TeacherPlaces
I was inspired by some new to me artists' blogs that I came across yesterday, Paulette Insall especially. So I decided to try layering a background with paint, stamps and a few bits of text scraps. Though I'm not finished yet, I wanted to scan it up...for a first try I thought, not bad. Now I'm playing with faces or ladies to put as the focal in the middle. I'm thinking of one, with maybe a bird flying from her hair. We'll see. This art play sure is fun though!
Ever roasted your own coffee beans? I am now the owner of an iRoast. Who knew I'd be a coffee roaster? Rick gave me the roaster for my birthday along with a huge bag of half-caf, green beans from Coffee Direct. The process reminds me of popping popcorn in an air popper while running the vaccum cleaner. Remember air popper's whir and whoosh? The clank and click of the kernals against the popper? Similar sounds to the iRoast, but the iRoast is louder. We roasted our first batch yesterday. I was a bit concerned as I read the directions. This thing comes with an attachment that you can fit a dryer hose on so that you can vent it to the outside. Seriously? How much smoke could coffee roasting put off? We just used it on top of the stove and ran the exhaust fan. None of the smoke alarms went off so I imagine we don't need to cut a hole in the wall in order to create a vent. After the beans roast, you clean away the chaff. Who knew coffee beans had chaff? Then you let the beans rest for a day before using them. I ground them up this morning--they look a bit moister than what we buy in the store. It tastes pretty good this morning, just like coffee.
On a another note, yesterday was clean-up day. We got in from NH late the night before, so we needed to unpack, start laundry and get things organized. It's spring break here and we decided to work around the house instead of traveling or camping this year. Our big project? Crown molding. Originally Rick and I thought we'd be able to trim out three rooms this week. Yeah, then we talked to my brother who spent a year remodeling his bedroom. John sold us on a special jigsaw thing, so we're in a holding pattern waiting for it to arrive. While we wait, we're also taking John's other advice: practice. Our first room? The laundry room. We, of course, is a euphemism as I'm not allowed to use power tools much. I hold boards, read the trim book directions, and make happy noises for Rick who's doing most of the molding work. While he worked at putting up tack strips yesterday, I organized my studio office. I took everything off of the shelves, dusted and then reorganized where things go. It looks nice now and the collections of books and junk make sense: professional books, poetry, home-improvement, Plugged-in, art space, etc. While Rick and I were thus engaged, Collin made a fort in his room.
He started a fort, but needed help getting the roof to stay on. I might not be engineer savvy, but I can build some forts now! We arranged his furniture a bit to maximize the roof holding power of the furniture. The roof/sheet drapes from bed to bookcase and he's got quite a cozy area underneath. Collin played in there much of the morning and into the afternoon. Got me thinking about the book Children's Special Places by David Sobel which talks about the importance of dens, forts and such to children. Sobel says:
Children know the importance of hiding out, of finding the "just for me" place where they cannot be seen. Peeking through a hollowed-out hedgerow or climbing a tree is the initial discovery of a "self-ish" space, a site detached from the ongoing intimate relation with parents, siblings, teachers or peers.Interesting book. We did find ourselves in those secret hideaways didn't we?
When we arrived at my brother's this weekend, it was snowing. Wintery weather calls for comfort food. I really wanted to cook for a day and stock my sister-in-law's freezer with heat & eat meals, but I got away with cooking for an evening. I made one of my comfort favorites: chicken with a cheese cloud. It's like a pot pie-ish filling with a biscuit topping. Love it! We ate it up and ate the leftovers for lunch the next day. I think everyone liked it or at least I hope they did because I made a double recipe and froze one of the casseroles.
Couldn't resist playing with Image Blender to make a recipe card--my color theming doesn't quite match the dish, but I was just playing.
My brother, John, took a bunch of pictures with his super-Nikon, so I put most of the ones he sent me into a little slide show. Though you can't see it as well here as on my flickr page, the detail he gets with that Nikon is incredible. Gotta get back out into that snow!
It's the last day of school before spring break. My service learning students are making up blog posts and video projects--most are finished. During first period one of the boys told a story about his car breaking down nearby. That led to me telling an"Orange Crate" tale (ie: a story about my first car--the orange VW Scirocco). Everyone has a car story to tell. After spring break, I think we'll build community with writing by drawing our first cars (or dream cars) and writing one of our car stories.
