I Heart Daycare

And my kids do too!  They so needed to be back into a solid routine.  They both love being back with their friends and they are learning so much every day.  Kaitlyn is even napping at daycare and is still able to fall asleep at a reasonable time without her summer routine of getting out of bed a hundred times.  If I remember to get her to go potty before AND after bath time, then she doesn't come out of her room at all. 

The only thing that I am not thrilled about is that Tyler is with the same teacher he had when he left.  He should be in the older toddler class because he is 19 months, but they have so many toddlers right now he's still with his old teacher.  Not that I don't like his current teacher, but I really love the older toddler teacher.  She did so well with Kaitlyn and she really likes that age group.  I know it's really weird to say because their toddlers, but I feel she really gives them a good foundation for learning.  She really gets in to teaching them shapes and colors and the basics they need.  Tyler needs so much more help in this department and I really wanted him to be with a teacher who was good at teaching such a young age group.  (For the record at this age Kaitlyn was speaking over 100 words, using simple sentences, knew all her colors, shapes and ABC's.) 

I'm also happy that Kaitlyn now has homework and of course she's excited to do it.  We work on it together and hopefully this will carry through when she starts school.  I love that she asks to do her homework when she's still at daycare and she calls everything she works on homework.  So cute.

I know we save a lot of money when we take the kids out of daycare for the summer, but I think this summer I'm going to try to talk daddy into keeping at least Kaitlyn in or I need to find some type of summer program for her.  She really needs the mental stimulation and I can only do so much on my own.

Ruffled Lamp

I came across this lamp here.  I thought it would be perfect for Katilyn's room so I decided to tackle it.  I LOVE how it turned out.  I bought the lamp with the shade from the family dollar store for $6 and I ordered the fabric online for about $4.  It was pretty easy to make, but I'll admit that cutting the circles out was super tedious.  It was totally worth it and it's going to look perfect in Kaitlyn's newly painted room.  I can't wait to put it all back together and add her new furniture.  I'll post pics when it's all done!

Do I Have Time for That?

I'm thinking about getting a Master's Degree in some sort of educational capacity.  I know that to permanently get out of the classroom I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get one.  I just don't know when to start and in what direction I need to go.  A friend of mine keeps telling me to get my ed leadership degree, but I have absolutely NO intentions of being any kind of administrator.  I am not cut out for that.  Besides, everyone and their mother want to be an AP/Principal.  I'm kinda leaning towards guidance because let's face it, I'm a fixer.  I just don't know if I have the fortitude to put in those long hours with no pay bump what-so-ever.  Right now, technically, I can work to my contract.  (I don't ever as I'm here early in the morning and usually stay late in the evening.)

I know you're probably wondering why the hell I got into teaching if I don't want to go back in to the classroom.  Well, in the few short years that I have been in education it has changed drastically.  Public school teachers are enemy number one these days.  Everything is blamed on us and we usually shoulder the majority of the burden of our respective districts.  Classroom teachers feel like circus performers having to jump through so many hoops that our state and local government place on us.  There is no authentic teaching going on these days, all we do is teach to a test, whether it be FCAT, EOC's, AP tests, etc.  Kids aren't learning English, Math or Science these days.  They are learning test taking strategies and how to guess correctly by process of elimination.  Those aren't necessarily bad things, but they definitely should not be the main focus in education.  Creativity has long gone out the window and we shove material down the throats of our students in an effort to cover all the standards that are going to be tested on the (insert test here).  Not to mention that these tests are given in April so now it's the teacher's responsibility to prepare 2 months worth of lessons that most students are going to blow off.  (School is over in June.)

I'm tired of being beat up in the classroom.  If little Johnny fails my class, it's because I'm a bad teacher, not because little Johnny never-comes-to-class-or-has-materials-when-he-does-so-he-tries-to-sleep-and-curses-me-out-when-I-wake-him-and-then-I-call-home-his mother-says-he's-my-problem-from-7-2-and-his-administrator-is-so-backed-up-that-he-suspends-him-because-that's-the-easiest-thing-to-do-with-the-limited-resources-we-have-available-and-it's-what-little-Johnny-wanted-anyway-because-he-doesn't-want-to-be-in-school-anyway.  *sigh*

Maybe I'll just go back to the corporate world.  At least I can leave work behind me when I clock out at night.

Letter Hooks

I found these wooden letters with hooks on them and thought they would be perfect in Kaitlyn's room...with a little help of course.

They started out like this:

And ended up like this:

I got the letters from Michael's in the dollar section.  Love me some dollar finds!  I took off the hooks first and spray painted them a deep plum color.  Then I painted the sides of the letters with a purple acrylic paint I had on hand from a mother's day project I did in May.  Then I traced the letters backwards on some scrapbook paper.  After I cut the letters out I modge podged the letters and put the paper letters on top.  I then coated the top of the letters with some more modge podge.  I liked them with just the paper but also thought they needed a little something more.  So I embellished them with some purple rick rack and some purple buttons.  I absolutely loved how they turned out and can't wait to put them up in Kaitlyn's room when it's all painted.