The Little Things: And a Happy New Year!

Now that Keith is actually sleeping a little earlier at night, I really should start updating the blog more often. However, by sleeping a little earlier I don't mean he's sleeping long stretches. Would be nice but he likes to cuddle with us at night. On the plus side, he goes down for bed pretty easily especially since he doesn't like to nap for my mom lately! I love watching him go to bed at night when he sings to himself and rubs his head. I guess all that singing while he was a newborn and in the womb paid off.

Christmas Break was far too short, and I'm counting the days to Spring Break. Keith enjoyed all the extra mom and dad time for sure! We enjoyed snuggling with him. I have to say that Christmas with a baby is a little different. Much as hubby and I like car rides, they just aren't the same with a baby in the car. We drove to West Virginia and amazingly our monkey did pretty good. We even got to sleep thanks to my sister driving. He was even great on the drive to Cumberland. I did discover that Monkey loves a schedule. Like really and truly loves his schedule. It was rough messing with it and he's just now getting back into the swing of things. The boy loves his early bedtime but he knows we don't sleep until several hours later because it seems like he's always waking up every so often for a snuggle until we settle in for the night.

The best part of the last month has been seeing Monkey roll over and his first tooth start to come in. He is a busy boy and as soon as he realized he could roll over, he decided he needs to do everything right now. He wants to roll, crawl, sit, walk and talk all at once and gets frustrated that it doesn't work. I can't believe how much he can do at this age! He has also become quite the giggle box. Everything makes him laugh and when we laugh at his laugh, it gets even louder.

As far as work, loving it like always. This school is so different from anything I've ever done, but it helps me to see how good this type of education can be for certain kids. I know children aren't one size fits all and our education system shouldn't be either. I wish some of the parents there would realize that though. I love seeing kids have a passion for learning and I would say after being at this school for a few months, all but a few of my students are there. I get excited when they get excited about learning something new. Seeing their faces light up when they tell me they've figured out something they struggled with is amazing. And the fact that they get to struggle with things and work through them is great as well. I have students who can name all the classes of invertebrates from memory and give examples. I have other students who can do an amazing job at explaining materials to other students. I really believe that if we could give students more choice in their work in all school settings that we would see an increase in learning simply because they want to succeed for themselves not to get a grade. My third graders took a mini learning assessment for me and after meeting with them, each one decided they needed to learn about fractions because they knew it was a weakness. Rather than me telling them what to study next, they came to that realization on their own. What more could a teacher want?

Monkey and his new dinosaur from his tio! He loves to eat it and hear the music.