Meet Riley!

Meet my new car. His name is Riley!
I hadn't really planned to buy a car today, but we were out looking and we came across a great deal...then there I was an hour later making the largest purchase of my life thus far. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but wow. After a bit of wheeling and dealing and some number crunching, I am the very proud owner of a 2009 Hyundai Sonata. Red wouldn't have been my original color of choice, but its certainly growing on me! The Erskine sticker goes on tomorrow!

Big grown-up stuff! Big purchase! 

Big day!!

Noise

There was so much noise today. My head is about to explode. The kids were unbelievably talkative today, everything was a joke, everything was laughable and hilarious.
Many feelings were hurt.
I was doing damage control all day. Now the band is practicing right outside and the drums mixed with the yelling students outside my door make me want to put my head down and cover my ears. Some days are just too much!

Tobacco Festival

I guess its part of the Lake City experience to go to the Tobacco Festival, eat chicken on a stick, almost get blown away by a helicopter dropping candy, walk around the Tobacco Museum, munch on funnel cakes, buy a mini bamboo plant, and chat with new friends. What a memory!

Estimating Raisins

Raisins + Math = A Fun Mess

1. Estimate how many raisins are in your box without opening it.
2. Open your box and count the top layer of raisins. Re-estimate how many are in the box total.
3. Dump out your raisins and count them all.
4. Record how many raisins each group had.
5. What was the maximum number of raisins found by a group?
6. What was the minimum number of raisins found?
7. What was the range? Subtract the minimum number from the maximum number.
8. What was the mode (most frequently found number)?

Now clean up all those raisins you dropped on the floor, oh wait they're all over the seat of your pants and your shoes and our floor. Cool, I hope you learned something!!

Good Day

Encouraging day! So yes, I live in a new city and I know very few people. Today however was probably the best Saturday so far! I slept late (9:00am!!), drank coffee while watching shows on Hulu, listened to a great John Piper sermon, took more than 5 minutes to get dressed, went to a coffee shop and did significant lesson planning, and spent the rest of the day hanging out with a fellow teacher playing scrabble, eating Mexican, and talking to strangers in checkout lines. Praise the Lord for these little encouragements!

The Case of the Missing Pencils

So, I buy a lot of pencils. I buy them, I give them away, they never come back...end of story. Yeah its a real problem. What am I going to do? Tell the young learners that no they may not have a pencil and they must sit there and write nothing/not take the test just so that they learn to come prepared...some say yes. I just can't do it. I've tried..I've been tough..to no avail. Anyway I'm spending a fortune on pencils and there has to be a better way. My solution: make all my pencils into flags (see below) that say things like "give this back," "don't take me!" or "I belong to Ms. Drummond" I have become very possessive as you can see, but I don't know what else to do. I'd rather go broke another way besides  buying pencils. :)