Monday, June 21, 2010

Monday madness

Just a quick update since I thought you might enjoy hearing about my day!

This morning I did boring things like scheduling and timesheets, and I cleaned out my mailboxes (real and virtual) and checked out my holds that arrived over the weekend. I also replenished displays, checked in on the other branch I am temporarily supervising in addition to Rideau, sent some e-mails, and prepped by classes for the day.

Then, time for fun! Today I had 3 children's events on the docket: a school BBQ, a class visit to promote Summer Reading Club, and a Welcome to Kindergarten event at another school.

The BBQ was a blast (yummy food I rarely eat, plus some new friends made!). Part of it was a "spectacle," alors many of the children performed (singing and dancing, including belly dancing by a Grade 5 student I know quite well - she was amazing!) Meanwhile, this morning, I didn't really think through the whole outdoors thing, because I forgot to put sunscreen on my arms - eek. Finding myself on the edge of a school playground with no shade was alarming. Heh heh. I scooted over into another area that was shaded pretty quickly, running back to my table when needed. Sunscreen or not, it was brutal out there. Hey, Divas, if you're reading this, note I am using your bags (hidden in the shade, bottom left).

The class visit of Grade 4s from another school was WILD - I think it's that end-of-year, we-can-smell-summer thing. Oh, and did I mention they had a substitute teacher? Yeah. So that was interesting....

The Welcome to Kindergarten event was the most fun, by far. It was arranged as "stations" within the kindergarten room, with a speech at the beginning by the principal and myself. Due to some miscommunication, I ended up with the gross motor skills station, which was actually fine. I brought some books about shapes and had the kids cutting out shapes with the scissors and construction paper they had in their give-away bags. When they cut out a circle, square or triangle, they could tape it up on my posterboard. I also had all the usual stuff (library membership kits, bookmarks and flyers about events and opening hours, business cards, copies of Preview - our program magazine, invitations for Summer Reading Club), as well as specially-made bookmarks with the shapes on one side (with common examples, eg. a button) and books about shapes on the other side. Fun moment at the event: a parent of Indian descent speaking Russian with another parent. Turns out she speaks Russian, Dutch and English with her kids, and he speaks 5 ("something like that") languages and has family in Holland. Man, I love my urban 'hood.

Here are the books I brought with me:
Other great titles:
I think this batch of pre-kindergarteners did a great job with their shapes:

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