recent happenings

Last night I awoke at 4am from one of those fantastic nightmares where I can't talk or scream by screaming out loud. Robert was reasonably startled by my outburst, as was I. Luckily, it didn't disturb Addison. I was awake for at least as hour after that happened though. The nightmare felt very real. It was too close to home for comfort and it took my mind and my racing heart a long while to forget.

I finally feel like I have a group of kids who are learning. I have one group of 6th and 7th graders that are making great progress with the Language Arts program I am using. It's a very non-standard approach to language arts that focuses largely on daily repetition of the most necessary language skills, rather than one at a time focus on all the individual skills. I am not yet working on compound/complex sentences structure with the kids, but that's because I don't think I was ever taught that concept. They have finally mastered calling an apostrophe by it's name rather than an "up high comma". And they know about adverbs, adjectives, pronous, verb, nouns. They are learning about prepositions slowly. They are comma-usage masters, even for introductory adverbs. It makes my heart happy. It's something I very much needed to see, so I am immensely thankful for my smart little students this year.

Speaking of smart students, some of my kids are extremely bright when it comes to technology. I consider myself fairly technology literate, however I have nothing on these kids. They can throw together a powerpoint presentation in 5 minutes, install and calibrate Interactive Whiteboards, and find proxies to access blocked websites. They are masters of their craft. I am awed by their abilities.

14 days of school left for Nicole. I get a 4 day break and then I go back for ESY (extended school year). Fun, fun.