One and Done

*Sigh* boy am I glad today is over. It was pretty good, but still, I am fully ready for a two week break.

My classroom actually looks pretty good. It didn't take as long to tidy up as I thought it would. I can actually see the dark top of the lab table (the past two weeks it's been covered by art supplies). There are still a bunch of supplies waiting to be put back in the closet, but I think those can wait until Monday or Tuesday.

Our first program is Sunday afternoon and the second is Christmas Eve night. We are ready. The one bell song is a little shaky, but if two of my high bell players stay on rhythm we're okay. We practiced the tricky bit over and over after rehearsal was over. The two girls I kept the longest were not happy they had to wait to eat lunch.

I had another student who shut down because he didn't think he could get all his fixes done before presents/the all-school movie. He tends to rage and throw/kick/knock stuff over when he has a meltdown. Even though he had a few meltdowns, the damage was minimal in the classroom. He took off into the gym and threw frisbees and pinnies all over. It's a good thing most of my kiddos were motivated to stay on task today (the rest of them were actually pretty calm) so I felt okay leaving them to go talk to this kid. I tried 'resetting' him a few times, encouraging him to keep trying, he had time to turn it around and get his work done, but the poor guy had just given up on life/school/himself and wanted to go home. He called his mom who encouraged him to tough it out. The rest of the day was a struggle, but we both got through it and he did get all his work finished in time to join the rest of the school at the movie!

Presents were good, as usual. This class didn't get into the letter present idea as much as other classes did. My kids gave me lotion, cozy socks and chocolate, a new 8x8 pan, Maurices gift card, Chicken in a Biscuit crackers and banana chips (some of my favorite snacks), honey (the student said they'd harvested it from their hives just last night!), and a fancy woven beaded bracelet a student made (he took it to the fair and got a purple ribbon!).

Then, Mr. E gave me a present to make up for the mix-up yesterday. It turns out he'd had my name all along but he checked the wrong pocket... The first year we did name swaps, he forgot who he had and had to ask every teacher who they had so he could figure it out. The next year, he kept the name piece of paper in his suit pocket. This year, he did the same thing. But when he went to check whose name he had, he checked the wrong suit coat! He found the name from last year's person. When he checked his other suit coat he found my name on the piece of paper. So he went overboard and got me a ton of minty things... some chocolate, some mint mints. Looks like I'll be set in the snack department for a while!