Friday, March 21, 2014

Haikus, continued . . .

Here a few more that were turned in today . . . .

The Great Haiku
I love my mommy
She smells like something funny
I love my mommy

The Earth
At night it's aglow
I do not like the bus stop
My life is random

Earth
I removed the earth
The earth was invisible
The earth was aglow

My Sister is Mean
My sister is mean
I'm always starving to death
I'm starving right now!

Tied
Balloons are aglow
They are tied down to the ground
Balloons are beautiful

(Save the best for last . . .)

Winter
Winter is unfair
I can't play outside with friends
Go away winter!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

I usually post on Facebook, but this was just too lengthy to post there.  Our third grade spelling curriculum has a page where students learn about haikus and get to write one.  They were supposed to try to use some spelling words, so that will explain the abundance of words with prefixes! Here are some of their inspirations (the first few have some extra syllables, but I just had to share!):

I Hate Math
Math is really bad
Preschool is for little kids
I hate math really bad

My Sister is Lazy, Very Lazy
She is very inactive
Her chores are always incomplete
I do not like her
(Side note - this student actually likes his sister - she's a sweetheart!)

School
Preschool is downstairs
Miss Ramey is very nice
I do not eat pie

She is Shy
She is inactive
The girl is unspoken now
She's unthinkable!

Balloons
Balloons are aglow
Balloons are able to fly
Balloons cannot fly

Preview of Frozen
Frozen is awesome
I like the movie Frozen
Icicle snowflake

Life is Bad
I don't like my life
My whole life is incomplete
It stinks really bad
(Side note - this student is not depressed -  he was given the word incomplete and just went with it!)

The Earth is Aglow
It is very bright
I am very bright in school
My hair is aglow

Unicorns
Unicorns are cool
Unicorn's horns are aglow
Unicorns like earth

Dogs
Dogs bark very loud
They are very furry too
Be careful, they bite!

And my personal favorite . . . .

You're always incorrect
Math is incorrect
Seven plus two equals five
That is incorrect





Sunday, November 4, 2012

My new school

Bible Center School is where I am now teaching

Long time . . . you know the drill

I'm teaching again!!  More to come . . .

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Time . . . and sadness . . . and JOY!!!! :)

So I know it's been way too long. I announce this is the last time I will say that. I realize that it may be a very long time before I post again, but if it is, I don't want every post on this page to begin with, "So I know it's been way too long . . ." :)

That was the time. The sadness comes with the subject of my last post. Sadly, the iPod has disappeared. It served me well for just about 2 years, but it fell out of my bag either in my driveway as I was headed to my car (on trash day . . .) or between my car and school . . .

Which is where the JOY comes in!!!!! I am back in the teaching game!! I didn't feel right posting on a teaching blog when I wasn't actually teaching, but since the school year started, I haven't had much time to really think about it!!

I am teaching 3rd grade again, still at a Christian school. I am back at the same school where I completed my student teaching in 2005 (was it that long ago??) I am no longer counting the days to 30, I have reached and surpassed that goal to reach the magnificent age of 31!!

I'm going to keep this short so I don't bore the people who don't read this. I'll leave with one quick story from my class this year.

The school's penmanship curriculum begins with print, then moves to cursive in third grade. Because they are just learning, most of what I write on the board is in print. If I write something that is optional to copy, I try to write it, rather than print it. I did this one day and a student said:

"Can you write that in microsoft?"

I looked at him with a puzzled expression for a minute, then realized what he meant. The other students quickly responded:

"It's manuscript, not microsoft!" :)

Saturday, December 5, 2009

trying to get back into it!

I know I haven't blogged in a couple weeks, and it was MUCH longer before that. I really need to just get in the habit of putting something up, even if it's just to say "I don't know what to write!"

I guess I'll have some more exciting stuff coming up -- I'm going to go visit my sister next week!!!

So what have I done in the past 2 1/2 weeks?? I'm glad you asked! I really haven't done much . . . .we DID go "Black Friday" shopping, though! I FINALLY GOT MY IPOD TOUCH!! I'm SO addicted to it now!




It's a thing of beauty!!

