Aaron and I in DC

So, as many of you know, my boyfriend Aaron came out to visit me for Thanksgiving (did I mention I have the best boyfriend on the planet?). We had an amazing time. An AMAZING time!

We spent our Thanksgiving together cooking ALL DAY, watching BBC documentaries, funny holiday movies and making each other laugh. My favorite thing we made that day, a double decker pumpkin cheesecake. Yes it was as amazing as it sounds.

The next day we went sight seeing. We hit up Arlington Cemetery and watched the changing of the guard and the wreathe ceremony. Aaron and I also discovered the grave of Abraham Lincolns son, Robert Todd Lincoln, as well as one of my relatives headstones. From there we decided to walk across the Potomac River to get to the monuments (yes I said walk, we walked from Arlington Cemetery to the National Mall). It was really beautiful, than we went and saw all the monuments (Washington, Lincoln, World War II, Vietnam, Korean War, White House, National Christmas Tree). We calculated it later on, we walked about 10 miles that day! When we got home I was exhausted, we took a quick nap and than made home made pizza for dinner and watched Emperors New groove.

The next day was our day of museums:) We hit up the Library of Congress, toured the Capitol Building, went through the Air and Space Museum, saw the Natural History Museum, and than dropped by the American History Museum. My favorite part of this day was watching Aaron in the Air and Space Museum. I had no idea how fascinated he was with flight as a kid, and even now. He knew what everything was in that museum without reading the tags. He seriously had a permagrin the entire time, I used a bunch of the stuff he taught me about it all in a lesson the following week with my kids. When we finally arrived home at the end of the day, changed and got ready to out into the city. We went out to Serendipity (it's a famous restaurant in Washington DC, if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about), hit up a bookstore and walked around the city streets.

Sunday and Monday were pretty relaxed, I introduced Aaron to quite a few people at church, we cooked pumpkin rolls, played scrabble and a little bit of Nintendo. The weekend was perfect:) I'm so glad he came and I can't wait to see him in 3 weeks!!!

Thanksgiving: My Kids CAN READ!

Well ladies and gents the life of a teacher moves on. The month of November was fun, filled with lots of transportation (that's the theme for our 2nd unit), turkeys, and gratitude. We had a huge thanksgiving feast for the parents and kids to share in, they made Native American hats and traced their hands to make turkeys. We learned what it was to be thankful and each of the kids shared. The items they were grateful for ranged from siblings and food to (my favorite quote) "I'm thankful my mom takes me to target":)

The week after Thanksgiving, I found out something- my kids can READ!! That's right my 5 year old baby kindergartners are little baby geniuses and I'm so proud of them. They've grown SO MUCH! One of my sweet girls who speaks very little English (and rarely says anything) read- "You can go on a boat". She pointed to each word and READ IT! (except she said in instead of on) She's AMAZING! I'm so proud of the progress they're making, everything's clicking and because of these results I revamped my reading groups (my highest group is going to try reading at a C level this next week! That's where they're supposed to be by the end of the year!). My two shy kids have finally started talking in sentences,  my three kids who say random things (For example, ask what does the word b-b-b-boat start with? One of these kids would say, "My mom went to the store and we saw a boat and I wanted to go on it but...") have clued in and started answering my questions. The classroom is coming together guys, it only took till the end of November but everything's clicking and things are moving.

Amusing Anecdote:

So, you know my crazy kid? The one who has beat me up and used to have fits in the classroom, notice I said USED to. His fits have decreased significantly, and this past week he had ZERO! None. Nada. Zip. His fits usually occur in writing, because his fine motor skills are behind a lot of the other kids and he feels like he's not good at it, but this week he wrote a sentence almost EVERY SINGLE DAY! The day we did underwater transportation I showed the students a clip of the Great Reef in Australia, and than we all pretended we were traveling in a submarine. They each got their own submarine and were supposed to write a sentence about something they saw. This crazy kid of mine wrote "I sow a sc!" (I saw a shark). He wrote I SAW A SHARK! The kids a genius. I literally picked him up and spun him in a circle because I was so proud.