The One About Valentine's Day

Hey!

Ok, so I know by now Valentine's Day is a memory.  But I wanted to recap my day.  As you know I was off the day before that with Stella.  Luckily Amy took Thursday and I headed to work and got to celebrate Valentine's Day with my kiddos.  Poor Amy though had to miss her first Valentine's Day with her kiddos and stay with Stella.  But she got to celebrate Friday when I stayed home since I had the day off.  Anywho.

So, not only was it Valentine's Day, but it was also our Friday since we didn't have school on Friday for staff development.  Plus it was the day before a 4-day weekend.  I was geared up for all kinds of crazy antics and wild behavior from my kiddos.  I had, once again, missed a day.  It wasn't looking good for me.

But, I put on my heart antennae (see above) and braced myself.  But I was pleasantly surprised.  My kiddos were angels, or cupids as it were.  They'd missed me.  I'm not going to toot my own horn or anything (TOOT TOOT) but there is a cute story.  One of my kiddos came into the classroom with his eyes covered chanting, "Please be Mr. Drosche. Please be Mr. Drosche."  When he saw that I was, in fact, back he yelled, "YES!" and raced to give me a hug.  Awesome huh?  :)  So the day went off without a hitch.  

Sadly, as you may have guessed from the previous post, I had to forgo some of my plans and fun thematic things.  My apologies to Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, and a full-on Valentine's Day.  We'll meet again next year.  So, I scrapped some things and we did Valentine's Day activities.  I also took some of the time the kiddos were working on their crafts to sort through and organize absent work and the general disarray of a classroom when a Sub is present.  

But it was a great day!  The icing on the cupcake was the party at the end of the day, after a Pep Rally.  The kids were amazing.  We watched A Charlie Brown Valentine (thanks Netflix for streaming ALL of the Charlie Brown movies, what up!) ate party food, and exchanged valentines.  Peacefully.  Without anyone running around.  No screaming.  No sugar-induced chaos.  It was heaven I tell you, heaven.  Ahhhhh.

So, all in all it was a great day.  It was also the first day in 11, yes 11, school days that all of my kiddos and I were present.  Can you believe that?  For 11 days straight at least one or two kiddos were absent, sometimes with me out to boot!  I hope the illnesses have finally left my classroom for good because I've had about all I can take.  Yuck!

So, finally I'll leave you with some pictures of the cute craftivities we did for Valentine's Day.  The first one is from Cara Carroll's (she is awesome, follow her here) Be Swine (A Valentine Craftivity).  It's free y'all, get it here!  Awesome!  Now, we didn't have time to do all of the activities but I definitely will next year.  This year we did the writing part and they turned out great!  The other pictures show our Love Bug Glyphs.  This is something I made for Valentine's Day and you can get it here.  I love gyphs (a topic for another post) and this one was super fun and easy.  The kids loved it and they made for great decorations for Valentine's Day!  I need to think of a St. Patrick's Day one now!

How did your Valentine's Day go?  Peacefully?  Too much sugar?  What was your favorite craft or activity?  I hope you had an awesome time and are ready for Presidents' Day!

Thanks for hopping by!  :)

Justin Bieber.  HA!  Apparently she's got big plans for him!

Braeden's.  I texted Amy this picture and he melted her heart!

All of our Valenswines!

Even pets can get some love this time of year!

She is a great friend!

Sibling love!

Heart-shaped lips on this one!

Cute!

Heart-shaped eyes.  They really got into the theme!

All of our love bugs hanging out together.

The One About Shuffling

Shuffling.  I'm not talking cards here friends.  Plans.  As in I'm out again with a sick kid, this time Stella, and am once again shuffling plans.  There were several things I had to move from last week to this week only to miss out on them again.  Oh well, when parenthood calls you have to answer.

This week was already gearing up to be super busy before my unplanned absence.  To begin with it is a 4-day week, we have Friday off, followed by a 4-day weekend and another 4-day week next week with Monday off as well.  Both days are for training/professional development reasons.  So I was already trying to cram 5 days into 4.  Throw Chinese New Year, Lincoln's Birthday, Mardi Gras, and Valentine's Day into the mix and it was a recipe for disaster.  Not to mention the fact that we are still studying Groundhog Day.  Looking back, I don't know how I thought I would be able to include everything.  I mean, Lincoln can be pushed to next week with the rest of my Presidents Day stuff (sorry Abe).  But Chinese New Year?  Mardi Gras?  What about the books I was going to read?  The dragon we were going to make and dance around the room?  The masks we were going to make and wear as I threw beads to the kids?  Man, I had some fun learning planned. 

Oh well.  I'll be back in tomorrow so we will see what that brings.  Not much though.  I'll have to struggle to catch up on what I missed, add in Valentine's Day fun, a Pep Rally, and a party!  Yikes!  That just means that dragons and masks may have to be postponed until next week?  Or, gasp, put off for this year?  Yikes?  What would you do?  What do you do when this kind of thing happens in your classroom?  Postpone even though you've missed the best window of opportunity?  Put it off until next year altogether and call it a wash?  Hmmm.  I guess I'll just have to think it over.  

Speaking of these days, what do you do?  How do you celebrate?  I don't go all out like I do for other things.  It's more discussion-based and we read some books and have a fun craft.  More like a mini thematic study rather than an entire unit.  

So tomorrow is Valentine's Day!  We didn't go crazy this year.  With last week being so busy and my absence for 2 days we just didn't have a ton of time.  Plus on top of that the flu and a fever virus have been running through my classroom.  I've had so many kiddos out the past 2 weeks.  Some for a while and some here and there.  Makes it hard to do too much and at times I feel like I'm wading in make-up work.  One fun thing we did do on Monday was a cute Love Bug Glyph I made.  It worked out perfectly because we had some storms which meant, ugh, no recess.  Fear not!  I was ready to go with this fun little craftivity.  I love glyphs.  It's like the lovechild of a graph and a craft.  I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for so I made my own and the kiddos adored it!  You can find it at my TPT store here.  I'll have to get some pictures of the finished products and post them tomorrow.  They turned out great!  Tomorrow we'll probably make cards and hearts.  There won't be to much time for anything else with our busy schedule.  We didn't get around to decorating bags or anything for our valentines either.  Yikes!  I feel like a horrible teacher now.  But it has been crazy!

Well, speaking of valentines I should probably take advantage of Stella's nap and get mine done for the kiddos, Stella's as well.  The boys will be addressing theirs tonight and that is always fun!  Well, I hope your week has been a bit calmer than mine and you are finding time to include everything you'd like, be it curricular or fun enrichment!  

Thanks for hopping by!  :)