Tending the Eclectic Kinder-Garden

Favorite Costumes:

Mine:
1) Kitty Cat

2) Angel

3) Witch (though I do the twirly dress/feather trimmed hat version, nothing scary for this kindergarten teacher!)

Others:
1) High school friends waaaaayyyyyy back when dressed as the

Ghostbusters

2) My daughter as a bride and my eldest son as a Star Fleet officer

3) A former student dressed as the Big Bad Wolf (he wore a baseball   cap on which his mother had glued fake brown fur and huge googly eyes, wool ears, wool teeth hanging down from the brim, etc.)

Favorite movies:
1) Sleepy Hollow (a la Johnny Depp)
2) Something Wicked This Way Comes
3) Lost Boys (though I enjoy the vampire genre year ’round)

Trick-or-Treat Candy:
1) Peanut M-n-M’s
2) Smarties
3) Old fashioned bubble gum

Family events/traditions:
1) buying pumpkins and carving jack-o-lanterns
2) decorating the house with our favorite figurines and decorations
3) trick-or-treating with the kids

Halloween songs:
1) Five Little Pumpkins
2) Purple People Eater
3) Humming “La dah dee dee dah dee dee, la dah dee dee dee dah abracadabra…”

Halloween recipes:
1) Pumpkin Pie
2) Popcorn Balls/Chex Mix (I’ll make popcorn balls one year, Chex Mix the next…)
3) Spiced Pumpkin Cookies

Crafts:
1) Wreaths
2) Banners
3) Magnets

Tags: meme

The Science Goddess tagged me a month ago (I know, I know!  A month?  Thankfully she knows I’ve been back to school, in a new state, a new district, etc.) for a meme started by Nancy, Teacher in a Strange Land, addressing what educators wish policymakers understood about the public school system.  Another teacher/blogger tagged me too but now I can’t find her comment~ Let me know who you were so I can link back to you, pretty please?

Here’ s my kindergarten perspective on Five Things Policy Makers Should Know About Kindergarten:

1)  While preschool and early childhood programs usually offer wonderful and diverse hands-on play/learning/socialization experiences for children, requiring *testing* for three, four and five year olds to determine whether or not they’re “ready” for kindergarten is ridiculous.  What’s next, IQ tests in utero via a two-way sonogram?  Children get to be children.  They’re not “allowed” to come from diverse backgrounds, they DO come from diverse backgrounds. One-size-fits-all fits no one.  Nothing like having to beat a dead horse.

2) Kindergarten teachers wish you would stop approving and paying architectural firms that offer a one-seat-toilet bathroom for girls and a one-seat-toilet for boys for a classroom of 12+ children…or TWO classrooms of children as their innovative design.  Take teacher feedback seriously, and require that the architect go back and rethink the blueprint, please.  The same goes for storage, cabinetry, and learning spaces.  Ask…the…teachers.

3) Playtime IS learning. Authentic assessment is more relevant, accurate, and applicable than DIBELS scores could ever be.  But authentic assessment doesn’t create cool flow charts and numbers to crunch… I know, I know.  You like number data.  You like number data more than you like children apparently.  Time for a change.

4) Kindergarten is NOT babysitting (though if you’d like to fund kindergarten teachers at the same rate a babysitter makes, I’d be more than happy to take that check).

5) Kindergarten entrance age requirements that vary from state to state don’t tend to help children at all: they merely serve to 1) replace expensive day care costs for parents who are able to get their children in to a kindergarten program in one state for a week or two, then move to another state or district that is required to enroll the student since s/he was already in public school elsewhere, 2) feed the ego of parents who think that trying to teach their one year old to read is the way to make sure s/he is ahead of everyone else and 3) frighten parents with less material wealth than others into believing that they can’t provide developmentally appropriate experiences for their children.  Most children aren’t ready for kindergarten at age four, though their parents ARE.  Some children aren’t ready when they’re a “young five” when the school year starts.  There is nothing wrong with being an “old five” starting kindergarten.

