Has It Been a Month? And. . .Five for Friday!

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted!  The beginning of the year has been insanely busy, and I still feel like I haven't caught up.  But I decided that no matter what, I needed to link up to the Five for Friday Party!  Here's a little bit of what my week has been like:

I went shopping on Monday!!  (That's always fun.)  I went to Target for a book shelf for our living room and came home with this instead.  :)  To my husband's great relief, this was cheaper than the book shelf I wanted and a lot easier to put together.  I love how it brightens up our whole room.

This is the science activity we did today.  Each group got four pea pods, and they had to count the number of peas in each pod.  Then, we graphed the data and analyzed it.  (Nothing like rolling science, math, and writing all into one big lesson!)  It was great to see them so involved in the lesson.  They really enjoyed it.  I did realize I have to revise the graphing sheet.  Watching them trying to make the bar graphs was interesting.

This is just part of the mess that my corner has become.  I promise, that was neat the first week of school, but since then, the piles have just grown.  (And grown, and grown, and grown.)  I'm hoping I can get it cleaned up soon.  We have parent conferences coming up at the end of the month, so I'm going to have to get a grip on the clutter!

This, right here, is the biggest reason I've fallen behind.  I have been without this since a week ago Tuesday.  (That's 7 school days for those of you playing at home.)  Seven school days without a computer is a lifetime.  I do everything on this.  Grading, attendance, e-mail, hand-outs, parent newsletters, etc.  Everything is on this baby.  Not only that, but I have to write proficiency plans for every single one of my English Learners, (There's 21 of them) and they could only be done on my work laptop since I do them through Lotus Notes.  No computer, no Lotus Notes.  AND, to make matters worse, Lotus Notes only works when connected to the school network.  No writing ELPP's at home for me!  I'm hoping to get them done by October.  (Just in time to write revised ones for the new grading period.  Sigh.)

And last, but not least. . .

This is what I've faced every morning for the last two weeks.  One of my little sweethearts has decided that she wants to be at home rather than school.  She comes in every day screaming.  The last few days, she's been inconsolable until our specials time at 10:40, but Thursday, the school counselor and assistant principal decided she needed to start the morning in my room.  I didn't need to go to gym after that work out!  She wants us to call her mom, and she kept trying to run out of the room, and I was doing my best body blocking techniques to stop her.  The strangest thing is that she finally calmed down around 8:30 (45 minutes after coming in), and she was perfectly fine the rest of the day.  We've met with her mom, and we're hoping that if we can just wait her out, she'll finally decide she's stuck with us and not pitch a fit every morning.

I promise!  It won't be a month until my next post!  I'm hoping to get my life organized and running a little more smoothly this month.  Thankfully, there's no more Curriculum Nights, preschool open houses, or evening meetings in my future.