Collin and I went skating again today. Semoran Skateway has a Tiny Tots (under 12) skate Saturday mornings from 10-12. We first went skating in December -- he's gotten a lot better at it and spends much of the 2 hours in the big rink. He doesn't seem to have a sense of his center of gravity--you can see him sway and swing in the limb a bit, but he sure has gotten better at it. It's amazing really and I keep thinking of how kids develop muscle control and marveling over my muscle memory. I love watching Collin concentrate. His wrists turn out and he gets this look on his face. This week he wanted me to show him how to go backwards... so I did. He's not quite ready to go backwards yet. Surely he needs to really master forwards and that center idea, but what the heck... we had fun in the practice rink trying it out.
Other news, we have a new flock!
Yes, more Spice Chickens: Ginger, Honey, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Saffron & Yoda ... Collin's special chick. We think (dare I say hope) that they are all hens, but you never know when you pick from the pullets and chicks at Tractor Supply (pullets hopefully being hens). We have 3 Rhode Island Reds and 3 "Pullets" of an undetermined breed. We'll see how their feathers come in. The plan is to build an A-frame chicken tractor and move them around the yard a bit.
Love the Caran D'Ache colors... if I were Fancy Nancy that would be special-speak for crayon colors. These crayons are fancy: water soluble, oil based, perfect waxiness. I made this one with Michael in mind--he owns the best salon in Orlando and loves dogs.
I visited a teacher's room for a meeting one dayand saw one of my fav Emily Dickinson quotes on her wall , so I had to make her this piece--a variation of one I made for Christine this summer.
Photoshop brushes are amazing. Months ago a friend mentioned how cool they were. Sara said she could waste hours of writing time playing with these brushes and altering photographs. I saw a few of the photos she or Michael had altered and was intrigued. I've been in a collage art phase here, still tinkering with animals, maps, color, scraps and rub ons. When I have time, it's relaxing to play in my office/studio and make art as Collin says. My friend Jennifer introduced me to rub-ons--they are much cooler now than they were when we were kids! You can get all kinds of tribal, celtic, scrollworkish rub-ons. Sometimes they are just the right thing for a small corner of something I'm making. But what to do when you run out? Make more! You can order almost anything from the Internet and I discovered last week that I could order rub-on (decal) paper. For about $25 you get 5 sheets of decal paper and 5 sheets of adhesive. I've been experimenting with the photoshop brushes on the rub-on paper-- I think I've figured out how to maximize the shapes on the page.
Collin is reading! Well, he's been reading since kindergarten but he's really reading now. At the beginning of first grade Collin's teacher began sending home basal readers for students to read aloud to their parents. She would send one "real" book (not a photocopied one) and then 2 of these basal readers. I'm calling them basal readers because I think that is what they are. They are not of the Dick and Jane variety but they are part of a leveled collection of many titles that accompany a textbook/reading program. I don't think I'd ever seen one in person, so it's been interesting. The books are photocopied sets from a textbook publisher. They are patterned stories, sometimes with some simple humor. Collin actually enjoys the funny ones or the outrageous ones. I think he finds and found satisfaction in begin able to read them. He struggled though with some words. Words I'd not recognized as tricky like could or nurse. Funny how I've faced my assumptions during this process.
Collin's school uses A.R. His teacher told parents at the beginning of the year that she would not put students in A.R. until they were ready -- this is a thing parents push for? Who knew? Like any group of students, Collin's class had all kinds of readers in it. Some came into first grade reading chapter books--one, it was rumored, was reading Harry Potter! Collin was struggling to read Eric Carle on his own, but he was reading at grade level when he entered first grade.
He was not ready for A. R. , but Collin wanted to be in the A.R. program-- he wanted it bad.
You see, if you're reading books in A.R. and doing well on the tests and meeting or exceeding your goals then you get a "free dress" day at school. Is that fair to the kids that aren't ready for A.R. yet? Collin missed all of the free dress days early on and he was not happy about it-- that six-year-old sense of justice and fairness is fierce, I'm telling you. I can see how the reward is a motivator, but man... Punished by Rewards flashed through my mind.
He began the A.R. program after Christmas vacation. This Thursday is first "free dress" reward day. He is very excited. He's more excited about his reward than he is about having a long 4-day weekend. Can you believe it? I'm thrilled that his reading has taken off since Christmas. Collin's teacher said that many kids turn a corner as readers at that time of year and she was right. He is reading. He's reading the magazine headlines in line at Publix; he's reading all kinds of environmental print (sings, and bumper stickers and menus); he's reading Eric Carle beautifully and he can read many of the picture books he has in his room. He's even reading chapter books, albeit slowly--he's just finished a Magic Tree House book , #8, I think. We were reading it at home and he chose it to read during "drop everything and read" time at school.
