una semana de soledad

This was a lonely week in my classroom.  Every day I was the only one in it.  One of my boys is sick, and I have no idea what happened to the other one. 

On Monday and Tuesday, I didn’t mind the solitude.  I got some work done, and I visited other classes.  On Wednesday, my empty classroom was getting a bit old.  Betsy found some work for me to do, and again I did some more of my own prep work and visited other classes.  Thursday was a holiday, so at least the whole school was empty.  By Friday morning, I was still holding out a little hope that at least one of my boys would show up, but…nope!  In fact, we only had 4 kids in school and they all arrived late!

So on Friday, I ran a school errand, helped out in the office, and I even got to hang out with the kids for a while.  I was really starting to miss teaching!  I led chapel in the morning and calendar time in Jen’s classroom.  Then later, I read a story to the students (I haven’t done this in a while since my boys and Leo have taken over this job.)  At the end of the day, I taught gym class to one of Judy’s kids and played baseball with the littlest ones.

I realized today how much I missed taking part in story time.  So the rest of this blog post will be about this week’s story.  It is called The Whales’ Song.  If you would like to know the story, watch the video below.  Try to understand as best as you can.

 

After the story, we painted a scene from the book with watercolors and glued on whale silhouettes.  This was an activity that I wouldn’t have been able to do as effectively with the full group of kids, so for this reason I was glad to have only a few children. 

Enjoy the video, enjoy the pictures, and please pray that I have students next week!

arte de crayolas

You may be wondering what this is...it's art, of course!

Jen has been looking for a way to use up old crayons, and she found this fun project on pinterest.com.  The timing was perfect because I was in the middle of teaching about color in my art classes.


The project is so simple, and so fun...all you have to do is glue some crayons on a piece of cardboard and melt them with a hairdryer. 

I was able to use it to teach the younger kids about mixing primary colors to make secondary colors. 

 The older kids learned about warm and cool colors through this project.

The kids' enthusiasm was reminiscent of last year's packing tape sculpture phase.  I love when the students get so excited...I wonder what the next craze will be.  

I think Jen is already consulting pinterest for me. 

el puente Teodoro Moscoso

Yesterday, I jogged/walked in the World’s Best 10K!  This is the most famous race in Puerto Rico.  It takes place in San Juan over the Moscoso Bridge.  Since I have no other 10K to compare it to, I will choose to believe it is, in fact, the world’s best.

There were 10,995 participants in the race from all over the world, and I can proudly say that I came in 6,233^rd place! 

I had planned on walking the whole thing, but adrenaline took over a bit.  Jen and I managed to run over the Moscoso Bridge one time before our lungs/legs needed a rest.  By the time we looped around and headed back over the bridge (about 5K) I never thought I would make it to the finish line.  But before we knew it, we were sprinting toward the bright lights and cheering fans. One hour and 29 minutes after we had started, we were receiving our Gatorades and medals. 

Here are some highlights from the race… the Kenyan men hit the 5K mark while we were somewhere between our first and second K’s… the Kenyan women followed shortly after …there was a man on a unicycle, another running backwards, and another dressed as Charlie Chaplin (I’m still not sure why!).  We were also able to see the last racer…a man using a walker.  That kind of determination is amazing to watch…it gave me goose bumps!

This was a fantastic experience.  I’m so glad I went, and I look forward to many more races to come.