Busy, busy, busy

T and I have been quite the busy bees lately. Since we got back from our short break, we've been constantly working on stuff! We are preparing for my upcoming craft fair, the Downtown Holiday Market, which is in 3 weeks. Crafting has been going at a fairly steady pace, though it will be slowed significantly when we leave for our Thanksgiving vacation on Tuesday. Meanwhile, I have to prepare for my upcoming Montessori weekend seminar, and T has class all day, every day this weekend. Of course, I've also been working on lessons for the classroom and have plans for little "love leaves" as Thanksgiving goodies for the children.

This week, I created 2 new lessons for the children. A corn painting lesson is on the shelves until Thanksgiving break, and I prepared a special rainy day activity for the Lunch Bunchers on Thursday.
Corn painting involves a printout of a corn image, (with individual kernels), qtips cut in half, a green coloured pencil and a yellow stamp pad. The children use the qtip to stamp little yellow circles into each of the kernels. Then they colour the leaves green. If desired, they can cut out the whole corn shape, which can then be posted on our landscape bulletin boards as though it's growing out of the ground.

For our rainy day activity, I made cinnamon clay for the children to make an aromatic garland for the classroom. I brought letter and leaf shaped cookie cutters and we spelled out "give thanks" with a few leaves for spacers. The children loved the activity (since we no longer have play dough out on the shelves) and it made the classroom smell delicious. Of course, the children took home the extra clay.

Cinnamon Clay Recipe

Ingredients:
2 bottles ground cinnamon
1 bottle white school glue
1 cup applesauce
1 cup flour

In a large bowl, mix the applesauce and as much of the glue as you can dump out of the bottle. In a separate, smaller bowl, combine one and a half bottles of cinnamon with about half the cup of flour. This will help make it easier to mix into the applesauce/glue mixture. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet. The cinnamon will cause billowing dusty clouds if you add too much at once. When all the dry ingredients have been mixed in, if it is still sticky, add more flour. Flour a clean surface well and knead the dough. It should be approximately the same consistency as Crayola Model Magic, only heavier. Separate dough into balls for distribution to children and pat flat with the palm of your hand. Use cookie cutters to make shapes.

I made a test batch of letters which were slightly less than 0.25" thick. They were a little brittle, so with the children, we made our shapes 0.25" thick. They are drying over the weekend, hopefully they'll be done by Monday so we can string them up!

Bethany under water

Puddles!
Originally uploaded by Gwen @ Silver Lining

T and I are spending a long weekend in Bethany thanks to Parent Teacher conferences happening at school. Being on the coast, we are getting an exciting first hand view of tropical storm Ida. Many roads are closed due to flooding, including the major highway, Route 1. Many shops are not open, but there were still quite a few people driving around taking pictures. I couldn't resist the massive lake-like puddles, so we joined in the fun. We attempted to drive to Rehoboth, but found we couldn't due to high water. We observed a man trying to fix a "road closed" sign, nearly up to his waist in water; on the highway!

Aha! moments

This is my first post from my phone! Fingers crossed that it works well. My little friends and I made some breakthroughs in learning today. There really is nothing better than being part of a child's aha! moments. Well, maybe getting a spontaneous hug and kiss on the cheek from a 4 year old.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

A great day!

That's what T and I enjoyed for dinner tonight. Real Southern sweet tea, fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits and potato salad! We figured that since we're in the South, we should enjoy as much real Southern food as we can. We haven't had good, smell-it-from-a-mile-away fried chicken since we visited Charlottesville last.

We're in Raleigh because today was the Handmade Market. I have to say it was one of the most well-run fairs I've been in, which made it easy for us to do well. The Handmaidens did a wonderful job of making everything as easy as possible. Also, the fair was held indoors, at the Marbles Kids Museum in downtown Raleigh so there was a lot of traffic. They must do a fantastic job of marketing, because the people who showed up were also all prepared to buy! They were prepared with cash, too! A very nice Montessori teacher came by my booth and immediately picked up a Cording Star Kit and suggested that I try to get into a conference or catalogue. When I told her I'm currently a Montessori intern, she said she hoped to see me at the Boston conference. How extra exciting to meet a fellow Montessorian!