I'm fascinated with his reading growth and how he's changing as a reader, but his first day with A.R. stays with me. I picked him up from school and his big news was that he was now allowed to do A.R. I congratulated him because I knew he had wanted to do it. I want to support him ans support what he does at school, but in my mind I'm full of questions, sometimes outrage. Anyway, then he said, "but now Mommy I can't read anything I want, I have to read A.R. books."
Blow to my heart, I'm tellin' you.
The other night Collin and I were eating dinner. His palette amazes me. For a six-year-old he eats quite a bit. I'd made chicken stir fry with chicken, broccoli, broccoli slaw, pea pods, etc. Collin was spearing his broccoli saying "broccoli crucified"... guess that's his Christian schooling showing there. I got to thinking about vocabulary, context and word knowledge. He's approximating -- all of the things he's learning about Jesus and Easter --trying to apply them to new contexts, but still.... crucified vegetables... hmm, I wanted to laugh, but I didn't dare. He did clean his plate.
Help! I'm torn between blog spaces. This is my personal blog. I also have a blog where I write about my journey with technology (Classroom 2.0). Now I've started a service learning blog for my students, but I'd also like to have a teacher blog where I can post educational podcasts and teacher-type things. Holy moly, that's a lot of blog space. What do you do? Do you only keep one blog going at a time or do you have several?
Perhaps you have an opinion about the Boy Scouts of America? I do, but I'm not going to share it here. Personal opinions become problematic when mixed with child rearing I've noticed. Not wanting to jade Collin to early or pass judgment as an example, I keep a lot to myself. Thus when he (and Jack and Robert) wanted to listen to the Boy Scouts of America sales pitch one evening at school, I went. Jennifer and Hector went as well. Midway through the meeting I see Jen signal me from across the room. She's shaking her head, ever so slightly "no, no" --that and Hectors slash across the throat gesture pretty much told me that they weren't buyin' Boy Scouts. The presentation was a high-pressure, sign-on-line and give us a check affair. Our boys just wanted to go camping and shoot bows and arrows.
After the meeting I got to thinking. Couldn't we camp on our own? My Dad did. In fact he and the men of our neighborhood formed the Renegades. Fathers and sons went camping a few times a year as Renegades. Jen and Hector thought it was a good idea. We even got excited about buying our own bow and arrows and finding some badges we could give to the boys.
I missed the first camping weekend. Rick, Collin, the Gonzales family and the Tenneys went to Tomoka. I was working in Sanibel, but I heard all about their adventures. It rained. When I called Collin from Camp Janet, he declared that the boys were "being beavers!" Apparently they used shovels to dig a ditch and build a damn in order to protect the Tenney's tent from a flood. Our second trip was this past weekend. Rick and Hector went to camp early Friday to set up--they were off work and the boys were out of school. Jen and I drove up together after school planning to meet the Tenneys and their friends the Jacksons there. We were again at Tomoka State Park.
On the way up, Jen told me all about trying to get badges for the boys. They'd found a dealer (Town & Country) and thought that getting such things would merely require walking in and paying for them. Oh no, apparently not. You have to have a license or a special Boy Scouts permit to buy those badges. It's not like the boys necessarily care about badges and we certainly aren't trying to fake our way through Boy Scouts, but we did want to give the boys a chance to earn something. We brought bows and arrows. And Jen had this great idea for name plaques and totems. She ended up buying these wooden rectangle shapes which she threaded with a leather thong. She painted one with stripes: red, green, yellow and perhaps blue. On top of the stripes she wrote Rebel Scout (I love the name change!) and then below is a place for each boy (and girl by the way) to write their name. Then she found little wooden charms almost that the kids can tie to either the rectangle or the leather strap that holds it. Of course in camping-lingo those charms are badges. She found a fish one, an open book one (on which she wrote science) and another whose shape now escapes me.
Why? We love crafts. Truly we do. Sometimes our boys do too. Jen figured making the badges would be fun to do, especially if it rained. I was all excited about our new Rebel Scout status and she and I came up with all kinds of cool things we could do with it: logos, t-shirts, totems, etc.
