final week of ed season.

last week was my final week teaching at hawlemont. i've taken a while to write this post because i'm still trying to process everything from the week...

here's a rundown:

MONDAY
a planning day, except this day was more exciting because 8 more corps members moved in over the weekend to be joining us for the trail work portion of the internship. while we were planning our hearts out, they were getting orientation to the site. hooray new friends!

TUESDAY
it was a weird day. we started the morning in 6th grade. that went well! it was a good conclusion to our time with them. then we had a lot of downtime because our 4th grade lesson was rescheduled due to the massachusetts standardized exams. our only other lesson that day was with 5th grade. we ended up just playing a bunch of games with them. it was great!

WEDNESDAY
a crazy busy day! we began our morning in preschool. we did some water experiments...they were okay...but the highlight was getting hugs from all of the preschoolers. they are ADORABLE! then we rushed over to kindergarten for our final lesson on oobleck. it is amazing how amazed kids get over cornstarch and water mixed together. i mean, i love oobleck. i could play with it all day...it's fascinating!! a great lesson to end our time!

then, we rushed (yet again) over to 4th grade to finish working on the rain gauge guidebook. the guidebook came together SO well! i am still impressed with how great all of the pages look. also, it was great to see that the students are really excited to keep measuring all of the rain gauge data! i love service learning : )

we enjoyed lunch with 3rd and 4th grade and had fun at recess. i hung around with a kindergartner most of the time. we searched for lost toy monster trucks...which was basically and excuse to run around the playground and all over the structure. kids are amazing.

in the afternoon, we popped back into 4th grade to do some wrap up activities and then bounced over to 2nd grade to finish the river project. that, too, came together well! i feel like the class didn't really get much from our lessons, but they really loved us. we received a bunch of gifts and notes from them. it was great! also...caleb and i both received LOTS of hugs. that was awesome.




THURSDAY
this was quite an overwhelming day. our morning began with trying to figure out how to put the rain gauge book together. we laminated the pages, relaminated most of them because the lamination didn't stick, then played around with the binding machine and ended up with an AWESOME project! caleb dutifully scanned in all of the pages the night before so that we have an electronic version of the guidebook.

eventually we joined 3rd grade for their morning meeting and then popped over to 1st grade for our final lesson with them. it actually went really well! we talked about transitions, gave them a card we made for their class and then told them what we were doing next. we allowed the students to share how they were feeling...i think they liked that. most of them said things like, "we'll miss you", "we had a lot of fun", "i don't want you to leave", but it was great to hear from them : ) then we played one last round of oh deer! they followed the rules. they used their walking feet. it was great.

then we had a bit of a break...(i went to art with 5th grade while caleb hung out with the 2nd graders at lunch). we enjoyed our last lunch with 5/6 and finished off with kindergarten art class and our last lesson with 3rd grade.

our last event was the all school meeting...that was the most overwhelming piece. we were called up during the meeting to have every class give us something. it was so great : ) i'm surprised i didn't cry...but i didn't. i really felt special. we joined 3rd grade for the water cycle song (to the tune of she'll be coming round the mountain) and presented the rain gauge guidebook to 4th grade. it was great : ) i also performed as star bellied sneetch #4 in the sneetches drama club play. it was fun!

all in all...a great way to end education season. lots of hugs, cards, and appreciation. just the way i like it!