swimming through the summer

[velvetpage]

Well, another high-carb weekend comes to an end and I need to get back on track today.

I hate dieting. There are Krispy Kreme doughnuts downstairs, and I can't let myself have even one.

In other news, my mother's pool is seeing considerable use. It's one of those above-ground ones you buy in one box from Canadian Tire - blow up the ring around the top, fill it, and as it fills, the ring starts to float and holds the whole deal up. It's about 2 1/2 feet deep, and just big enough that if you try to swim laps, you will spend slightly more space swimming than turning around. Elizabeth is still very clingy. She got accidentally dunked last week (I was walking in the pool with her, slipped, and we both went under) and she's not yet sure of the whole swimming thing. But she likes getting wet, and she doesn't scream or hold on so tight she leaves marks, so we're making progress. We're hoping to get some kicking soon, maybe even a face under water.

I went to the teacher store yesterday and spent $70 on six resource books - all in all, it was a very good sale. So this morning I sat Elizabeth down with her colouring book and crayons, sat myself down with my plan book that I bought a few weeks ago, and started planning the 80-minute literacy block schedule. Life is much easier if the kids have a schedule that stays the same from week to week. And it provides a focus for planning; I know how much time I have to fill with each type of activity. I'm doing as much planning now as I can, to reduce general stress after school starts.

Whoever thinks teachers do nothing with their vacations has never seen how busy we usually are in the summer. It's not nine-to-five, certainly, but neither do we relax for ten weeks.

Comments

[pyat.livejournal.com]

There are Krispy Kreme doughnuts downstairs, and I can't let myself have even one.

I'm going to chuck them out when I get home. They're actually not very good. They taste like raw dough.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'm at the "mmmmmmm. . . doughnuts" stage of my diet.

[anidada.livejournal.com]

I'm always at that stage. :P

How does Elizabeth feel about balls? The bunny mostly stopped clinging to me once she had a floating ball to chase around (beach, marblized plastic, whatever) -- she kicks like a frog to try to reach it, it's very amusing. And now that we have a flotation swimsuit, it makes it a lot harder to hold onto her while she's exploring the water -- they're not meant as lifesaving devices, or as unsupervised flotation devices, of course, but they make it easier on the arms. Highly recommended. :)

What exactly is a "teacher store"? Are we talking Scholar's Choice, or the Publications Ontario folks? (Seriously, I'm curious -- teachers always have such neat stuff...)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth loves balls, but not enough to let go of me to go get one. She will push with one hand while clinging with the other, though. We're going to try water wings or something similar to encourage basic floatation. She won't touch the air-filled ring that came with the beach ball. She knows that as soon as she gets in it, we're going to hold her much more loosely, and she's not up for that.

In this case, the teacher store I went to was Scholar's Choice because they were the ones with the sale on. Usually, though, I go to a little independent one which has a much wider selection of French resources. There's also Tralco, which is a publisher of multilingual teaching resources. They happen to have their head office in Hamilton, and it has a little store attached to it as a kind of publisher's outlet store. They do most of their sales at conferences and through catalogues, though.

Teachers are always buying resource books of one type or another. One of the reasons new teachers have so much trouble the first few years is that developing a collection of this type of thing is expensive, but crucial. I think retiring teachers from each board should get together a few weeks into the school year and have a giant garage sale to which only teachers in their first five years are invited. I can't afford to be buying this kind of stuff as often as I need to to build my collection, and my program suffers for it.

On the plus side, I've now got a pretty decent collection of grades 4 and 5 stuff, and quite a few books that say 4-8 or 4-6 on them which can be adjusted for my purposes. In another five years, I'll need a room of my house to dedicate to all the stuff I'm not using at school at any given time.