recent posts
October 28, 2011
Halloween is in three days, and the hunt for odds and ends to finish the kids' costumes is still underway.Do you remember L.'s DIY Clone Trooper costume from last year? The one I spent hours on (and almost severed my fingers while sawing through a white plastic trashcan)? The one L. claimed he would wear year after year because it was so good. It's in bits and pieces all around the garage and this year L. wants to be some character out of the computer game he likes to play these days. When he first told me about it I though, oh this will be easy because the character I...
October 27, 2011
I've been taking on too much lately. You know how it is, you pile on thing after thing, thinking you can do it all, but it's that one last thing--that smallest of all the things--that ends up being the one to topple it all. Like, saying 'yes' weeks ago under some duress to an invitation to attend an evening event on campus this past Friday, only to discover, three days later, that it was the same night and time as my daughter's school's fall festival.
Her new school. Her first fall festival there. And her grade worked hard on making bottle cap magnets to sell at...
October 25, 2011
In my special topics class on Monday we talked about nationalism. The students were assigned this essay to read, and they weren't happy. It was "long" and "difficult" and, also, "boring" to read. This was not a new reaction, by any means. Students often react that way with this particular essay but I like to teach it anyway. Once I explain it, and once we get a good discussion of nationalism underway, they come around; walls are knocked down, barriers breached, and they leave with a little spring in their steps.
Well, maybe I'm making up that part....
October 24, 2011
This was the quintessential sort of fall weekend, I think. The leaves are just starting to turn, and we have all our Halloween decorations out. My thoughts have been turning to apple cider and roasted pumpkin seeds and all things orange (I made carrot soup last night, too--I'll post the recipe later in the week if it's a good one). We finished putting up the last of the decorations yesterday. As an after-thought I stuck a witch's hat on the candelabra we have in the corner of the dining room. T. laughed in delight when she saw it, and then she ran off to the kitchen for some paper...
October 21, 2011
A recent study has come out suggesting that multitasking is bad for you--in all the ways I expected, of ourse. I was disappointed to read about the study, though. I not only multitask all the time, but I pride myself on my ability to multitask well, thus achieving the impossible over the course of one single day. I don't know how I could accomplish everything I needed to if I weren't able to creatively and efficiently switch between tasks: grading papers, returning phone calls, helping students, answering e-mails, dipping briefly into writing projects, picking up kids, dipping...
October 19, 2011
Two weeks ago, while I was making dinner, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I found two neighborhood girls outside. They are close to L.'s age, and he knows them from the pool and from swim team.
"Hi!" I said. "What's up?"
"Can L. come over and play?"
My heart skipped a beat with happiness. The last time a kid rang the doorbell looking for L. he was five years old, and we lived in our old neighborhood. A boy who lived two houses down used to come over almost every afternoon and stay for hours, and things always went wrong. L. hated the...
October 18, 2011
Time has been whizzing by lately, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop it. We are so bound by routine these days--not more than ever, I suppose, but it feels that way. I get up at 5:30 every morning, and even though I pack school lunches and snacks the night before, and I try and take care of as many odds and ends before going to bed, I still feel like I'm racing against the clock each morning. L.'s been a good sport about the mornings overall, but this doesn't mean it's been easy to get him up and out of bed and fed and dressed by 6:50 each day.
When I...
October 17, 2011
I'm reading this book now. I started it, thinking it would be similar to Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safron Foer, a book that really affected me on many different levels. But Herzog's book is very different. For starters, he is not a vegetarian, and he is pretty honest and up-front about this early on. His book is meant to challenge our bizarre and illogical approaches to how we view animals; how we don't think twice about eating animals who have suffered tremendously to become the fried chicken in a family dinner, yet we will go to great expense over the care of other animals we...
October 14, 2011
In the carpool line at T.'s school yesterday, L. suddenly broke into song. The lyrics were a little catchy, and set to "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz:
I throw my Xbox at my mom sometimes
Singing ay-oh, buy me Halo
"Where'd you hear that song," I asked, curiously.
B., a boy in his German class, apparently set the entire "Dynamite" song to alternative lyrics (and very clever ones, too), and L. couldn't get it out of his head. He sang the song over and over again, all through the carpool line, all the way home, all through Blockbuster when we ran in there...
October 13, 2011
We are drowning in acorns around here. They are falling from the sky by the dozens, and at night, when the wind blows, I can hear the thud thunk of acorns hitting the roof and gutters. On Tuesday I slipped out to check the mail, while dinner was cooking on the stove. I had almost made it to the mailbox when a huge acorn fell from the oak tree in the middle of our yard and smacked me square on the top of my head. It hurt! I've truly never seen so many of them my whole life. This is what our front path looks like right now:
And we have collected buckets of these--they are shiny and round...
8 Printable Thank-You Cards for Teachers
Allison McDonald
Jessica Efird
Family Education Staff