Getting Ready for School
Here are some things that most of us teachers are doing these few weeks before school starts, and maybe a few new ideas for your school.
We would call this “joyful stress.” It is stressful because you have to get it done, but it sure is a lot of fun.
It can add quite a bit of help and some “esprit de corps” if you have some of the older students come in to help with your preparations this week. After that, the doors are locked and the suspense builds.
We like to keep what goes on the last week before school begins secret so that the new decorations, games, library books, artwork, and creatures will be a surprise to them on the first day of school.
We like to keep our students excited and wondering about the first day of school. If at all possible, the first day of school should be the “happy” day, and the last day of school should be the “sad” day, don’t you think?
So, here is what we're doing this week:
1. Cleaning off nice, large, school desks we got for $5 each from our local public high school, with help loading and unloading from a few older boys. Public school children must chew a lot of gum.
2. Reorganizing and categorizing our library, with help from some older girls.
3. Cleaning out the fish tanks and adding a new geo (large fish), a large plecostomus (sucky fish) and a naughty crab which keeps trying to escape through the top of the tank where the filter is. Thank you North Waco Tropical Fish for your interesting and weird selection.
The naughty crab
Our ball python is getting ready for school too. We found this shed yesterday. If their environment is kept moist, the skin comes off all in one piece.
