Teacher birthdays are a bit tricky in my experience. Do you bring treats for your class? What about healthy eating? Do you want to keep your birthday a secret? Should you share it with the world? Do the students care? Do you care? My birthday was even more problematic because it didn't happen on a school day. Yesterday was my birthday. I figured my kids would probably remember, so I planned to pick up a pomegranate from the grocery store (something edible and exciting and also healthful). Well, Walmart didn't have any pomegranates. Bummer. I stumbled across an interesting-looking Mexican produce called jicama. The sign said it has an apple-pear flavor, so I figured why not try something new?
This morning I forgot to grab a peeler/knife and a bowl. When I looked it up online, it turns out jicama is actually a vegetable. A sweet tasting vegetable, but a vegetable nonetheless. My kids thought it was an onion. I kept forgetting the name of it and had to relook it up on the computer. We're hopefully going to eat it tomorrow (you cut it like a pineapple).
Along the line of birthdays... one of the kindergartners had a birthday today. He brought me a birthday cupcake. One of the 5th grade girls made him a card and had everyone in the class sign it. Then she snuck down to their classroom (with my permission, of course) and dropped it off and ran away before anyone could see who left it. And that was pretty much all the birthday things that happened in our classroom today.
Sometime during the day Mrs. E wrote a note on the board in the office saying "Happy Belated Birthday Miss H!" One of the 7th and 8th graders saw it and asked me when my birthday was. Then they all chimed in their birthday greetings. But none of the 5th graders did. Ms. J was the only one to ask if I had a good birthday (that was before any students arrived). It seems the 5th graders totally forgot my birthday was yesterday! Or if they remembered, they didn't say anything. It's okay. I'm not super bummed. I'm a little proud that our class made it through the day without any of them remembering.
At the end of the day we discussed the jicama a little more and one of the 5th graders asked why we were eating it... "just for fun?" I hemmed and hawed a little (I still don't feel comfortable parading my birthday around to the world) and finally said it was going to be my birthday treat to the class. None of them batted an eye. I'm pretty sure only one or two of them was paying attention at that point, so who knows.
After school today, we did first aid and CPR training. The lady who did it was really good. She gave us all sorts of tricks on how to remember the stuff we're learning. Now I want to put together a couple of first aid kits to have around, just in case! She showed us how to use a t-shirt to make a sling and explained the wonders of tampons for plugging bullet wounds (hunting accidents). Diapers are a must in a first aid kit since they hold a lot more blood than your typical gauze, plus there's a leak-proof barrier between the absorbent part and you.
Following our class, I hung up the balloons for our countdown to the last day of school. As of tomorrow, there are only 21 days of school left. Earlier in the day I printed the special activities for each day, rolled them up, and slipped them into the balloons. The 5th graders saw me doing this and tried to get a look at the special activities. Ha! I was pretty sneaky about it, so the activities are a complete surprise. It took me a while to blow up all those balloons! Now the ends are tucked under the ceiling tiles of our room; it looks quite festive. I think they'll have a great time finding the balloon that matches each day. We get to pop the first one at the end of the day tomorrow so the 5th graders know if they need to bring anything or not.
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