Raleigh itself is not a bad place to be either. It's about a 5 hour drive from home, but it didn't seem that bad. Our hotel is fantastically nice, and we were upgraded to stay on the Club Level. The area even has quite a nice number of consignment stores with men's and women's clothing! T and I are already looking forward to applying for the Spring Handmade Market. :)

Halloween Crafting

A peek at what I've been working on this week. Last night, Nicole came over and we worked on making 50 of the little Sculpey pumpkins you see in the dish at the far left. They're actually little pencil toppers, waiting to be popped onto cute Halloween pencils. Those will be our little gifts to the students in the art class we teach together. In the middle are pins backs, waiting to be hot glued to the backs of the wooden pumpkins in the bowl at the right. It was quite difficult to track down enough of those wooden pumpkin shapes at 7 different Michael's stores! I spray painted them orange first, then drew faces and details with paint pens and then finished them off with a coat of (supposedly) reflective spray paint. My hope is that the children in my class will be able to wear them pinned to their costumes for extra visibility and safer trick-or-treating. I've packaged them in little cello bags tied with twine and a tag explaining their purpose.

Also, a quick thank you to my goody goblins (Mom and Sneetch!) for delivering the goody gourds to GHS early this morning. I hear they were received well and enjoyed!

Goody Gourds

I have been missing my friends (big and small) over at GHS, but haven't had a chance to talk to most of them. So, I decided to make a basket of goody gourds to be surreptitiously delivered to the kitchen as a surprise for all my big friends. Each little goody gourd includes a handmade felt "kind soul" ghostie pin, a packet of sweet tarts and a packet of kisses. T helped enormously in creating the gourds. He did the actual assembly of the entire patch!

Goody Gourds Tutorial

You will need:
Orange cocktail napkins (tissue paper would work also, but rips more easily)
Green pipe cleaners
Goodies for stuffing the pumpkins
Green paper for cutting out leaf tags and hole punch (optional)

To make the pumpkins:

1. Open up a napkin into a square.
2. Place your goodies in the center. Pull up the edges and gather them at the top, creating a little sack.
3. Wrap a green pipe cleaner around the "stem" twice, leaving the ends unwound.
4. Cut out a green leaf tag, punch a hole in the top and thread it onto the pipe cleaner.
5. Using a pencil, wrap the loose ends of the pipe cleaner around to create a vine curl on each end.
6. Distribute to your friends!

School bag

Quick post to share my latest creation (I have a couple to share actually). I made this bag, cut to finish, all tonight. I started at 7 and just finished, so 4 hours. Not too bad for a perfect, custom-made messenger bag! I didn't even go out and get new fabric. Everything I used was either from previous projects or stuff I bought on a whim. I pretty much followed this tutorial, with ideas taken from all over, plus my own additions (adjustable strap, vinyl bottom).

Here were my criteria:
Washable (although now I'm not sure with the vinyl bottom)
Big enough to fit my laptop
Lots of pockets for all my small things
Pocket for books (for spontaneous story time at school)
Adjustable strap
Wet/yucky stuff proof bottom
Able to stand up on it's own

I actually managed to fulfill all of my own criteria on the very first try!

Hooray!

I got in! I got in to the Handmade Market. It's a huge craft fair held in Raleigh, NC, twice per year. I'll be in the one this fall, on Saturday the 7th of November. I'm so excited! I have probably enough inventory at this point to take down there, but I am hoping it will be a really successful fair, so I will try to build up more inventory. I was also accepted to the Downtown Holiday Market which will be in December, so I need to get cracking! I hope to have some Montessori materials there as well!

That's exactly how I feel

Exhausted and on the edge where comfortable meets uncomfortable. This weekend was our first seminar of the school year. That means we had to turn in an album, original lessons, and a paper as well as take a practical exam on Saturday and we had class all day today. This time around it was our Practical Life album, original lessons and paper. I think mine all turned out well. I wasn't unhappy with any of them as we turned them in. Some time I will upload photos of my original lessons. The practical exam was for Sensorial, which also went well. I didn't have to retake either portion!

Our next seminar and due date is in December, so we have some time to breathe. However, I am hoping to have one craft fair in between and I am already signed up for a craft fair the weekend after the seminar. So I will need to plan my afternoons carefully. Besides all that, I have holiday crafting to do! Halloween is approaching fast and I have plans for goodies for the children...

