September

September is just around the corner. Today I spent some time in our classroom, organizing, decorating and cleaning. I love this part of my job. It's so much fun to get everything looking cool for the kids. Deb's dad has made us some wonderful shelving that she painted navy blue with lime green inside. We bought a dragon that winds around our rocking chair and a frog prince to sit on our shelf at Ikea. We're doing our whole calendar corner in a castle theme. We reworked our rules and incentive system around a "royalty" theme, so that should give us a fresh start. Tomorrow we will do our planning, photocopying and getting some paperwork done. I've reworked my socials units so I can end with my Canada unit in anticipation of Canada Day...an idea I got from another teacher. We're going back to our old math program and scrapping the new one we tried last year. I'm so happy about that decision.

I'm anticipating that next year I will be going back full time or at least 4 days, depending on what I can find. I think it would be less stressful in a way to have my own classroom, rather than finding a hodge podge of positions to fill. I feel nervous about that already. It's been 7 years since I've done it on my own. I'm not sure how it will be to teach full time and be a mom. When I taught before, it was pretty all consuming. Often, it was 6 or 7 before I got home and I often had things to finish on the weekend. I guess I'll have to be much more efficient. Anyway, I'll let God look after the details of that. It would be lovely to continue on in this part time position but financially, it would be wiser for me to work again. I need to chat with some other teacher moms and see how they did it! Maybe I'll seek them out this year. I know there's a few on my staff and some at church.