Outside of having the opening shift at Dunkin' Donuts, I HAD to pick the profession that starts the earliest in the morning. Why can't school start at 11am or so? Alright, I'd go as early as 10am and would promise to not complain about having the school day end at 5pm. I can't ever remember being a morning person - in fact, for MANY years, I HATED BREAKFAST. After church, I'd have to be dropped off at home to eat a bowl of Lucky Charms while my family went out for bacon and eggs. I've come WAY around on the breakfast thing - in fact, it may just be my favorite meal of the day (I could eat the chocolate chip pancakes at It's Tops every morning for the rest of my days) - but I still just can't drag my butt out of bed at 6:30am and have a smile on my face while doing it. Thursday evening, I had my first Student Teaching seminar down at State, and even after spending the whole morning and afternoon at Bryant, I had SO much energy - I do FINE at 4pm, but I'm not so good at 9am. Point made.

I think I'm going to tell Miles that I want to start doing some more things everyday. There are a couple of things that I'm thinking of, simple tasks like being in charge of the "Question of the Day" (where the students put their names under the proper response to a posed question such as "Have you ever been on an airplane?") and the "Buzz Book" (a large sheet of chart paper that has the date and a different question-y type thing which the kids discuss with the person next to them, and then we discuss and write as a group). I should be taking over sections of the day in the coming weeks, and by starting off with these kinds of daily things I'll get small-steps practice. The calendar is the next thing I want to usurp, but I know Miles won't give this up without a fight - he really seems to enjoy it.

Things I Did By Myself on Thursday: At the start of the day, Miles asked me if I wanted to lead the "ABC March" ("A-B-C! Look at Me!... P-Q-R! You're a STAR!") - I wanted to immediately scream out "NO! DON'T MAKE ME!". I have a deep voice, and, although I like to sing, and can kind of sing, I don't really have a voice that is suited for singing kids songs. Whenever I try to sing along with the songs on tape that are used in the class, I either have to go really high (falsetto high), or really low (almost too low). It's just awkward. Add to this that one of the kids' parents ended up being in the room when it was time to do the march. That's another thing about me, I tend to get REALLY self-conscious (more so than what I normally feel at any given time...) when I know that an adult is watching what I'm doing. I like being goofy with kids, I think it's a great way to engage them and hold their attention, but when an adult is around I muse, "They must think that I'm a complete idiot." There were a couple of times where I was so lost in my head that I momentarily forgot which letters we were on, but, all in all, the "ABC March" went off without a hitch.
Miles wants to start daily sharing so he asked me to bring in a couple of things to share - a way to model for the kids what kind of things they can bring in, and what they can say about them. Coincidentally, Miles and I both brought in pictures of our cats, and small animal figurines that remind us of relatives. Weird. I brought in a picture that I took of Macon when he was months old (it normally hangs above our toilet, which, now that I write it, sounds odd...) and said that it was a picture of someone/thing that I really cared about, and I was proud of it because I took the picture. The other item was an elephant figurine that I gave to my grandmother a long time ago, and I got back when she died in 2001 - I let the kids know that I keep it on my desk and it is really special to me because it will always remind me of my grandma.
For workshop time, I got to cycle through half the class at a time and do a sorting/gluing activity with them. It was a lot like the macaroni sorting I did with them on Tuesday, except this time it was sorting colored shapes (red circles, blue rectangles, yellow squares, and green triangles - sounds like Lucky Charms, eh?). The kids were MUCH more conservative with the glue this time. AND, the little girl with autism actually did it! Sure, she had two adults to focus her and put down dots of glue for her, but SHE DID IT.
During Tribes circle time, we went around the circle telling the rest of the class what our favorite place in the world is. I said mine was the Great Wall of China - which, isn't really a "place" but more of a "thing/site/attraction" - I probably confused the kids, but I'm serious about making it a priority to visit the Great Wall of China before I leave this mortal coil.