Why Not?

Remember that time I said I won a contest? Well, now I'm in the running for another one. And you can be, too! Check out all the rules and what not here.

Halloween, anyone?

First, I won a contest! This page that I follow on Facebook (I follow their blog, too) posted something about guessing a number between 1 and 50 and whoever got it first would get a free cd of counting songs. So I figured, what the heck, I'll play; and I guessed 12. Twenty minutes later, I found out I won! So now I get a counting songs cd and I'm super excited to use it with my kindergarteners. :)

Second, kindergarten. It's not so bad after all. I still really miss my 5th graders though. But it's nice being in the same school. A few of them come see me daily, either before or after school. And others I just wave to as they walk past after school. It's great. Yesterday they asked me if I was going to come see them in their costumes. I wasn't sure of the kindergarten Friday schedule, so I told them I couldn't promise, but I'd try. Turns out lunch is at the same time on Friday's and since I go just a few minutes before they go to lunch, I hurried down and surprised them with a visit. :) It totally made my day when all 27 of them (almost in unison) gasped and exclaimed "Miss Barnes!" I so wish I could have stayed with them all semester! But, back to kindergarten. Those kids are so super cute. I already have them wrapped around my finger. :) Hopefully they don't cry when I leave in 6 weeks like they did when Holly left last week. Also, I'm not a fan of Halloween. But celebrating it with my students is awesome! And my costume rocked. :)

Some Mill Hollow friends are on their way up right now, and we are going to have a mini party with them. This time I am dressing up as Cheerleader from Teen Girl Squad. :)

Third, on Monday we took our kindergarteners to the pumpkin walk. So I went twice during the day. Then, during FHE, Elise called and asked if I wanted to go again. It was pretty awesome this year, and I told her I would go because I really wanted to see them all lit up. Here's some of my favorites.

And now some with people in them...

Looking for the aliens in each scene.

Stina has awesome jumping skills.

We flew!

We tried to spell fun.

One of my most favorite movies.

Yep. We're cool enough to get our picture with the witch. Also, this was the third witch I'd seen there that day.

Janielle as the Genie.

Elise is a sad Yoda.

My all time favorite!

Coming out of the pumpkin mouth.

Mostly, this week has been pretty awesome. We also had service week for IWA. I'm so glad it's over, but it was fun while it lasted. I also turned in my license application yesterday. Now I just have to wait another six weeks. 

D-r-o-w-n-e-d R-a-t-s

Janielle posted pictures on Facebook of today's activities, so I decided to be a picture stealer and blog. Because I don't have any lessons to be writing this weekend. (Secretly, I wish I did. Because I am so bored!) However, I have been reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey most of the day. It's so good! And it totally makes me wish I was going to be there to finish it with my 5th graders! I would love to see their reactions to some of the events. :)

Anyway, today was the homecoming game. I wasn't going to go because I was so sucked into my book. But then Janielle came over and asked if I wanted to go up with her so she didn't have to go alone. So I said okay. It's been pretty cloudy all day, and we decided that if it started to pour rain we would come home. Well, approximately 2 seconds after we got to the stadium it started raining. And it just kept getting harder. So we came home at half time. And this is what we looked like.

At the game

Walking home. We were already soaked, so we decided to jump in the puddle. And many others.

This is what we looked like by the time we actually got home.

On a side note, I now have everything I need to turn in my application for a teaching license. Weird! There's only 7 weeks until graduation. (Which means 9 until Christmas! :D) I think it's finally starting to sink in that I'm really graduating. Huh. Neat. 

*Also, this post is #43 for this year. Which means that I totally met my goal of getting more posts than last year, and I still have two months to go! Woot! :)

Ever wondered what teachers do during their prep hour?

I'm about to answer the unknown! Okay, so maybe it's not so unknown to a lot of you. It's definitely not unknown to me. Yesterday, while our kids were in art, Launa and I spent the time watching videos on you tube. Mostly this one:



And others of this kid. He's flipping amazing! And fun to watch. :)

Then, she showed me this little girl:



Holy cow! She started playing when she was 3. I think I need her to come teach me how to play Rhapsody in Blue.

