It's a Cotten life: My First Snow Day

Pippi Longstocking declared it wasn't fair that she didn't get Christmas vacation just because she didn't go to school. Likewise, I am reveling in my first snow day. With the kids in school, snow days have always been a fun break in routine, but now I get the excitement of a day that was already spent in my head being returned to me to spend all over again in a different way. Ka-ching!

There isn't any snow of course, in our terribly mild climate (where did our winter go?!?!), but there is a thick coat of ice on everything.

My job is going well. The first day, I was rather bored, since everyone but me knew what was going on. I felt like I was just a third wheel, kind of following around doing what everyone else told me. I couldn't correct the kids in our room because I didn't know their names or the rules yet. I was just decorative. As I figure things out, it becomes more interesting. There is more to do and knowing the kids, I can be excited for them, figuring something out, or behaving better than they did the day before, that sort of thing. I am getting to know the two little kids I am with more as well, feeling more connected to them and what they need.

I am also a bus monitor in the afternoons. I was dreading bus monitoring, but it is getting better too. There is the little boy with no front teeth at the moment who sat with me the second day and read a book to me, asking me all the hard words. He told me he would draw me a picture over the weekend. He now apologizes to me every day for not drawing one the night before. He is terribly cute. Then there is a sixth grade girl who thinks of me as her homework tutor. "Is this fraction in the simplest form?" "Is the Pacific Ocean a continent?" That last one just kills me. Shouldn't a sixth grader know what a continent is? But then, I never remember when I learned things. So I just explain it to her. In our first grade room, we were diagramming sentences yesterday, discussing adjectives and the like. Then we did earth science, discussing the mantle, crust and inner and outer core. And that seems incredibly early to me. I only remember that sort of thing in fourth or fifth grade. So clearly, I have no real recollection of what people should know when.

Home is going well too. Right now, Justin is home and he has fun days with Elsie, while working on leather and doing some housework. Justin leaves next Monday, flying out to train with my brother for three weeks, so I am trying not to rely too entirely on him, since I am going to be doing it on my own for awhile.

We are all adjusting. I think I am glad I took the job. I already know that being an aide or teaching assistant is not my life calling. Being a teacher, while a lot more work would be so much more interesting. But that requires grad school for me. So for now, this is good!

And now, for some pictures of last Saturday when we actually had snow!

Gilbert, Elsie, and I went out to see the snow.

I told them to smile nicely for the camera. Yeah....

Snow angels

"Quick-foot, light-foot bunny track." (A favorite line from this book.)

Trying to make snowballs.

Do you see how little snow it takes to get us excited this year? There is grass sticking out of the snow. But since we have had hardly any snow, we get excited by even an inch or two.