eventually, this is key; those pull-ups let them be lazy. While it is more work, they are a little more hesitant to wet themselves when they are wearing underwear.) Anyway, when I put a pull-up on her for "quiet time," she had to go and actually told me about it. I was a little miffed that she hadn't done this earlier but after that she just told us all the time. I even have her out of diapers at night even though her older sister is not!

This just shows that while parents need to put effort into training, we really have so little control over what happens.

And, I do find that bribing works. I sometimes think, "Well, they'll be chubby and potty trained."

So after my "opus" on potty training, I should sign out and get to work. On last thing, I am trying not to write too much about my family, knowing that anyone in the world could be reading this! So, if you kind readers are at all concerned, please tell.

Over and out. (Have I used this one before?)

This afternoon I all of a sudden thought, "Oh yeah, my blog!"

We've been busily enjoying a vacation in Regina, with a short hiatus for a family reunion in Swift Current, and are soon to return home. I have accomlished almost all I set out to accomplish here in Regina; as in previous summers, I run all of the "big city" errands that are more easily done when offices and stores are ten or fifteen minutes away rather than one, two or even three hours away. I won't go into detail.

Our family reunion was wonderful. I really miss the times that I spent on the farm as a child. We were SO carefree; unbelievably so! Because I was a girl and often not asked to do farmwork, we had the whole day free to play. I can't even imagine that these days. I also appreciated that we could just be ourselves at the farm, mostly unencumbered by the concern of what others thought of us.

Our children experienced some of that at the farm this past weekend. There were lawn tractors out for them to drive (without the blades running), quad rides, and even rides on the BIG tractor. A cousin had donated his above-ground pool which the children often used. And, to top it off, several dogs, cats and a litter of playful kittens wande43e around the yard. A few of the kittens are of a breed that has six toes on each paw which makes them look chubbier and even cuter. I'm sure there is a picture of one of my kids holding a kitten while eating her hot dog. Very sanitary but who cares!

We are soon home where I'll have to get to more school work. I haven't done as much as I intended but I have still made fairly good progress so that it is only once in a while that I suddenly panic, wondering why I took on what seems like such a mammoth task!

I'll leave you with an acronym closing whose meaning I have recently learned. You see, I must be old, or perhaps don't have time to pay attention to all of the acronymgs used these days to speed up texting. Anyway:

ttyl

Nothing to do?

Could it be? Am I really bored? It happens so rarely of late that I don't know what to do. I guess I could work on school work and I will later. Jason's at Bon Jovi -- Ha ha ha! Emily's at Auntie Sandra's and the other three are watching Billy the Exterminator after jumping on the trampoline almost endlessly. It really ended when they started wrestling a little too hard. Then Livi hurt herself and Omi jumped off the trampoline to me -- when I wasn't looking. It all went to pot from there so I had them come in. I feel guilty about this until I realize that they had swimming today, played outside at the Sandra Schmirler park for a while and jumped on the trampoline.

Wow, my kids are getting so big; other than nighttime, they are potty trained. Yeah! I spent almost nine years changing diapers and I can't say that I'm sorry to be done with babies. Don't get me wrong; I love my kids lots.

Oh yeah! We got passports today! Or at least we began the process; hopefully the rest goes as well as the first part did. What a lot of work!

My life really isn't interesting enough for a blog. I'm done reporting for the day. I'll do some work now...maybe.