I never thought I'd say this

Remember how I was super nervous to teach 5th grade? I worried about it all summer because I didn't really know what to expect. I thought the kids were old enough that I would be way out of my comfort zone, and I really worried about teaching math. That was seven weeks ago.

Today was my last day in 5th grade, and it took everything in me to not let the tears fall at the end of the day. Several of the kids got me little presents, and Launa even got me the second book in the Mysterious Benedict Society trilogy so that I can still have a chance to finish it. I was pretty excited about that. :) My kids have been talking all week about their "extra credit music assignment", too. You'd think that I would have picked up on something for all of them to be so excited about a music assignment, but I didn't. And then after they took their social studies test this afternoon, they all surprised me with a book they'd made! For their "extra credit music assignment" Launa had all of them write me a little note and decorate the page. And then she bound it, and gave it to me today. We took some pictures (which I so wish I could post!) and I got a hug from all of them. They all wanted me to sign a paper, too. :P But I was already in the process of writing them all a note to go home on Monday. So now I have an excuse to go back down there Monday morning. :D My most favorite part, though, was how excited they all got when I told them I would just be in Mrs. Hellstern's class upstairs, and that I would love to have them come see me before or after school. It really makes me excited to graduate and have my own class every year.

Monday I start teaching kindergarten. We're going to the pumpkin walk. And it's supposed to snow. Yeah, not cool. Hopefully it doesn't snow. I'll have to remember to take my camera and get some pictures for sure. :) I'm excited for kindergarten, I'm just not so excited to have to think like I did last year for preschool. Maybe this'll be easier though. I hope it is!

Why I Love UEA

Wow. This week has been so much better than last! Unfortunately, my car is still dead. The engine Dad was going to get for it turned out to be bad; so it's just sitting at home. I think. At least I have Mom's car for now, so I can still get to school, and various other places. Like UEA. Holly and I got up super early on Friday to be in Sandy by 8am. At least I got one day to sleep in, right? (And yes, I took full advantage of it by not getting up until 10. :D) And actually, we didn't even get there until 8:30. It was so fun to hang out with Tycee, Ashlee, Caitie, and Holly again!  We spent the entire day together, sitting through a couple of really boring classes, one really good one, eating lunch, and browsing through the idea fair. We all left with a bag full of stuff. Too bad we didn't think to get a picture of us holding everything. That would have been entertaining!

After the conference was over, we headed to Jordan Commons for a movie. We saw Life As We Know It, and boy was it good! Before the movie, though, Caitie spotted a little machine thing that you can win a movie from. As in the actual dvd. So she tried it. Six times. And never won. But here she is trying...her first and I think fourth attempt.

Chillin' with the girls at Texas Roadhouse

It's been so great going through the program with these girls! I wish Tycee, Ashlee, and Caitie were student teaching up north so that we could play together more often. (Not that Holly and I play a lot, because, well, we're always doing something related to school! Unless, of course, we're sleeping.) 

I spent the rest of my weekend at home writing the end of my social studies unit. It actually made me really sad. I've really grown to love 5th grade, and I so wish I could just stay there for my second block! But, kindergarten won't be terrible. I hope. It will be quite the different way of thinking, that's for sure. Oh, yeah. I also started learning a new song on the piano while I was at home yesterday. 

Yeah, after three hours I still haven't even mastered the first page. And there's 30 pages. But that first big run? Yep, almost have that one down. :) Too bad I don't have constant access to a piano anymore. Also, I don't think this is the exact version that I have, but it's close enough. Gershwin was definitely one talented guy!

Daughter of a King

So I realized after my last post, that I totally forgot to put up pictures of my awesome bedroom! I bought dot wall stickers back in August, and LOVE them. My wall looks totally awesome!

Also, I planned a trade fair for my class this past week. This has been our first actual social studies unit and we've spent a lot of time talking about Marco Polo, Bartolomeu Dias, and (tomorrow) Vasco da Gama. Among others. :) With this comes discussion about how things used to be traded, etc. And I thought it would be a good idea for them to experience a trade fair. So they all brought one or two things to trade, and they had twelve minutes to do it. Launa and I both thought they'd be done faster than that, but they took the whole time, and still wanted to keep going! I wish I could post the pictures I got of it, because they really enjoyed it. Probably as much as they like our read aloud book....and that's a lot! Speaking of our read aloud, it's probably one of my new favorite books. It's called The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart. Love it! We're almost done with book one, and then we'll start book two...right before I move up to kindergarten. :( Guess I'll just have to talk Mom into getting it for me for Christmas or something. 

