First days of school...

The first week back is almost officially over. Tomorrow is read in your pajama's day (which should be interesting.) This week has been full of downs and ups. The first day back was rough, we had a few incidences in my class that we dealt with and went on with the day, but it rattled me none the less. Not to mention I'm still groggy and attempting to recover from my vacation, my whole one week long vacation. That's right regular school year teachers, I got one week off ALL summer long. So much for the 3 reasons to teach being June, July, and August. Then again I think if I had the entire summer off I would be bored.

Today was absolutely amazing. The students were enthusiastic and excited to learn about the Mona Lisa, its history and even this past weeks events- the crazy lady throwing her cup at the famous artwork! (Thanks Ted for that article link! You totally inspired me!) Last period particularly today was so focused and full of energy I was totally in love with what we were doing. They students were jumping up and down wanting to answer the questions that I asked and had questions that they asked me and were very into the fact that the names of the Ninja Turtles were the names of famous painters :) ! We even subtracted the year Mona was painted from the present year to find out how old the painting is- Interdisciplinary connections with math! Now thats what I call good stuff! Tomorrow I'm going to take photos of their own Mona Lisa artworks and post them on artsonia sometime this weekend. Overall the first week back was a success. Now I just have to come up with a way to track their IEP goal progress in the form of daily progress notes/ check lists... I have way too much work this weekend!