This is the way we wash our hands...

That's my view about 40% of the time I'm at work. Sometimes it's the boys' bathroom, which is right next door. Because this is my unofficial post, I do a lot of bathrooming related reminding; remember to wash your hands, please turn off the water while you rub your hands, let's sing a hand washing song.

We ask the children to sing a song to themselves while they wash their hands to make sure they are washing their hands for a reasonable amount of time to get most of the germs off. The suggested song has been Happy Birthday, but I think it may confuse the birthday issue, so I prefer this one, sung to the tune of "This is the Way We Wash Our Clothes":

This is the way we wash our hands,
Wash our hands,
Wash our hands,
This is the way we wash our hands,
So they're nice and clean!

In general, the time I do spend in the classroom has been alright. The class is definitely not normalized, which is to be expected. What I didn't expect was how tired I would be! Of course, everyone warns that the first month and possibly first 6 weeks will be tiring as the foundations are set with each individual child and then the group as a whole. The integration of the new children is a slow process, but the reward of a normalized classroom will be well worth the work and wait. I thought that managing my own classroom of 19+ children who were all 3 or 4 years old would have adequately prepared me for this. Was I ever wrong. Maybe the difference is that this year, the room is not "mine" in the sense that I am not the lead teacher. It is not up to me to set the ground rules or organization of the space, physical or interpersonal.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by it all really. Being a very sensory person, I think I am more easily over stimulated, by sounds, sights, touches. In an as yet non-normalized Montessori classroom, those things abound. With no breaks in the day, barely a chance to get a sip of tea or run walk quickly to the bathroom, at times I wonder what I'm doing. Besides, I am always thinking about my classes, homework and upcoming exams in the back of my mind. To be honest, I relish those frequent trips to the bathroom hallway for the quiet and time for me to stand still for a few minutes.

Keys

I feel like I have officially changed schools. I received a pair of keys to get in to MSM yesterday. In honour of the occasion (and also because we have to carry our keys around all the time), I made the key holder pictured. It was pretty simple to make and after testing it today, I think it's also good at serving its purpose. The idea was for a key holder that would be easily accessible even when my hands are fairly full and could be worn unnoticeably even if I don't have pockets. The holder is attached to a belt loop with the snap strap on the back. The keys are attached to a hair tie which is anchored to the holder by being sewn into the seam and also by the little felt stopper at the back. Finally, the holder is lined with felt to silence the keys while they're not in use.

Here we go!

I guess I took an unannounced vacation from blogging for the summer. I didn't intend to, and it's certainly not because nothing interesting was happening. In fact I think the cause was too much happening and me being too caught up in all the studying, learning, worrying and relaxing.

But now, I'm back. The real world that is the school year is back and I'm stuck with it, even though I don't feel ready. Tomorrow is our first day of school with children (we worked on classrooms all last week and today). Fortunately, McLean only has returning children starting school this week. We don't get all the little newbies until Monday. So for this week, the children will all know more about what is supposed to be happening than me. That's ok; children can be the best teachers.

Many people have been asking me about nerves or if I am feeling anxious. Strangely, I feel less anxious than I expected. In keeping with the theme of unfortunate happenings, my lead teacher is not here for the start of the school year, so I am a bit worried about having to deal with parents' and children's questions. Mostly though, I am concerned about the children liking me and my liking the children. I really loved "my babies" at GHS, and I am afraid I won't be able to feel the same way for these new children. I know this is silly and I am sure that the children will like me and I will like them back. But that's my top worry; not the lessons I'm supposed to be able to give, not the new routine which I barely know anything about, not the fact that I don't know how to give lessons on half the materials in the room. I guess we'll just have to see how I am feeling tomorrow afternoon!
In the meantime, I have been spending evenings trying to motivate myself to work on my Practical Life binder and exam which are due in 3 weeks. I've also been working on things for the classroom. I made fabric murals for our three bulletin boards again. I will have to try to get a photo of it. I've made a number of things for the room to personalise things for the children. I decided the room theme for the year will be bumble bees, so each child has a named bee hanging on the bulletin boards until they do some artwork to put up instead. I'm quite proud of my little bee design.