A little update

This past Wednesday, at long last, I defended my dissertation...

...and I passed!

My official "hooding" ceremony is not until June, but I am officially "Dr. Sneaker."

woo hoo!

I still have final revisions to my paper based on feedback from my committee, but those are due by May 15th, so soon enough I will be DONE DONE DONE!

In other news, Baby Sneaker turned 1 (where did the time go?) and the Sneaker family moved into a new house this weekend.

Defending a dissertation and moving in a span of 3 days...yep, that's how I roll.

Do I really have to go to school in the morning?

fired again

This morning when it was almost time for the kiddos to start coming in, I went around the corner from my classroom to our work area to get a few things ready for next week. When I heard the Kinders being dismissed I headed back to my room and one student had already arrived. 

She looked at me and said, "oh you're here. I thought you got fired."

Definitely started my day with a chuckle! 

How was your day?

We have a training day tomorrow and then student led conferences on Friday. Hooray for quasi-short weeks. Mr. Sneaker has been out of town since Sunday morning so I have been on my own with Baby Sneaker trying to do it all (take care of her, keep the house clean, get my dissertation done, watch the three hour Bachelor finale etc. etc.). This mama is tired and looking forward to the weekend already!

Funny

Sometimes the things that come out of kids' mouths are so funny.

I was re-reading Knuffle Bunny Free today (and I didn't cry this time thankyouverymuch) and there are two pages that fold out to show a long picture sequence of Trixie's dream about the children in China who would enjoy Knuffle Bunny since she left him on the airplane and couldn't retrieve him because the plane she was on was already heading to China. I was attempting to read the words on the extra long foldout pages upside down and when I went to fold them back in, I fumbled the book a bit. I said something like uh oh, I don't want to rip the pages.

One little girl sitting up front said, "yeah you don't want to get fired."

I guess ripping book pages is pretty serious in her mind.

:0)

Knuffle Bunny Love

This week is K week, so naturally I broke out my stash of Knuffle Bunny books. I always hide them away until K week so the kiddos have no familiarity with the stories until we read them together (unless they've read them at home, but I've been lucky so far in being able to be able to introduce my classes to the wonderful world of Knuffle Bunny). 

I've posted about my love for all things Mo Willems in the past, but having just read Knuffle Bunny Free to the class today, I had to share about it.

Knuffle Bunny Free always makes Mrs. Sneaker cry.

Even more so now that I am a mama to this cutie girl. 

She will be 11 months old tomorrow. Where did the time go???

I can handle the story until the part where Trixie decides to give Knuffle Bunny to the crying baby behind her on the plane. Then I start to get a little choked up. But when it gets to the part with the letter from Trixie's dad, I'm just a sap. I felt a bit embarrassed getting all emotional in front of a parent helper and an IA, but there is no escaping it when it comes to Knuffle Bunny. 

What stories make you cry?

After I read the story, I had the kiddos use the StoryKit app on their iPads to record what their favorite part was and why. They also drew a picture of their favorite part using the Sketchio app and imported that into their StoryKit book. We are still working on proficiency in using StoryKit because the kiddos email me their work when they're done, which can be a bit tricky for some of them. But, it is awesome that I can have their work in my email inbox and forward it to their parents, have an audio clip of them telling their favorite part and why they liked it, and have a paperless record of their work. Tomorrow or Friday I am going to use the app called Socrative to have the kiddos vote for their favorite Knuffle Bunny Book. As they cast their votes, a graph is created on my iPad, which I project onto the board so they can see which book is getting the most votes. Once everyone has voted, we discuss the graph and decide which book was our class favorite. 

Over the years I have purchased all three Knuffle Bunny stories and a few pigeon books, but I am feeling the need for a trip to the library so I can introduce the kiddos to all of Mo Willems characters. I need to make a note to remember to introduce Pigeon during P week. 

***

In other news, I officially have a date to defend my dissertation. It was going to be May 15th, but I moved it up to April 24th to ensure that I can graduate in Spring term. All defenses need to take place before May 10th to count for spring graduation. I met with my adviser today and turned in my application for graduation. I am not done with the actual dissertation yet and have about 4 more weeks until I need a final draft, but I'm getting very close to the end and that feels good. I mostly have to work on chapter 5 and then just go back and do some formatting and editing to the rest of the document. I am currently at 173 pages. Yikes! 

I heart technology

Posts on two consecutive days...this is getting a bit crazy.

I just have to write a quick note about technology. I should be blogging about all the amazingness that is 1:1 iPads in Kindergarten, but I just don't have the energy or stamina to keep that up. I know there are other bloggers out there doing just that, so I'm gonna stick to something much more simple.

email

I have an email address for almost every child in my class and that made scheduling my spring conferences a whole lot easier.

I emailed my parent email list with a list of conference times and asked them to reply with their top two choices. We do student led conferences so I usually have 3-4 kids scheduled for each 30 minute time block. Within a few hours I have almost half of my class scheduled. I know I will need to make calls to a few parents (probably 3) but three calls sounds much less time consuming than 21.

I know that not all of the parents will get back to me, but I indicated in my email that I would just schedule the ones who didn't respond, so it is what it is.

It feels really nice to save time and be efficient.

And that is all I have to say for now.  :0)

Teen Numbers

I am so excited!

I use a Teen Number song in my class that came from a youtube video by Harry Kindergarten. The song starts with the verse Come on everybody let's get this done, numbers in the teens they start with a 1. I love the song and so do the kids, but we focus a lot on the ten groups within teen numbers so I had to add an extra verse.

When I was viewing the video last week, I noticed that Harry was getting some negative comments on youtube because people think his song will confuse kids and won't help them learn the place value in teen numbers. I shared my second verse with him and he made a new video with it.

How awesome is that!

I don't actually sing it the way he does (just the first part was mine), but I actually like his version better. I can't wait to show it to my kiddos this week!

Here is the "second verse"