On 100 Days, Valentines, and Fancy Tables

 

On February 13, the Agents and I celebrated our 100th day of school. We added our 100th sticker to our 100 Days chart...

 

Took a picture in front of our 100 Numbers Wall...

 

Made crowns with 100 stickers on them, glasses out of the number 100, and necklaces using 100 beads...

 

Made a 100 Day snack bag using ten pieces of ten kinds of snacks...

 

Built a wall using 100 red plastic cups...

 

And made 'If I Were 100' posters, aging ourselves 100 years.

 

We also celebrated Valentine's day early, due to the possibility of a snowstorm on the 14th. We had our friends from LTCC Preschool come downstairs, and everyone passed out Valentines.

 

 

Even I got some!

 

 

 Agent J. and Miss Candace outdid themselves, giving the other Agents super nifty pencils with carefully selected animals on them. Agents M & V were very excited!

 

 

On February 15, the Agents and I took our show on the road and performed at Limington SDA Church. I'll be posting the video from this performance later on this week, so stay tuned!

 

 

It was also at this performance we debuted our very first 'commercial', made from an interview with the kids during National School Choice Week. Everyone loved it, and now you can love it too.

 

 

February 17 to February 22 was Winter Break, which - for those readers in unlucky Ohio - is a vacation week apparently unique to New England. My mother flew up for a visit on the 17th, and we spent the entire week undergoing a project that seemed easy at first but quickly grew into an unprecedented behemoth:  building new tables for the classroom. I prefer tables to desks, especially in small multigrade classrooms like my own, because they help conserve space and foster a sense of community among the students. The purple table we have been using for the past few months belongs to LTCC, and because they'll need it for their new preschool room when it gets up and running, I mentioned to my mother I'd need to find a new table somewhere.  I don't remember how it happened, but somewhere along the line she decided she would come build me one instead.

 

 

You'd think the easiest part would be buying the wood, but it was actually very tense. There were no blueprints for the tables we built. My mother simple IMed me a picture of a table and asked if I liked it, and when I said I loved it, she said 'okay' and that was that. When she got to Maine we printed off a picture of the table, went around measuring desks and chairs kids in chairs and the tables in the cafeteria, and researched the standard desk heights for kids from grades K-3 and 4-8. Then she drew some lines and numbers on the whiteboard and on the picture of the table and off we went. When we got to Home Depot more computing was needed to make sure we didn't buy a billion dollars worth of the wrong size wood. Watching my mother crunch numbers was like watching a race against time in an action thriller. After that, everything was smooth sailing.

 

Haha, just kidding. After that everything was barely controlled chaos.

 



 

But by Monday morning, by the grace of God and the sheer genius of my mother, we had these gorgeous tables! Just look at them in all their freshly stained glory!

The Agents were super excited, which made the whole week of work worth it tenfold. Since then we've had the opportunity to try the tables out with the older Afterschool Care kids and the LTCC Preschoolers, and I'm pleased to say the tables were a success with both!

 

Meanwhile, in the stairwell, my mother found time to begin our next project...

 

 

Thanks, mom, for being so fantastic and coming to my rescue with hammer and jigsaw!

 

Tune in next week to read about our Dr. Seuss and hygiene escapades!

 

God bless,

Mia

 

Trip Day, Snow Days, and Sick Days

Last week, we had our first fieldtrip in 2014. To finish our unit on animals with a bang we visited the Animal Welfare Society, an animal shelter in West Kennebunk. The Agents had a blast.

 

 

 

As you can see, the cats were as thrilled to see us as we were to see them.

 

The puppy our tourguide introduced us to was much nicer, and let Agent J. and Future-Agent A. (Agent V's little brother) lead him around on the leash while Agent V. took pictures.

 

We walked around the facility a couple of times, looking at all the animals with awe and, in Agent V's case, trepidation.

 The animals.

 

The awe.

 

 The trepidation.

 

Agent V. didn't like the noise in the dog room, and refused to even venture inside until we found a magical solution: noise cancelling headphones. With these he was able to conquer his fear and go forth into the dog room with confidence.

