"And then I kick her, sir"

Today I am grateful for my husband. Well, I suppose I'm always grateful for him but tonight, especially so... which is funny since we were arguing earlier tonight, humph. Anyways, I'm grateful for my hubby for giving me a much needed kick in the bee-hind to go and get crackin' on my girly relationships, I too often let them slide. It's too easy to just say "well, if they wanted to see me then they'd call"... however, that's not such a brilliant idea on my part. Long story short (which is hard to do when you're verbose like me) I had a grand night of chatting with my very pregnant (jealous!) friend over creamsicles. And, it was all thanks to hubby's kickin' me pants. Thanks hubby o' mine.

In other news... (I hate that saying, I find it annoying yet it runs through my mind while I'm typing blogs/emails all the time)... Tommy still isn't back in school so it's still all quiet on the classroom front. The units I'm doing for Language Arts with the 4 grade 2 girls are going really well (if I do say so myself). I had the girls each pick a different Magic Tree House book (they picked Pirates, Dolphins, the Amazon and the Arctic) and I've been creating questions and vocabulary and other fun worksheets for each girl, based on their book. It's been a lot of work but they've been loving it (much to my enjoyment and surprise) and I've been having fun too. We've been doing vocabulary on a grid format. Each day (that we do vocab, not every day) I find 4 words from each chapter in each book and make a 4X4 grid with big spaces for each word. The girls and I then go through each word, talking about what it could mean (or does if they already know), read it in the chapter and then draw a picture to remind us of what the word is. The girls enjoy being able to individualize their learning and understanding and hey, who doesn't like to draw mushroom for the word "vile"? Yesterday I started them working on their dioramas. Exciting! They each picked 2 objects, plants, people or animals from their story and are doing research on them. I have asked them to supply 4 facts about each "thing" and include that with their diorama. I'll be taking pictures of the progress tomorrow. The girls are all working really hard (even the "I'm done!" child- you know the one... the one who's finished before you're finished explaining the task and she's finished with the exact minimum that you asked for) and are quite proud of their boxes. We even created a rubric together that they will be using to self assess and then I'll assess after. It's fun only teaching one class to 4 girls! I suppose I shouldn't really get used to it though seeing as how there is only 7 days of school left... and then in September I'll have a full class.

It's miskeeter (say it out loud if you don't know what on earth that word is, I enjoy spelling phonetically) time out here... all day long, in class, you hear *smack!* "oh, I missed"... or, *smack!* "Ow!" "Sorry, you had a mosquito on your head"... how I wish my classroom door had a screen!

Another reason to love my husband? He's in the kitchen making my lunch for tomorrow, how much do I love that he cooks!? So much! ...I should go help.