I went to help Rebekah with her classroom again. We are getting close to being done. However Rebekah made the comment that you are never really done. That is true, teachers are always having to change things to make the classroom interesting for the students. It is a lot of hard work and I have to give a big "Thank You" to all of the teachers out there.
Calendar and days of the week
Job Chart
Word Chart
Writing all the kids names on their name strips so they know where to sit and get to know the other students. I love these name strips because they have the alphabet on them. I think they are super cute!
Yes, more laminating
The biggest job was preparing to get rid of all these old, old, old, books from the classroom. Some were as old as 1964. No offense to anyone who was born around that time. I am not trying to say that is so old, however for books the children need more up to date reading materials. I ended up with a few more boxes of books after I took this picture.
I had to stamp each book with this
Then I got to put all the new books in the baskets.
Over the weekend Dave went to Trents house. He picked these pretty roses from Trents rose garden. I love the colors. It is always nice to have fresh flowers around the house.
Yesterday Dave and I went for a hike. The night before he said "Let's get up at 7:00 and go hiking". Well we got up at 7:00, but didn't end up leaving until 9:00. I don't know why it took us 2 hours to get going. Anyway, it was a very easy hike. With my health I am still not up to doing anything too major. We went on a trail up Little Cottonwood Canyon. I remember taking my niece Nya up it last summer and she was only 3 at the time. She did the hike so I remember it being pretty easy. Anyway, Dave is just like a kid. The entire hike he kept stopping to check out rocks and the river.
Of course he saw this huge rock and had to climb it.
Something that I thought was cool were these bright orange berries that were high up in the trees. I have never seen them before, and believe me I have done a lot of hiking. (Last summer) It is always fun to discover new things out in nature.
At one point he even went in the river (which was freezing cold) to get some rocks and to pan for gold. He found a few flecks of gold. Too bad he didn't find a huge nugget, we would be rich :)
I started feeling really nauseous on the hike (probably because I was over doing it, even though it was easy) So I pretty much came home and had to spend the rest of the day in bed. I felt o.k. when I was laying down, but as soon as I got up the nausea was definitly in full force. Regardless, we had a great time out in nature. It is the first hike I have done since May so I was loving being in the mountains again. Enjoying the sounds of birds, squirels, lizards scurrying off the path, the river raging the mountain, and of course spending time with the love of my life, DAVE!
Friday Rebekah, Nya, and I went to the classroom to start decorating. One thing Rebekah wanted to be sure was that she got lots of bright, fun, and interesting colors for the children. The room was so bland, it really needed some help!
Here are some of the supplies that we got on Thursday.
Nya was in charge of decorating Rebekah's Desk. She did a mighty fine job!
Rebekah and I got started on placing the butcher paper and boarders. We thought all the bright colors and polka dot theme turned out great!
And of course tons of laminating all the dye cuts!
Of course after all the laminating comes cutting them out! That will be quite the task. Also on Monday we need to finish decorating the boards with all the cool stuff Bekah got. Again I was exhausted from my summer cold. Plus I am still recovering from the treatments that I had during the month of July, so I get tired really easily and can only do so much.
Friday night Dave and I were house sitting for Matt and Rebekah. We decided to invite Stacey, Juan and Sierra over to watch a movie. I love watching movies at Bekah's because they have the most amazing movie room I have ever seen. We watched Laura Croft Tomb Raider, which I have seen a ton of times, but I still love it and don't think I will ever get sick of it.
It was fun to see my cute niece Sierra, she is at such a fun age.
Rebekah is going to be teaching a.m. Kindergarten this year. She invited me to go shopping with her to get supplies and decorations for the classroom. I jumped at the chance to go because I have secretly always wanted to be a teacher, especially for all the cute teaching aide's they have out there. I would probably end up spending my whole salary just on that stuff. Anyway we started out at IKEA. We were there for about a 1 1/2 hours and it was fun to look at all the cool stuff they have there.
After IKEA we hit the dollar store to look for some storage containers for books, pens, pencils, glue, scissors , and whatever else we might find that would be good for the classroom. We were successful, which doesn't always happen at a dollar store, but we were satisfied with what we found. After the dollar store we hit TJ-Max (sorry no pic). I'm sure you are thinking "What would you find there for the classroom"? Well we were looking for a large tin can that Bekah could use to put all her pointer sticks in. We were successful in finding something that would work.
Next stop, Lakeshore Learning Store. Oh my, I was most excited about this. This store is a teachers dream (or maybe just my dream) and has all kinds of cute things. We had to find a lot of supplies here and I was in 7th heaven helping Bekah choose boarders, calenders, word strips, name strips for the desks, posters, pointers, die cuts, and a few other things that I can't remember right now :). It was great.We then headed to Staci's to pick up Nya. It was great to see Katya and Cali too. We still had another stop to make and Rebekah thought Nya would enjoy this next stop. We went to the D.I. (no pic) to pick out books for the classroom. The classroom already had books, but they were all from the 1950's. Bekah wanted some nicer, updated books. Nya was great in helping choose books that she thought the children would enjoy. Nya was a big help in also putting all the books in the cart. The great thing about the D.I. is that all the books that Bekah got were only 50 cents. I think she got like 150 books or so. Lets just say the bags were very heavy. Nya wanted to pick out a toy, so I took her down the toy isle and she litterly looked at a ton of toys, wanting to make her decision very carefully. She could only choose one thing and she wanted that one thing to be extra special. She picked out a Dora doll that was totally dirty and it looked like some kid decided to chop the hair. Bekah and I were both like "Are you sure that is what you want"? Certainly there were several other toys that were in much better condition, but cute Nya wouldn't budge. When Nya got in the car she wanted to make sure Dora was safe so she buckled her in! Nya is too funny!By this time I was exhausted from our day of shopping! I have one of those great summer colds so I wasn't feeling to good. Rebekah still had a few more places that she wanted to go and I decided to go home. It was a great day and I enjoyed getting to spend some time with Rebekah.
Dave and I love Redbox! It's nice because it's only a buck to rent. Every once in a while we will get a movie that we have never heard of, or that we think is probably only worth a dollar to watch. Anyway, we were renting a movie Wednesday night and Dave saw the movie "Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium". Dave said that he had heard of it, but didn't know if it was good or not. I looked up the description and said "This looks totally lame! You can get it, but I am not going to watch it" So Dave rented the movie. I ended up watching it with him and it was surprisingly good! It stars Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Justin Bateman. It is about a magical toy store and quite funny. It is rated "G" which is a rare find these days. I think it came out in 2007, so it may not be easy to find. But if you come across it, I highly recommend it. In fact, it is a movie a I wouldn't mind owning.