We had our IWA Women's Conference yesterday. Wow! It's amazing what something like that can do for you after a really bad week. Multiple things have either bugged me or stressed me out lately (mostly because I spend WAY too much time thinking!) and when my car died last Monday, that was the last straw. And things didn't really get better as the week went on. But then Friday was a pretty good day at school. And I got to go be with Aundrea when she got her endowments. And at midnight, I rearranged my living room. It seems like there's so much more space now!

I still wasn't really looking forward to being at the institute by 8:30 on a Saturday morning, though. And I didn't get up until 8. (Oops?) I finally made it up there, but also didn't really have a good attitude about it still. We practiced with the choir, made sure everything was ready, and then went into the faculty room to meet with Ardeth G. Kapp and Merilee Webb. Yep...I met, hugged, and talked with a former Young Women's General President. Cool, huh? :) Sister Webb has directed several choirs for general YW broadcasts, among other choirs. It was sitting in that room with them that I finally realized that I was there for a reason, though I had no idea what it was. It wasn't until the conference was long over that I figured it out, either. And I'm so glad I finally caught on! Things don't look so bleak anymore, and I love it. I just wish it hadn't taken me six days to figure it out. 

Here's a couple of songs just because. And they seem to fit right now. *I'm not posting them for the videos...just the songs.

Life in the Fast Lane

So much for getting at least one post a month! Turns out that teaching keeps one VERY busy, and thus leaves no time for blogging. But, today is parent teacher conferences, and since I don't have to go, I will attempt to play catch up. :)

Back in August, I had the chance to go visit Jason and Shayla. Months previous, Jason had been telling me about some awesome place that they go to get ice cream after going to the temple, and I said he should send me some. His response was "You come. We go to temple. We go get fat." So I said okay. And that's exactly what we did in August. Turns out the place we went for dinner used to be a Leatherby's, but now it's something like Eats and Treats. But still with a Leatherby's menu. And it was all the same food. Good think I like that place, eh?

Now you see why Jason said we go get fat!

Then school started at the end of August. We had a two day student teaching orientation, which was actually really boring. They just told us the exact same stuff they've been telling us all the through the program. Do they think we've never heard it before? September 1st was my first day in fifth grade. And honestly, I didn't really like it at the beginning. The thought of teaching older kids scared me. A lot. But, my cooperating teacher, Launa, is so fantastic! I was telling someone the other day about how I've really lucked out and had the best cooperating teachers all the way to the end. Anyway, remember how I said at the beginning that teaching keeps a person extremely busy? Yeah, this is what my calendar looked like for September.

Janielle (aka Daisy) so kindly added little notes for me. :) Thank goodness my October calendar isn't anywhere near that full! I only have 10 days left in fifth grade. And honestly, I'm really going to miss it. My class is absolutely fantastic! They chat a lot, but they all know how to work hard and help each other. And I love all of the fifth grade teachers. We just started our math groups yesterday and I get to work with the group that Angeline has. I love being able to see so many different teaching styles! But, at the same time, I'm really excited to move upstairs to kindergarten. It's easier for me to teach the younger kids for some reason. And, I already know I will have another fabulous cooperating teacher! 

School and IWA seem to take over my life. It's not so bad, just go, go, go! We have service week coming up for IWA, and I have to figure out what to get for our speakers, as well as get some of my treasurers to volunteer to pick up food, etc. Should be fun. Oh, Elise did a photoshoot with me a couple weekends ago for graduation in 2 months. Check it out here! Here's a few other photos of life since being back in Logan.

Hanging out at the USU/BYU game

 

And yet another football game.

Yep, we're attractive.

A bunch of us went hiking on Labor Day.

Apparently there's not as many as I thought. Oh well. I guess I'll go work on some lesson plans while I wait for the car fixing place to call Dad and tell him why my car doesn't start. Exciting, no?

Ps. Yes, I'm aware that my header doesn't match the rest of my blog. It's currently under construction.