Back to School Back to School

Up until now my blogging has simply chronicled my trip in London, but now I am back to school in Provo and no longer seeing famous sights on a daily basis. Therefore, my blogging material has somewhat dried up. I have decided to refocus my blogging on my job as an after school teacher, and I might occasionally throw in a few of my cooking/baking exploits. I will discuss and share my projects, and when I get desperate possibly beg for ideas on more things to do. So here's the basic description of what I do:

Occupation: Sentinel Academy Instructor, part-time wannabe chef
Classes: Enrichment Reading, Arts & Crafts, Technology Science, Sports, Learning for Life
Grades: 6th (En. Read.), 3rd-6th(Arts, Tech. Science, Sports), 2nd (LFL)

Each post will include a brief description of my lessons of the day, pictures, and a discussion on upcoming lessons (particularly difficult ones). I will also include my favorite moment of the day...watch for this one at the end.

Tuesday (today) is arts & crafts day, and was also my first lesson of the year. I have pretty much a full syllabus for this class from the awesome website I found: http://www.kinderart.com/arthistory/

Since it was our first day I started at the beginning--with cave painting! There is a lesson on the site I use about cave painting, but rather than using dirt and lard as described in the plan I simply used crayons.

We watched a short clip showing pictures in Lascaux caves in France. We then briefly discussed purposes of cave paintings:

• Worship
• Bountiful crops
• Successful hunt
• Etc.

Each child received a piece of construction paper in either brown or grey. Then I explained, "This paper is the right color, but it certainly does not look the right texture of a cave wall." I think the kids were a little confused at first, and then slightly shocked as I quickly crumbled my blank, flat piece of construction paper into a tight ball. The shock didn't last long and soon the whole room was crumbling away, with little Arnold going as far as stamping up and down on his paper with his foot.

Then we simply flattened our papers out, and drew our cave paintings for the next half hour. I was surprised by how good some of them were.

The first day was a success, but the hard club is coming tomorrow. TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE. I know nothing about it yet am expected to teach it for the next year. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

Moment of the Day:

I was told by possibly my most misbehaving student that I was, and I quote, "The best teacher he had ever had." Of course, I strongly suspect this has more to do with my knowledge that fcuk is not a misspelled cuss word and the fact that I have Paper Planes on my iTunes, but I'll take it as a compliment none the less. I have found the difficult students become less difficult when they see you as a friend and not just an authority figure.