Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

What I Did For Fun Today

What did you do today for fun? Week Five for Welcome to My Reality.

I would have to answer this thinking about my class. Yes, I love teaching. I love teaching special education. My class is medically fragile and quite low academically, but even within my six students there is a great deal of variation.

One of the best parts of my day is circle time. It is a half hour or so block of time devoted to learning and having fun together. There is our usual songs about the days of the week and the weather, but there is also the songs we like. To keep it more motivating for my 'higher' student, I make us vote for the song they want to sing. We laugh over my crazy drawings of a Penguin for Penguin Polka and my bus for Wheels on the bus. The students and my staff go up and make a tally mark to vote for the song they want to hear. The nurses whisper with their student and then go up and make their vote and their student's vote. Penguin Polka was the song that won today. Those of us who can stand do and when the music starts we waddle around dancing the two step and bumping merrily into each other saying 'hello'. It really is a wonderful time.

Before our vote and song, I do a few other things. I had to change it up a bit today because of changes for students and one student was waiting out in the 'thinking chair' until he calmed down and could join us - it is never boring, that is for sure.

While the other two students and I waited, I read our story - Perfect Snow by Barbara Reid. I love her plasticine pictures!! The girls were so used to me starting with our circle song - that requires them to have their fingers up to draw circles - I had to tell them we would still do it, but only after a few more of our friends joined us. I also chose this book because later we would be doing a craft that was an aerial view of a snowman - Reid has one page that has an aerial view of a school's playground on a perfect snow day. It was a nice tie in for later as well.

After the story, and once we were joined by our other students, we did the circle song followed my the days of the week song and the weather song. We all squint when I open the blinds to check the weather.

Today we did an farm animal puzzle. I put the pieces in a bag that I can shake and the students have to reach in, grab a piece and then tell me what it is - this gets us using our words and our signs and today, our animal noises. As I held open the puzzle piece bag I made animal noises as they reached in. It was all wonderful fun and the students were all engaged. Gotta love it when they are all interested in the activity.

We did our song vote next followed by the song, then tied up our circle time.

We have just changed our time for our circle time. We used to have snack after it - now we have integration, computers or physio - depending on the student - but the funny thing is, our one student who is so into routine starts rubbing her tummy in the hopes of eating (she has Prader Willis Syndrome - which means she would eat ALL the time if we did not schedule it) We have to remind her we have changed things a bit. I expect she will get the new routine by next week. she is a smart little cookie.

Later, after lunch we got started on our aerial view snowmen. It is going to take our lovelies a few days to complete this project, but it was fun to watch them trace the circles and then cut them out. They are going to be so great when we are done. It never ceases to amaze me the student's personalities come out in their artwork, even with us providing the assistance.

I love this class. I just hope I get a lot more time with them. Time will tell. This position is going month by month and I know one day the teacher is going to come back, but until she does, I am going to enjoy these students and my wonderful, yet challenging staff.

Tomorrow we are finishing our aerial snowmen and making blueberry pancakes for lunch! Let's hope I do not forget any of the ingredients.