A Little Christmas Shopping

So I hear that Black Friday has been spread out from now until Christmas. What is up with that? That takes away the excitment of it all. Ah well. I went out and did a little shopping myself tonight and then came home and looked for a few gifts online. I have a few places I think I will be getting a lot of gifts from.

Oh I supposed this post is going to be up for Saturday. I should have done it an hour ago but I was too busy watching my cousin on CSI: NY. She was on tonight. If you saw it she was the shooting victim named Vanessa Walters.

Day 4

Just some pics for today. Too tired.

NaBloPoMo Day 3

Harder than I thought - I almost forgot tonight. I have to do report card grades for all the classes that I teach. That is what is on my mind tonight, but all I want to do is go to sleep. I am so tired. Ah well, gotta do, what ya gotta do. It is easier said than done - some classes I only see once a week. Then school was closed a few days or my schedule was changed or the kids' behavior was such that a lesson was nearly impossible so I don't have tons of grades. Other classes the children are not really able to write responses so I have to base my grades on their work/projects/activities. For one class I came up with the idea to have them make something out of clay and then tell me about it. I made a chart and took a digital picture of their work and asked them to talk about it. I recorded their responses on paper. Extremely time consuming and takes a lot of classroom mangagment because while I am talking to an individual student - what are the rest of the class doing? Here is a sample of something the children made from clay. They had to tell me what the animal does to help itself survive in its environment.

The Big Apple (in more ways than one:)

This is the caramel apple that Taye and I got as a gift from Khloe's birthday party/Halloween festivities. How cool? I was trying to figure out how to eat it - it was overwhelming. So I just cut slices out - sprinkles, caramel and all. Love it - Thanks, Khloe!

Election Day ... Today I went to a workshop in Manhattan. On the way I saw this guy drumming for $ in the subway. I just walked by giving him a smile. I was thinking how much Sentayehu would have liked to hear his music. She is drawn to music in all forms. On the way back from the workshop 7 hours later the man had moved down to the train stop where I was getting on the train to go back. He had a bigger setup and all these kids were playing along with him with shakers. They were having a great time and their families were enchanted. They appeared to be on a family outing on their day off from school. It was really cool. I love NY.

The workshop was at my favorite museum in NYC- The American Museum of Natural History. I went there to get background information and training on the Moveable Museum which will be coming to our school in January. The museum has 4 of them. The exhibit for this one is on dinosaurs. It is very exciting. I actually learned a lot today - I learned is that all birds are dinosaurs. A dinosaur is defined as an animal having a hole in its hip which allows the legs to be positioned under the body for upright walking. Also, did you know that there are dinosaurs with feathers? Crazy! And the pterodactyl is not a dinosaur!

Day One

I will begin with a few Halloween Pics. This is the first year in YEARS that I have particpated in Halloween. I just wanted Sentayehu to have the fun of running around. She doesn't even like candy. Luckily she got a few pretzels here and there. The one piece of candy she did eat stayed in her mouth for a long time preventing her from being able to say, "Trick or treat," and "Thank you."

NaBloPoMo

Ok - so I know this is a stretch, but I am going to try to particpate in National Blog Post Month by posting every day in the month of November. It willbe hard but I should at least be able to get a picture up per day - if nothing more. There are a few good events coming up that I can posst aabout - see you every day this month (unless you've given up on me).

WOW - It's been a long time ...

I have no excuses .. sorry. If anyone is still looking in - these pics were taken by my cousin Elizabeth. I will do a slide show of the past of the past few months to catch you up on what is going on.