When we drove up to the campsites, the boys were hip deep in a mud puddle and still digging. By dinner it seemed that Jack, Jen's oldest, had a fever and by the next morning he was throwing up. It was pouring rain. Perhaps normal rain, given that you have good shelter, would be ideal for doing crafts, but that was not the case this time. It rained buckets. We hardly had enough "tarp-ology" to keep tables dry much less ourselves or breakfast. The kids loved it. The adults? Not so much. The kids could have cared less about the rain. Lucky for them, Ryan and his cousin, Hunter, brought and entire tub of full-sized G.I. Joes. Who knew boys still liked G.I. Joe--they kept the boys occupied for hours in and out of the rain! The girls, however, were content to build a fort and hut in the dirt as well as read some books I found from NCTE still stashed in the back of my car. After the rain cleared it was frisbee and football, fishing and rock skipping, tag and smore making... perhaps we'll get to those Rebel Scout badges yet.
I'm title-challenged. Titles actually stop me in my tracks. For instance, I'd like to start a podcast show--you know record musings perhaps weekly that I can broadcast on blog or upload to iTunes. Not that I would have much of an audience, but I'd like to think through my ideas and you never know... sharing ideas always engenders more. I'd like to start a podcast show, but I can't think of a title. I've been playing around with the idea for months and I'm still stuck. Here's a short list of titles that have caught my fancy:
Literally Speaking
Technically Speaking
Literally Yours
Technically Yours
Teacher Talk
Room 222
Literacy Matters
Inside Teaching
The list goes on. I just searched several of the titles in Google and they are all being used by someone... for instance, I got 17,000 hits from "literacy matters" and over 99,000 for "literally speaking." Of course, Room 222 used to be a television show in its own right-- I like the idea but that title doesn't really speak to me either.
In my frustration, I decided to search the web for a title generator. Amazingly there are over 2 million title generators online. Who knew?
For fun I plugged some words into Fiction Alley's title generator: bright, thinking, books, on, busy, mind, ideas, a literacy, speaking. These words rendered these random titles:
Title One: bright books on busy ideas
Title Two: a busy literacy
Title Three: a mind on bright books
Title Four: bright literacy
Title Five: a speaking mind
Title Six: thinking ideas
Title Seven: speaking books
Title Eight: busy thinking
Title Nine: thinking for ideas
Title Ten: speaking and thinking
I kind of like Literacy Bright (like a play on that old Lite Bright toy) or Literally Bright, hmm... that's interesting, but too much like the Smart Girl label I got tagged with at school. !Ay Caramba! These titles. Do you have any ideas?
Bye for now!
las
PS: I also found a job title generator --quite amusing. I might have to start using one of the new titles it gave me:
Lee Ann Spillane, Analog Education Tutor
Lee Ann Spillane, Real-time Phenomenon Advocate
Lee Ann Spillane, Psychoactive Research Diety
Are we done with th 40 hour work week? So asks a recent MSNBC article I googled after discussing work weeks with Rick. Our district pays teachers for a 37.5 hour work week. How many hours do teachers actually work? Here's a tidbit fromt he article:
A globally connected economy has made "9 to 5"
little more than the name of a 1980 film. With the economy ever more
service-oriented, the line has blurred between the average wage-earning,
coveralled Joe and his salaried, tie-wearing boss. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3072426/from/ET/
I'm on a strange collage kick: maps, animals, torn paper. Who knows what I'll do with them, but it sure is fun to sit and just piece together things. A little whimsy ...I suppose.
This morning one of my students said, "why is Florida's weather so bipolar." Interesting how teens use that word. Here's Collin's weather study... I love the snow man!
Thinking about technology and learning with friends and family this morning, I thought to myself, I should just have a technology salon one evening. Last week I taught my mom to skype. We've been happily using it ever since. I don't know very much, but what I do know I like to show and teach others. Web 2.0 tools are accessible and for the most part easy to use. I've fully integrated iGoogle and Delicious into my thinking and learning life and I can see how skype will go that way too. What a great collaborative tool--really, group projects, group meetings...having a car wouldn't matter though having a high speed Interent connection will. I'll come back to this idea later as Lee and I need to empty the trash and tidy up the condo before heading to the office. I just wanted to get it down... technology salons. Hmm...
Welcome to the World Baby Charlotte! Collin is very excited to have a new cousin and Auntie Lee Ann and Uncle Rick are tickled too. 