 

So magic.

 

I think their favorite part was seeing the bunnies - no one barking at them or giving them cat-eyed glares there.

 

 Just calm disinterest.

 

Unfortunately, poor Agent M. was out sick for much of the week. We missed her tons and tons! Pastor J.E. came to read to the Agents on Tuesday, and they made her a card. Thanks to Agent M.'s mom for the picture, which will be below just as soon as my phone decides to do its job.

[Agent M.'s photo here]

We also played for a group of local pastors on Tuesday, and they really enjoyed it! Pastor J.E. said he got all kinds of emails saying how great the Agents were.

 

After all that, the week was pretty quiet. We worked and played really hard.

We had a snow day, which was awesome, and then the week got really quiet when Agent J got sick and it was just Agent V. and I holding down the fort.

 

We made do somehow.

 

In library news, we've begun making an absolute mess of things by sorting the books by genres. This process may take longer than cataloging them, although we have a week long break coming up and might be able to knock out a chunk of the project during.

 

So that wraps up this week! The commercial should be on Facebook this evening, and you'll be able to find it via links through this post, last week's post, the website, and on Facebook itself. This upcoming week is both our 100 Days of School party and Valentine's Day, so tune in next Sunday for another exciting post!

God bless,

Mia

National School Choice Week and Agent Shoutouts

Hey, guys! Last week was National School Choice Week, a time when students, parents, teachers, and the community celebrate the decision to support private education and their chosen school. Schools around the country put up posters, held events, and made presentations to get the word out. The foundation that hosts National School Choice Week sent us a ton of decorations, and yellow scarves commemorating the week. We at FMLCS are certainly proud of our school, and we decided to show that pride by wearing our yellow scarves while making a commercial to show online and local churches. The commercial should be finalized by the end of this week, so look for it on our Facebook. For now, here's a picture of the kids in their scarves holding some of the nifty signs we had posted during the week.

 

 

I want to give a couple shoutouts to the Agents today. They sometimes can be a bit...silly, shall we say.

 

The dedication in this picture is astounding.

 

Agent V-in-the-box.

But they can also be kind, caring, and helpful. Agent M. had a fantastic week when it came to being a classroom helper. She was constantly asking her friends if they needed help with their work, if she needed to read them the directions, if she could get them anything - all unprompted. It was a really beautiful thing to watch, and helpful to me as well as the other Agents. Thanks, Agent M.! Keep up the hard work!

 

She also noticed this while we were deeply engrossed in math, and it is too crazy not to include here:

 

"Miss P.! Miss P.! We have that doll!"

*cue Twilight Zone theme song*

 

I also want to congratulate Agent J. on his fantastic tracing. I told him if he did his level best, I'd put it on the blog - and I meant it! Great job, Agent J.!

 

This week we did our line project in Art, taken from the Arts Attack videos I worked with during my time at Pine Tree Academy. The kids had so much fun with it; I don't think I've ever seen them draw different lines and then trace them so studiously. I mean look at them.

So focused.

It was warm enough to go outside several times last week, which hasn't been the case recently. The kids really, really needed it!

As did the staff.

We've made some progress with our library cataloging, slowly but surely. We've got most of the books logged on our Library Thing catalogue, so now we're going back through and grouping them by genre. Eventually all the bins will have signs, and all the books will have stickers to match those signs - this way the students will be able to keep track of where books come from and keep the library tidy themselves. Right now, however...

 

Yeesh.

We made some progress in another area of the room, too! Behold, the Concentration Station:

 

 

This is where the kids go if they're having a hard time focusing with the noise of the main table. The noise cancelling headphones and the smaller area help keep the kids calm and focused if they get over-stimulated or too distracted. The kids have been using the Concentration Station for a while now, mostly on their own - many times they'll stop whatever they're doing and announce they're headed over to the station so they'll focus better - but over the weekend I fixed it up so it looks less like exile and more like an actual station. Hurray for progress!

 

I hope to have a lot more progress to show you next post, especially regarding the book bins. Stay tuned!

God bless,

Mia