Kindergarten encompasses a certain stage in a child’s development.  It’s a stage to experience, not a race to try to win.

*****

Feel free to grab the meme and address it in your blog- let me know if you do!

Tags: kindergarten, meme

…about *moi,* in case you were wondering:

1) My favorite hobby would have to be crocheting blankets, but I think I’ll be inspired to crochet scarves now that we’re living someplace with much cooler winters!

2) My favorite season is winter, though autumn is a close second, especially since leaving Alaska several years ago.

3)  I’m not into hunting and fishing like other members of my family, but I wander through antique malls whenever I get the chance. I’m on the lookout for a specific salt cellar that will complete my collection. I…WILL…FIND…IT.

4) I prefer vanilla/spicy scents over fruity, any day.

5) I don’t get nervous about shots or getting my blood drawn since having children.  A flu shot comes nowhere near the pain level that childbirth does.

6) I think love manifests itself in many different tones and forms, but none of them are cruel.

7)  I have two favorite Christmas songs: Little Drummer Boy (duet) by Bing Crosby and David Bowie, and Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (instrumental) by J.S. Bach.

I prefer to drink “foo foo” coffee in the morning, but occasionally will drink tea.

9) I can’t swim, but have made sure my children don’t have a water phobia.

10) I prefer walking to running, and only in cooler temperatures.  Having gallons of sweat rolling off of me while getting sunburned holds no appeal for me whatsoever.

11) My favorite piece of jewelry is my wedding set, though I love my charm bracelet too.

12) I can whistle, but don’t get me started or I’ll never stop.  As a teen, my mother and I tried to re-enact this scene but never made it all the way through because we’d burst out laughing:

13) I neither sing nor hum in the shower.

14) My favorite candies are peanut M-n-M’s and Smarties. Never together though.

15) I’m an Eskimo who loves ice cream…big surprise. Dairy Queen’s Peanut Buster Parfaits (with extra nuts) can just about make my day. So can plain ol’ Tin Roof Sundae. And Rocky Road.

Tags: meme

Meme rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people (I’m just inviting my readers- if you take up the meme, post back here so I’ll know and can come take a peek)

I have two books stacked on top of each other, so I’ll give you the meme-required-info from both and you can try to figure out where my brain has been for the last week:

Book number one:

“Suddenly, like a striking snake, she reached out and grabbed my hand in a fierce grip. “

Followed by:

“At once she twisted it behind my back and held me so that I could move neither forward nor backward but only cry out in pain: ‘Anne! Don’t! You’re really hurting!’ ‘Well hear this,’ she hissed in my ear. ‘Hear this Mary. I am playing my own game and I don’t want you interrupting. Nobody will know anything until I am ready to tell them, and then they will know everything too late.”

Book number 2:

“After a neuron fires, a neurotransmitter swims across that synapse to a nearby neuron, and when it finds the lock and binds with it, that new neuron starts to fire.”

Followed by:

“Not all keys fit all locks; there are certain locks (receptors) that are designed to accept only certain neurotransmitters. Generally, neurotransmitters cause the receiving neuron to fire or prevent it from firing. The neurotransmitters are then absorbed through a process called reuptake; without reuptake, the neurotransmitters would continue to stimulate or inhibit the firing of a neuron.”

I signed up for Oprah’s webclass too, so I’ll be buying A New Earth and catching up on my reading each evening before next Monday- or trying to, since I’ll probably be having too much fun spending time with Shannon visiting!

Tags: books, meme

1) Answer the questions below.
2) Take each answer and type it into Photobucket.
3) Take any picture from the first page of results and post. (click on the picture and copy the HTML code)
4) Have fun!

~What age will you be on your next birthday? thirty nine!

~ A place you’d like to travel to/visit? Europe

~ Your favorite place? Home sweet home.

~ Your favorite object? My wedding ring.

~ What is your favorite food to eat? Chinese!

~ Your favorite animal is… a koala bear.

~ What is your favorite color?

