oh the memories

This year is the last year of teaching with having at least one of my own boys in Kindergarten with me. For the past 8 years I have had one of each of my four in my classroom with me, and starting in September that will change. My youngest will move on to Grade one! As I have watched each of them grow and change in their year with me, it made me think about my life. When I was in Kindergarten, I decided two things; I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up and I wanted to be a mommy. Who knew I would be incredibly blessed to be both at the same time.

So, I found the photo of me in Kindergarten and I have come a long way. I found it interesting to see myself at the age I "started" my journey of education....I don't plan of ending it anytime soon :)

what defines me?

Today in Kindergarten we were talking about shapes; particularly squares and rectangles. I showed the class our Canada flag and asked what shapes they saw on it. One child said two rectangles. Perfect! Another child said "the Toronto Maple leaf". Um, yes, a RED maple leaf, but Toronto? :)

Symbols are all around us, and with these five year olds, that is how they label something or define an object or place. If I show them a symbol of an octagon they define it as a stop sign, whether it has the word stop on it or not.

It got me thinking of what defines me? When people look at me do they put a label on me by what they see? Do they define me by my job alone or do they get to know me as a person.

At a staff meeting this past week our Pastor shared with us about "Walking with God" which is our church theme this year. He said something that really resinated. He asked "If you couldn't teach, who would you be?" He challenged us in our own personal walk with God that I am to be a Christian before I am a teacher. I want God to define my life before anything else. My desire is that when people see me they see Jesus as a symbol or label that makes me who I am.

l is for lion

This past week I came up with a cute craft for "l". I cut out shapes for the students to glue as directed and then gave them white glue in a cup with a q-tip (for a gluestick) and also gave them fusilli noodles. They glued the noodles around the head for the mane. I then gave them a black marker to finish off the details of the face and claws if they wanted to. Some even drew their lion with teeth ;) They really loved this craft....not sure if it was because it was messy (glue) or because they got to play with food, but regardless, they had a great time and the final product was worth all the mess.

j is for jellybeans

For our j craft I had the students cut out different coloured jelly beans and then glue in in a jar. I loved this craft for the simple fact that they got lots of practice cutting ;) They turned out great as well. I showed them a real jar with jellybeans and pointed out how the colours were in all different spots. They also were not all in rows. So their challenge was not to put them in any order or in any pattern (which they love doing as we have done TONS of this in our math lessons) They met the challenge and their jars turned out awesome.