A New School Year and Family Fun

Ayden, Dianna, and Jarod enjoyed the park immensely today the park . . . more pictures coming soon.
Aren't they so cute? Dianna loved being "in charge" of the boys.
The park we went to is so cute. It's right down on the water of Pensacola Bay and has lots of newer equipment just right for them.






A new challenge at school for me this year: I'm teaching Language Arts instead of Arithmetic, Science, History. I've been teaching the arithmetic side since I started at PCA (this is my fifth year already, praise the Lord). I am completely uncertain how I will do, but I trust my administrator who is also a dear friend. I know she seeks the Lord's will in preparing teacher assignments. I was given a choice; I didn't have to make this change. Although, if I hadn't agreed to the switch, I don't know what I would be doing. This first bulletin board is one I've used several years in a row now for my welcome board. I don't know if you can tell, but the ball just off of Mickey's kicking foot is half a styrofoam sphere that Talani cut in half and drew the soccer pattern on. The other soccer balls are sheets from a notepad that I laminated so I can write on them and wipe them off to use from year to year. Each student has a ball with their name on it. So far, I have 30 students, praise the Lord, and am praying for 2 more.

Here's my good work board. I should admit that I used all the same bulletin boards when I was teaching arithmetic, science, and history. My cheerleader board used to have the caption, "Hurrah for Homework Habits" and I had little labels for homework ideas, mostly geared toward arithmetic homework. (Always do your best, Ask for help, Use time wisely, etc.)

My teaching board used to say Dive into Division. I probably shouldn't admit this, but I had to ask another language teacher what the proper past tense of dive was (dived or dove?)

Also, I've heard that diagraming has 2 m's in it, but all the A Beka Language only uses 1. Interesting.

Here's a tip I learned from a TA a couple of years ago: She did not want to put staples or pins through the visuals she worked so hard to make, so she put velcro on the back. Since I use felt for all my backgrounds, I just added little bits of velcro on the back of all my visuals this year. Now I don't have to use staples or pins and I can move the visuals around as I need in order to make it look right. I even put velcro on the Bible flash-a-cards I used for my Bible board. I cannot remove that velcro, but that's okay. It doesn't hurt the card, and next year I will remember which cards I used. Thank you, Holly Knehr Shier, for the wonderful idea!

My Bible board is probably the easy way out. In 4th grade, we teach the life of Christ after Christmas, so I used to take down my Christmas board and put up this board so quickly before leaving for vacation. We teach the life of Christ at the beginning of the year in 6th grade, so I decided to use this board again. I probably should come up with something a little more hand-made, but until there's time for that (yeah, right) I'll just stick with the easy board.

Well, now I will attempt a new post with more pictures. The kids are eating dinner - homemade black-bean-and-steak chili, rice, and homemade breadsticks. It's quite late for them (9:00), but we all took a great nap today, and nobody's tired.