Reality Check!

It's been a week since our 2010-2011 school year has begun! Overall, I have a great group of kids. There's one...he might make me seriously consider early retirement...but that's a whole other post.

I often get reality checks at school. The kids that I have the privilege of teaching are very different than I was when I was there age. Not only in the normal ways...but in the socio-economic ways as well.

Best of example of this happened today.

In Social Studies, we have been learning about Social Scientist and who they are, what they study and why. We've learned about Economists, Historians, Political Scientists and Geographers.

The other day, there was a homework assignment that was sent home that instructed the kids to collect 4 artifacts, one from each category of Social Science. They had to pretend they were that person that chose what to study and why.

It was great. Many of them brought in maps for an example of what a geographer might study. Articles from the newspaper about local government issues as an example for political scientists were shared and very interesting things from history...including one of their grandfather's army hat that he wore in WWII.

For the economists, a variety of things were brought in. One of the boys brought a .45 cent off coupon for a brownie delight that he was very concerned about getting back. Some students brought in things like coins...all sorts of things that showed economists were concerned with the topic of how money was saved and spent.

My team teacher comes through my room, white as a ghost. She's asking me what my kids brought, I'm sharing proudly, just as a good teacher should. She whips out a ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL! Yep, you read that right, A ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL. It was real. Crisp. Green. The letter matched the alphabet. We held it to the light. A REAL one hundred dollar bill.

That's what one of her students brought in for his economist artifact. Ummm....REALITY CHECK!

And here I was thinking of trying to talk my student out of his brownie coupon so I could use it...

Music To My Ears...

Life has been really crazy-busy lately. It always is when the month of August rolls around. The back to school "panic" starts to set in, along with the "We are almost out of summer...what else can we shove into our days" panic. Our house is no different.


In the beginning of August, I was doing everything I could with Reilly, trying to soak up our time together before I headed back to school. Unfortunately, that often meant he and I were spending "quality" time together at school...him often entertaining himself on the floor or being "oohed" and "ahhhd" over by some of the other ladies at school!

So last Monday, August 16th, was one of the highly anticipated days...back to school for the teachers, ice cream social that night, get to meet our kids...just a big day. It was also a very sad day...I knew that when I dropped Rei-Guy off at Miss Betsy's that morning, we weren't going to have our lazy summer days together anymore.

So it was at the ice cream social, about half way through that I get this exact text message from Dave... "I kid you not, I just asked Rei what he wanted and he said Mama." Okay...shot through the heart. Like I wasn't feeling bad enough already...let's add another dagger.

So I pretty much ran out of the ice cream social at 6:30, beating over half the parents out of the parking lot to race home to hear my son say MY NAME! I could barely wait!

When I got home, he and Daddy had been practicing over and over, and as soon as I walked in, I got to hear it, I got to hear Reilly say Mama for the first time.

His first word.

I'm sure it was no accident.

It was music to my ears.

P.S. He still says it, so I know he did it on purpose! :)