Makes you smile!!

After 23 years of teaching, there is always several changes that you see that happen in the teaching field.  There is one thing that always stays the same and it is how you care about the children and how they touch your heart.  I have a student this year that every day she leaves me a note on my desk.  Those little notes touch my heart daily.  

I tell all the students how much I love to come to school to see their smiles.  I wanted to share just a few notes that I received from her this last week.  She told me later that she wanted me to have those smiles she drew on the weekend so when I'm missing the students I can look at the smiles and it would make me think of them and their smiles. Even as so many things change in education, the one thing that never changes is how much we love these kids!

Hope you have a great week!

A little late, but a fun Christmas idea!

I know that Christmas is over, but I wanted to share what I used in the classroom before Christmas this year.  My co-teacher saw an idea of using the Grinch to motivate the students before Christmas to be extra kind to one another.  We started by reminding the students how the Grinch's heart was small and we wanted to work really hard to make it big before Christmas.  We talked about things we could do to help make its heart grow bigger.  The kids talked about being kind to other kids, teachers, and adults.  They also talked about how following rules and keeping the classroom clean would make his heart grow.  

Each day when they came into the room I would have the heart from the day before on the wall and a new heart to show if it had grown or if it had not grown.  They were so excited to look at it every day.   During the day, I would also make comments of how some of their actions were making his heart grow bigger.  Today was our first day back from Christmas break and I put up the heart he started out with, the heart that was in the middle of the time we started and his final heart.  They were thrilled and talked all day about how much they made the Grinch's heart grow.  It was a simple thing to do, but they sure loved it!  

Hope all of you enjoyed your break or you are still enjoying it if you haven't gone back yet!