It's Never Boring in Kindergarten

So I came in to work this morning, just barely, after a bad attack of IBS. After having two days of almost nothing, I decided I could "help" the situation with some fiber cereal and kelfir. Boy did it ever. But not the way I had in mind.

After finishing up in the restroom, I made my way to my classroom. The custodian was in there, mopping up what had happened overnight. You see, on Monday, I came in to discover water everywhere near the sink. We had a leaking pipe. Unable to turn the water off, we put a large bowl under the sink to pick up the drip. We dragged my large rug outside to dry, moved playhouse furniture that had gotten wet. Keep in mind this is just a slow drip- that had 2 days to accumulate.

So before I left last night, I changed the bowl, emptying it of water. 15 hours however, is too long to go. Water had spread more this morning than Monday, since there was no rug to soak up most of it. Also, todays flood did manage to creep to the bottom loft reading center. The rug there is wet in the closest corner.

So my day was off to a great start. Fortunately for me, my morning was helped by two things: PE and Library. PE was from 8:15 to 8:45. Normally it's at noon, but the schedule is changed this week due to testing in grades 1, 3, and 5. And yes, the testing means my assistant is in another room proctoring during the morning. After PE, the Library Lady brought her lil red wagon of books to our class for a visit. What a nice surprise! Two weeks earlier, we'd missed library, since the media center is often used for small group testing. Sine our Library Lady is a certified teacher in her own right, I was able to leave them in her care for 30 minutes or so.

When I got back, the students were choosing books from the wagon. Library Lady left, and I read a couple of the books the students had chosen. After that, I gave directions for the "Pp" word book they were to make. As they started in on that, it was already 10am, and my assistant was back from testing.

10:40 was blessed lunch.

After lunch we started choosing names for our pig for the Great Pig Race.

What's that? You've never heard of the Great Pig Race? For shame.... it's the annual ending to the fall fundraiser. Each class that sells an average of 3 items per student gets a pig to race. The pigs are battery operated fuzzy stuffed animals. They waddle, then stop to snort and wag their tail, then walk some more. The uppergrades race. The lower grades race. The winner of each of the first two races then race. The winner of that wins a party for their class- either pizza, or popcorn or ice cream. It's pretty much all luck as to where in the walk cycle your pig is when the race begins.

At 12:30 we'd chosen a name and a costume for our pig. We were: Ninja Pig! We found a white belt from dressup to put around his head a la Karate Kid. Then using strips of construction paper, we made ones for ourselves and wrote Ninja Pig on them. A couple of signs were created, and at 1pm we were ready to roll into the gym for the races.

I have a lil bit mixed feelings on the event. On the one hand it's exciting and loud and fun. On the other hand, it's exciting and loud and revvs up their little internal engines. When your own class pig doesn't win... some aren't sure what to do with all that built up feeling meeting with disappointment. Some get mad, some cry, but most are ok. Luckily today we were able to run around outside on the playground afterwards.

Most of today I felt like it was all I could do to get through the day, wanting nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed. I probably will go to bed early tonight, which I didn't do last night.

Why you ask? Well, I was on a first date :D (big grin) And he's interesting, and kinda sweet, and has a nice sense of humor. He's a techie geek, and has worked with computers and networks a lot. We're going on a 2nd date Saturday. Oakland Cemetery has it's Halloween guided walking tour that night. Should be fun.

But when I came home last night, it was only 10 minutes to Heroes, and by the end of it I did go to bed, but tossed and turned for an hour. So then I got up to watch the rest of Xmen2 on DVD before finally going to sleep for real at midnight.

Whew! I didn't want to get up with my alarm this morning :P But it's never boring in Kindergarten.