~ What is your favorite t.v. show? The Tudors

~ Favorite celebrity male, favorite celebrity female? Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie

~ What is the name of your pet? Anni

(She’s a cat, not a smiley though)

~ Who is your current love?

(actually, it’s “Chris-the-Lasikally-enhanced-soldier-and-Harley-tech!”

~ What is your nickname? For some, it’s “Mikey.”

~ What’s a bad habit of yours? OVER-cleaning! Ha!

~ What was your first job? I was a teacher aide!

Thanks for the meme, Paulette!

Tags: meme

I’ve been tagged by Science Goddess for a meme, and since I know it’s one of Life’s Little Rules that you *never* defy a goddess (being a domestic one myself), here we go!

To get started:

1) Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2) Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.

3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on his or her blog.

Okie dokie, here we go:

1) Like the Science Goddess, I too, am a morning person, and not just because I have a toddler who rises before the cock crows. I’m up early, having coffee, reading (even when the toddler sleeps in) and enjoying the solace each day, whether it’s a work day or not. At times it’s a pain having to wait for the rest of the family to wake up, eat, and get their own batteries charged, especially when I’ve been up and rarin’ to go for two hours.

2) I really dislike mobs. My early rising gives me the opportunity to avoid them while grocery shopping (the commissary opens at seven a.m. here), and I do whatever I can to get all of my errands done before the lunch hour, because mobs in stores or restaurants mean that there are mobs driving on the road. Do not invite me to go Christmas shopping with you on Black Friday. Do not invite me to go shopping with you on Christmas Eve, or the day before Thanksgiving for that matter, it’s not going to happen.

3) I prefer fat free coffee creamer over sugar free. That sugar substitute leaves a disgusting aftertaste in my mouth.

4) I find it extremely difficult to write anything more in-depth than a grocery list if someone is talking to me, I’m hearing sibling rivalry, or a television show is on too loud. I have to “hear” myself, my words when I write, and I can’t do that with unpredictable background noise or someone chatting away at me. Can’t.

5) I used to dance around to music as I did the domestic goddess thing. Vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the windows, folding the laundry. Journey was my get-up-and-shake-it music of choice. I’m not sure why I stopped. It’s a habit I need to get back into now that I think about it!

6) My fingernail polish and toenail polish must match. No burgundy fingers with pink toes for me.

7) Symmetry and balance is important to me. Very. The term “obsessive compulsive” pops into many of my friends’ minds when they come to visit me at home or encounter me putting up a new bulliten board display at school. I KNOW when someone has come into my home and tilted my mirror by the front door *just a tad*. It drives me insane when we move to a new home and the overhead pendants in the dining room or kitchen or living room aren’t centered with the windows in each location, or centered in the ceiling in a room without windows. Thankfully this need for visual balance doesn’t extend to my students’ activities in the classroom. They can expand or shift their learning centers, creative constructions, and move through the room freely to share their latest painting, favorite story, or plans for recess.

Whew! Kind of cathartic. Who to tag, who to tag, who to tag… I can’t think of seven, so I’ll choose three, thank them in advance (I know a lot of you are just trying to make it through this month!), and get this one posted!

Tags to:

Shannon even though she’s relatively new to BlogsVille!

Shabby Chic in Suburbia because she’s been an inspiration since I discovered her blog (and thank you for the photography tips!).

Education in Texas, a blogger I’ve discovered just this week- giving me hope that there is some form of teaching sanity in the Lone Star State.

I’ll start:

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there…

(Thank you C.C. Moore)

Okay readers, now it’s YOUR turn to continue on (and remember to link back so I can see where you’ve decided to take us)…

Alice tagged me for a “Great Education Podcast” meme! Taking this year “off” from teaching means I get to be in charge of my own professional development and educational explorations, so feel free to follow the links, turn up your volume, and listen in to what *this* kindergarten teacher has been enjoying lately!

*Phyllis Ferguson’s podcast, Download “Stop the Pendulum, I Want to Get Off” discusses how fear impacts children and teachers in the classroom and advocates for teachers to have “pervasive caring” towards their students.