So I was thinking...: Why I Teach...

So I was thinking... that I truly love my job, and how blessed am I that I can say that and mean it. I have been teaching first grade for 111 days. No I don't know that because I am counting down the days, I know it because my class counts them everyday! I know its been a while since I have posted and I apologize, I have been forgetting my camera alot lately, but something happened Friday that I wanted to share.

With encouragement from some other blogs I have been doing special Science and Social Studies lessons; in first grade these subjects are mostly taught through reading, but loving these subjects I wanted to find a way to teacher it better; so every Friday we either have SCI-FRI(taken from Cara) or Historian Fridays, where we dig deep into history with our detective caps on!

This Friday we had a historian Friday as we dug deep into the history of African American inventors. (Side note: Did you know that the mailbox, ironing board, mop, traffic signal, incandescent lightbulb and POTATO chips were made by African American inventors...my kids loved that one!) After learning about these inventors we had the chance to be inventors ourselves. My kids were really creative coming up with some great inventions from random craft items that I had in my classroom!

One of my little boys was having trouble deciding what to invent and knowing that he played football this year we decided on a field goal and football to play table football. He loved it and got started writing his patent to invent it!
However; once his was made the football(two stryofoam cups taped together) got stepped on. His face sank as well as my heart. After lunch we were sharing our inventions and he didn't want to share, all he could do was hold his football in his hands. I had to think of something fast, so loving football myself (I broke my arm playing with the boys in the 6th grade) I turned on my announcer voice and set the scene hoping I could cheer him up enough to present. "Three seconds left in the last game of the season, and it all comes down to this one field goal" I grabbed the popscicle stick field goal and lined up with him (the whole class is laughing at me at this point, even my lab student) but I didn't break a sweat because the next moment, the BIGGEST smile came to his face and he shot the football right through the uprights and my class cheered! It was great!

I'm tearing up just thinking about it, because this is why I love my job. I get to act silly, dance around and love on kids everyday while teaching them about life and learning. I am blessed to have the opportunity to help a sad little boy smile the biggest smile because I made his invention special. I am truly blessed.

Here is a recap in pictures of our adventures:(taken w/ the phone, sorry if blurry)

<-- SCI-FRI We learned about our bodies and got to trace ourselves on the carpet with chalk! Then we played a simon says type game with body parts.

--> Paper plate clocks to learn time to the hour and half hour.

We celebrated the 100th day of school with funfetti cookies, counting 100 things, and doing things 100 times like jumping, clapping and stepping!

SCI-FRI! Study of clouds: cumulus, cirrus, ans stratus cotton ball craft!

For Groundhog's day this week, we made cute little groundhogs (All of the shapes are hearts!) and wrote about what our burrow would look like and discovered what animals are true hibernators and which ones are just light sleepers! Did you know that a bear is only a light sleeper, and groundhogs slow their breathing down to one breath every five minutes when they hibernate.