Also, I woke up to this!!




Again, a thing of beauty! I figure it's about time we got some snow!! I think I need to look for schools farther north, or at least somewhere that gets lots of snow!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

364

That's how many days there are until I'm 30. It's kind of depressing, but kind of not . . .

So, what does a girl do the weekend before she turns 29??

MAKE APPLEBUTTER!!!!! :)

My family has made applebutter consistently since I can remember. When we used our 35-gallon kettle, we would make it every year or every other year. Since we've started using my Uncle Steve's 50-gallon kettle, we've had to make it less often. The last time we made it was in 2003 and we had about 10 people helping. This year we had to postpone it a day because of the rain, so we were down to me and my parents with a few people stopping by for a couple hours at a time to help out. If you've never been around for applebutter making, let me give a run-down of the process.

First you have to get a LOT of apples (12 bushels this year). I don't have pictures of that because it's not that exciting and Dad and my brother, Kaleb, went to get them after dark.

Next, starts the peeling. I have a video, but I'm not sure it will work, so I have a picture of me at the peeler, too.









You end up with a bucket of peeled apples that looks likes this.





Next you cut the apples into quarters and cut out the seed pit or "cutthroat" as a lady in our church said she heard it called. We call this part "snitting" :) We then rinse, drain, and bag the apples and put them in the freezer, fridge, or outside on the deck in boxes if it's cold enough! This goes on for 3 or 4 days before the boiling day.


On the morning of applebutter making, my dad sets the kettle stand up on bricks in the driveway and starts a fire. After it's going pretty good, he'll set the 50-gallon kettle in the stand.



Here's the kettle we used.




(oh, dad cleans it the night before -- this picture is actually after the applebutter was done on Saturday night) Dad started the fire around 6:15 am.
After the kettle is on, we put about a gallon and a half of water in the kettle and wait a little bit until it has heated up. Once it was heated, we added apples. Here's the kettle after there were enough apples to have to start stirring. We started adding apples about 7:30 am.






Once you start stirring, you have to keep stirring until it's done or it will stick to the bottom and burn.

Some of the stirrers were:

My mom




My aunt:





My cousin:



and me!





My dad obviously stirred the most, but for some reason we don't have a picture of him stirring. Some friends from my church came out and were a BIG help for a couple of hours, but I didn't ask if I could post their pictures. You'll just have to use your imagination!!


We started adding new apples every 20-30 minutes until we used all our apples. (the entire 12 bushels plus the 36 bags we found in the freezer.) When it was half-full, we added pennies to add some friction to the bottom and keep it from sticking. We added the last apples at 1:30 pm.





After the apples were all in, we kept stirring until it had cooked down to a thick applesauce. (about 4:00 pm.) This was about the time my arms started to get REALLY sore. I don't think my arms have EVER been that sore. My dad usually has more help stirring than just me, so I wasn't used to helping him quite THIS much! (and we haven't made it since I was 23!)




After all the apples have cooked down, we added about 65 pounds of sugar and let it cook for another 2 hours. At about 6pm, we added the spices (oil of cinnamon and oil of cloves) until it was just right.







By this time, my arms were completely dead and I had already taken 3 ibuprofen and a muscle relaxer and neither had touched the pain. Mom finally had the GENIUS idea of using a mentholated muscle rub to help relax my arm muscles.

By this time, my aunt was here to help take it up (aka put it in jars). I would stir while dad dipped it into an enamel pan and take it inside. There, my mom and aunt were ladling it into jars and sealing them. We eventually got into a routine where I would stir, dad would dip it and take it inside, he would come take the stirrer from me, I would go inside to help fill jars, then I would take the pan back outside so he could fill it again. We got into a pretty good routine and had everything in jars by about 7:30 or 8:00 pm. Then all we had to do was clean up! Everything was cleaned up by about 9:30 when everyone was so tired, we ended up eating cereal for supper! When all was said and done, we had 126 quarts of applebutter!




(Sorry this picture is sideways -- I forgot to rotate it before I loaded it and don't want to have to re-load it!)




So that's a day in the life of applebutter making. If anyone wants some, just let us know -- we have plenty!! :)