Thirty-five. One.

35 Works of Art.
(the last child-peopled 35 days of Kindergarten; God bless them all.)

Installation (or installment) #1. Or #35 if you prefer to count backward. Which I think I do.

The plan: With notes on the realization thereof in red.

1. Welcome back from spring break. Review rules. Hope that this has some effect.
Rules review may have had some minimal effect. One kid went to Disney World over the break. I was very excited about this. Our class still struggles with calling out, which escalates into chatting at volumes so high so as to make the teacher inaudible. The teacher being: me. I do get tired of addressing this. How does one retain one's sanity addressing this again...and again...and again... ?
2. Calendar and Bible time. Bible: Review Easter, talk about the appearances of Jesus to His disciples after resurrection. ("Peace be with you," said He; loving the doubter Thomas; forgiving the unfaithful Peter; fellowship a priority; the beginnings of the Church -- "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you...") How did you celebrate Easter? Sing our latest song -- "It Was a Great Thing." Pray together.
Discussion took too long for singing to take place. But it was good talk. Surprising how many kids said they did nothing to celebrate Easter. General exclamations by all when Thomas put his hands on Jesus' wounds. I was proud of my roly-poly (in speech and body) G. when she turned to the memory verse of 3 weeks ago on the wall behind her and recited it with gusto: "For we know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. Romans 6:6." I tried to bring up limited atonement today. Those God has called into His family are those Christ died for. J.'s closing prayer included "and bless our food." Bless the boy. He's like a fifty-five year old boxer who's just been brought into a church for the first time and is trying to reverence the sacred.
3. Math: telling time. Reviewing parts of a clock. Workbook pages for basic 'o'clock' times. Playing with small demo clocks and giant clock hands and numbers on the carpet.
Surprisingly smooth. Every blessing You pour out, I'll turn back to praise.
4. Phonics: introducing lots of short 'e' words. Game played with the chart of words. Teams have Readers, Artists (to illustrate the word), Rhymers and Sentence-Makers. Work through different words as a team.
A liiiiittle chaotic. Hoping that we can repeat this and have it go much more smoothly now that they know how it works. One team was smooth and smart and open-eared. The other was wacky, didn't listen to each other, all over the place. The talking over my voice and instructions was starting to get to me by this point.
5. Their elective; lunch; free time (help! this needs more structure in order to avoid yelling, violence and chaos. We'll see what happens today. Maybe I'll give them more specific tasks). Story time (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator) and nap. Recess.
The Great Glass Elevator is wacky. Way off from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 60s political commentary (we're in chapter 4), puns that go way over a 5-year-old's head... I'm thinking I may need to hop over some bits in this readaloud. We got through today's chapter, but I may lose 'em if it keeps up this way. I think we all miss the chocolate and the wild machinery. Free time: we made birds by gluing fragments of tissue paper onto self-designed 'bird-shapes.' The normally unartistically-inclined J. got into how the tissue paper loses its color on the white paper when wet. I loved how his eyes gleamed when I told him it looked like he'd found the color of sunshine and captured it on paper. This made me glad.
6. I take the other Kindergarten class today -- art focus this week. Color! Rainbow day. We'll learn the chorus of "Look to the Rainbow", meet Roy G. Biv, and make rainbows with pastels, on mural paper, etc.
Messy. Fine. Didn't get to the song. They talked over me too much. But it's always good to see kids paint. I hope these parents aren't prissy about pastels all over white uniform shirts, etc. Blue paint in one kid's hair, on another's face, and all over several hands.

After school: tutoring one special lad on alphabet and sounds. He has a unique way of looking at the world. Quotes of the day from this dear alien: "I am an artist. I have art power stronger than other people." and "When I was a baby, I was good all day."

Lingering sense: Thankfulness for a day that did not sock me in the face, after a very rough morning, rough getting up, facing situation, fighting fear, inertia and other things. Hopefulness. Desire to not let the day keep talking to me negatively once school's over -- hoping to learn to let it go. Hoping the emotional frustration with being talked over will stay at a low-grade, keeping-it-in-perspective level. 35. There it was. There it is. Committed to the Lord of it. Gone and done,
and the color of sunshine on a very gray and rainy day.