When I was little I used to sing a song all the time..."I'm a little coconut, sitting in a coconut rut..." It garnered me the nickname Amy Coconut (although rumor has it that nickname actually stemmed from the fact that I was slow to grow hair and my head resembled a coconut being covered only in fuzz...whatever). Anyway, I'm in a rut now, but it's a happy rut. My Mondays are all pretty much the same - I rush to grade journals and look at behavior charts from the previous week. I try to get kids back in the groove of school after they've stayed up late all weekend. My week slowly progresses from there until it's Friday and I'm shocked at where the week has gone. School has been stressful, but enjoyable. My kids are frustrating, but overall they are terrific. I have some absolute stars. We do have parent/teacher conferences on Thursday and Friday, so that will be a nice deviation from the norm. I do have a lot of positive news to pass on...(and just a little bit of "needs to improve" news).

My weekends have started to run together, too, since Will has been here for the last few. We sit around, do a little bit of work around the house, then do some more relaxing. We talk about taking advantage of this time, knowing that in a few short months he'll be deployed again, but then I think we realize how nice it is to just sit around together. Yesterday, we spent almost two hours on the phone with Mom and Dad D. Will and I were laying on the couch, they were probably doing the same in Texas, and it was like we were all just sitting around chatting (we all love the speakerphone). It was a nice way to spend an evening. Just relaxing...enjoying each other's company.

So here I am in my rut, starting a new week that will probably look a lot like the last several weeks. The ground is covered in a heavy frost this morning and as usual for a Monday morning, I'm not in any hurry to get out the door. I hope it's warm where you are. I'm eager to get out in the yard, clean up the weeds, and get some new things in the ground - but I think I'll wait until my fingers won't freeze (and neither will the new plants I find). On the upside, it's not raining right now. My windshield wipers will get a break this morning - that is, if I ever get up and get moving. So, happy Monday all. Enjoy your week in or out of your rut (and if it's in, I hope it's a happy rut like mine).

Spring Break? Ha! We are still three weeks from Spring Break. In the middle of those three weeks is the second round of parent conferences. And then, in true brilliance, our state testing starts immediately when we get back from break. Nothing but a rip-roarin' good time up here.

On a much lighter note, Will and I spent the better part of the weekend lounging. We did venture out to an Irish pub on Saturday night with some friends, and lo and behold, there was a reggae band playing. Yep, reggae. Nope, not Irish reggae...just plain reggae. And I'll add that none of the band members were from the island most famous for reggae, unless I'm way off base and reggae is really from the island of Hawaii. But I'm pretty sure it's not. Well, it was an experience to say the least. An experience devoid of green beer, however, which was a minor disappointment...as opposed to the Polynesian reggae band, which falls in the major category.

Today the state is supposed to go green (-er?) for St. Patty's day, but it's raining so I'm definitely not riding my bike to work. That and I don't know where I'd carry my econo-sized box of Lucky Charms for our math lesson...nothing like percents, ratios and decimal conversions with sugary cereal. I promise to recycle the box.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, y'all.

Livin', learnin', and havin' a little fun...

As we are hurtling towards our state standardized test at a rapid pace, I decided we needed to slow down and change things up a bit. We have no mandated curriculum for reading, and the provided curriculum is stale and boxed. So, on Thursday we stretched our brains and our creativity and had a day of silent communication. Our two most recent stories in our textbook have been about the Stone Age and about Louis Braille. Well, both stories demonstrated the ability to communicate ideas without verbalizing them (a total dream for a sixth grade teacher - especially since my class this year talks more than any other class I've ever had). Well, it was rough going at first, but it ended up being so much fun - for the kids, too! They blow me away sometimes with their insights. Let's just say we ended up feeling blessed that we all have our sight, and that we can just record our thoughts and ideas in writing instead of having to draw them primitively!



Now, nose back to the grindstone! We're in the thick of our algebra unit - scary, but so much more fun than I imagined. There's something so comforting about math...when you do it right, it works. Even when you throw letters into the mix. To be quite honest, I didn't know sixth graders learned algebra until about three months ago. However, so far, so good! We'll see how it goes from here...