Happy October!

Here are a few images from our Month :-)

Lily hanging out with Kaiden on our way to the park.

Lily playing in the music room at the Children's Museum.

Cora and Lily hanging out on Papa's tractor.

Lily enjoying every ounce of her soup! She even has a special 'soup bib'!

Lily was having an ice cream and I asked if I could have a bite and she said 'No, Mommy, No!" with such authority - along with her actually pulling the ice cream away from me :-)




Lily's little friend on our street is Christopher. Here they are with coordinating lawn mowers.


Lily's enjoying the cookies I baked (from scratch!)

A great big thanks out to Leeat and Heidi for doing such an AWESOME job on Thanksgiving!


Welcome to portable 6 at Tollgate French Immersion - my classroom!


We're doing a poetry lesson in our English class that I've called 'Popcorn Poetry'. Essentially the idea was to get the students to appreciate that poetry is the expression of one's senses through the use of words. So I brought in popcorn and the machine and had them record their 'senses' of the popcorn. It worked really well! Next week they'll be done their poetry anthologies and I'll be posting them on this board.

This is the south facing side of my portable.

Here is a look from the back of my classroom. I hang out a lot at the chalk board :-)

Yup - this is where I spend a load of time during the week!

My portable is the one on the left. Right across the 'street' are corn fields. Immediately behind the school are farmers' fields with crop and livestock - mostly cows :-)
Enjoy your weekend!

PPS

In addition to Lily's 'directions' she is filled with hilarious quotes:

"Mommy, you no knock up Daddy in the car"
We were driving in the car, I was driving and Mike in the passenger seat when he said something that warranted a punch in the shoulder. Lily, sitting in the back, was a witness to this and, in her own words, asked me not to hit Daddy.

"Mommy, you go make some noise with Daddy"
I was putting Lily to bed while Mike was doing dishes when something made a loud noise in the kitchen. Lily asked what it was and I said it was Daddy making noise in the kitchen. She then instructed me to join him.

"Mommy me pick you up"
When Lily wants picked up she says "me pick you up", since that's what I say when I'm asking her if she'd like picked up - so she sees it as a command rather then a question.

Lily is SOOOO much fun to be with!

PPS

Lily's taken a new direction these days: giving direction.

At the dinner table, I'm discussing the day with my lovely wife (for those of you who haven't clued in now, Pamela hasn't gone to the other side, it's Mike doing his once-a-year duties). Lily will pipe up: "Mom, Dad, you no talk now."

"But we'd like to talk to each other, dear."

"No. You no talk, Mommy no talk."

Or at bedtime, we've gotten into a bit of a routine where Lily tells Pamela how she'd like to be left alone. We give her the choice of leaving the door open or closed, and Pamela will lie down with her for a minute or two. And then recently, she got a: "Mommy, you go downstairs now."

Then there was the clincher tonight at supper. It was again around the whole "you no talk now" routine, which is pretty funny on most days, but today was about giving turns. "Daddy, you no talk now, Mommy talk. Go ahead, Mommy."

The concepts she understands these days are just phenomenal, aren't they?

And for those who aren't Facebookers, I've got to share the story about a new book we picked up at a bazaar this weekend, entitled "My Name is Bert." I was reading it to Lily last night, and Bert's telling us all about him, and we get to the page where he's talking about his favourite number, which is 4, because there are 4 letters in his name, and there are four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter, and he likes them all. I stop reading, I look up at Pamela, and I say, "This is wrong. Bert's favourite number is 6. 'Cos five is your fingers and your toes, and two's your eyes and one's your nose, but 6... my favourite number is 6..."

And the look on Pamela's face is somewhere in between "Where the f*^@ did I find this guy?" and "I love you so much it hurts." Truly one of the most incredible expressions I've ever come across.

And so to prove it to her, I had to find it on YouTube and show her, and we revelled in Bert's glory. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfY6kapyBY

And so I pledge to never read the offensive material again to my daughter. Somebody dropped the ball there bad.

MS

I've got my own classroom!

I signed a contract today to fill in for a woman who went on maternity leave. I've been in the class since Monday and will be there until the end of September 2009 :-) There is a good chance that she'll want to come back in September, or she can also take an extended leave and not come back until January 2010!

It is in a French Immersion school in Woodstock, approx 50 km from our place. The commute is the ONLY downside to the gig. The 24 students are FANTASTIC and the school is small, with only 160 so you get to know all the kids and their parents. I'm teaching a split class - 7 grade 7s and 17 grade 6s.

I'm very much looking forward to it! I leave by 7:30 so I never get to see Lily in the A.M (okay, so that's the second sucky part about it) but when I get home around 5 pm she beams at me and says 'You at work, Mommy ?'.

I am in a portable that is surrounded by cornfields - I kid you not!

Mike has been 'asked' if he'd like to teach at the University of Guelph next semester too. Basically he needs to be sent a contract to make it 'official'.

So, if the blog seems like its lacking or you don't hear from us much, it's likely because I'm knee deep in grade 6 or grade 7 curriculum!

PPS