Three Things Thursday

1. Wednesday I finally took a run down to see the big hole in the road. Well, I was too late. They were already hard at work repairing the road.  I met a couple of other people going to take pictures who were also surprised at how fast the repairs were happening.  A little unneeded info - I had to pee badly. I thought since I was on a closed road it should be no problem.  But I met a few walkers and decided to wait. Then I decided there was no more waiting and just went!  Right after I finished a car came by! Man I almost got caught.  There were Road Closed signs in 3 places and this car was going as far as it could. Eventually you come to  a huge pile of dirt that won't let cars go by anymore.  I assume this car was getting as close as it could. After all not everyone is in the kind of shape where they can run to it and go even farther because it is not enough of a run.

So I took some pictures. Just realize where the dirt is there was no road.

2. My high school reunion was a ton of fun, more than I expected.  People looked very different than I remembered but a fair amount of time has passed since I last saw many of them.  My friend from NYC still came in spite of Irene and she got out of town just in time the next day!  

3. On Wednesday I had yet another First Day of School.  You would think by now it would be old hat but the first day of school is still a special thing.  This year was a bit different as I have some of the students again that I taught last year.  It is also a class with a 2 to 1 boy girl ratio.  We have switched to multi age this year and the jury is still out on that one.  But we are also doing a bit of departmentalizing. Instead of teaching everything I am not teaching reading and I am teaching math twice a day. I LOVE IT!  It is hard to be an expert at everything and put adequate time into planning so many things.  This  is one thing off my plate.  I can put more quality time into planning my math lessons and I can refine it after I teach it the first time.  I took a lot of time before school started to organize how I was going to make the two classes work and keep things separate.  So far the time spent has paid off. I am already changing some things to make it go more smoothly.  I love knowing all of the third graders and I already knew most of the fourth graders.  It is all about those connections you make with the kiddos.  I love having more teachers to share ideas with for the other areas. We are also doing a science  unit together and doing different sections. I for instance will teach the habitat of the forest floor to all 4 classes  at different times rather than teach four different habitats.  Less planning and more of an expert!  Works for me.  I miss my old partner as she has moved to kindergarten and we worked really well together.  I love the size of my class.  It is quite small!  So I am feeling like I have gotten off to a good start!  Yeah!

Plus.....one of my students brought me  - not an apple -but a dozen fresh eggs today.  They have 17 chickens and made it sound like I might get eggs rather frequently!  Can you say fresh eggs beat apples any day of the week!