Please cover your mouth!

I really should be cleaning my house since my parents are coming to visit me tomorrow. Instead I'm reading blogs. Very productive, I know. I just am not feeling very energized. I've been feeling on the brink of getting sick since before school started a few weeks ago. The start of school is always stressful, then to top it all off I get sneezed and/or coughed on at least once a day. Luckily I wasn't the one to get thrown-up on the other day. Poor little Jacqueline, she didn't even know what hit her. My rug, a some pillows and a couple of books were also counted as casualties in the "incident". Ahh, you gotta love second grade.

Mmmm...the best tasting weeds ever!

BLACKBERRIES! The kind you eat, not email on.

One thing I still can't get over since moving to Western Washington, is the existence of a delicious and, if you BUY them at the store, expensive berry as a WEED! They grow without any help, and actually take over if you let them. They are on the side of the freeway, in parking lots, on school and library grounds, along walking trails, everywhere. (As an aside, those are all places where I have actually helped myself to blackberries.)

A lady that I work with was begging people to come pick some from her yard since they were just ripening and falling to the ground. Oh, what a waste! I went over there one day after work and picked my fingers raw. Then I had this scrumptious treat:

Yesterday, as I was walking to my car at school I happened to look up and what did I see? Some plump, dark berries glowing in the setting sun. They were just begging me to pick them. I left my car door hanging open, and, in my dress shoes, climbed a low rock wall to reach over the chain link fence in order to snag a yummy treat. Of course one of the other teachers came out to the parking lot while I'm standing up there. Don't mind me, I just love to snack on weeds!

No, I Have Not Dropped Off the Edge of the World...

I've been getting ready for the first day of school. After weeks of cleaning and sorting huge piles and cupboards full of left over junk from last year, I finally got my room totally cute and organized and just perfect. Yay!!

My desk area

*note the slippers under the desk :)

My teaching station


My literacy board

A look towards my classroom library and word wall.

Work tables (I got rid of student desks this year.)

Student cubbies and a small group teaching table.

And then the kids showed up today and messed it all up! Rude! Actually, they seem like a pretty good group of kids, but kids will be kids. I just have a figure out new routines for everything now that I don't have student desks. It is amazing how used to my old routines I am. It kept throwing me off all day that I couldn't do things like I had been doing them the last three years. Oh well, I figure something out. I just like all the extra space not having 24+ individual desks in the room.