Another day! Subbing Second-graders today...

I'm off to substitute teach second-graders today. Along with subbing music and drama, subbing second-graders is my next favorite thing to do! They are at the age where they don't complain so often about each other and they're excited about learning. They're more independent and eager to please, too. I subbed drama at one elementary school last week. The kids in one class were especially misbehaved, but I had fun anyway. I watched as the older kids used a box of props to do improv., and I led a younger group in acting out a story (They were fantastic!). I had one class try a game called "The Liars Club" where three kids were sent away from the group to share a mutual experience (their Thanksgiving, for instance). Then the group had to choose one person's story to try to pass off as their own when they returned to the group. The first time I subbed drama for these kids, we acted out a bus. Each child had to climb onto the bus in character (as an old person, an animal, or in some other type of character). The kids enjoyed that a lot. It's good for kids to learn drama, because it enhances creativity and it teaches them how to focus. I love subbing music most of all, though. How hard is it to have a bad day when you get to sing? Usually, I don't get to teach the kids how to read notes, though. I'm assigned to read a story, show a video, or play games with the kids. When I have my choice of games, I have the kids play Music Ball, My Gold House Key, Conductor, Freeze Dance, Concentration, or Musical Staff Bean Bag Toss. My knowledge of composers and musical genres isn't all that good, but I've been known to plumb the school library before classes start to find supportive material to use. The older kids showed me a new game the other day. Now I just have to scrape through my sub bag to find the piece of paper on which I wrote the directions for it...

Good memories I have from my childhood: looking for books at the school bookfair (My favorite book was "Up the Road Slowly"), swinging on my swing (I felt like my feet could touch the sky! I sang while I swung, too.), cutting out "people" from the comics and having them interact with each other, riding my bike and feeling the wind rushing through my hair (Of course, I advise my own kids to wear helmets - as my husband and I now do), lying under our cherry tree with friends (like Tim, a kid I knew when I was little), climbing in our apple tree, playing jacks (yes, with the old metal jacks...lol), getting my Chatty Cathy and Thumbelina dolls, going to Brownie meetings, visiting my grandparents at their place on the Rappahannock River and playing croquet, enjoying poetry with my other grandmother, and going rock hunting with my mom. I loved my dad, too, but I can't remember many fun times with him. He was a tortured soul - bipolar and alcoholic. It took me a long time to realize the difference between someone saying "I love you" and somebody showing it. I feel bad for kids in similar situations to the one I was in while I was growing up.

Things I love today: All kinds of animals. We have two hamsters. Our littlest one (a back dwarf hamster with bits of white) is our oldest hamster, amazingly enough. He has finally gotten to the point where he'll allow me to pick him up and nuzzle him a bit. It's been a long time coming! Sometimes I'll ask him for a kiss and he'll slightly nip at my knuckle (I'm still not brave enough to offer my finger to him!). He's adorable. Our other hamster is a regular-sized one. He is a golden color, and squirmy. Somehow, though, he'll nestle comfortably in my daughter's arm - but not for too long. :-) Our hamsters appear to be on different time-tables. While the regular-sized one sleeps during the day, the smaller one sleeps at night (I think). I'm hopeless when it comes to talking to animals, though. When I subbed a classroom with tadpoles in it the other day, I "talked" to the tadpoles when nobody was around. Hmmm... I love seeing birds appear in our backyard. I'll always say "hello" to them. My favorite pets are cats (I had cats - and dogs - for pets while growing up), but my husband and son are allergic to them. We wouldn't even have hamsters if I hadn't slipped in some gerbils a long time ago when the kids were smaller (and then the gerbils mated and...well, that's another story).

I call my mother the animal-whisperer. She is good with all types of animals. She even tamed a wild fox who visited the backyard of her home in Florida! (Of course, I wouldn't recommend this.) She's tamed a few feral cats, too. One now lives indoors with her and is very affectionate. We had cats and dogs for pets when I was a child - beautiful tabby cats. One, the silver tabby, was the sweetest thing. I imagined she was my grandmother - come back to life in another form to look over me. She was so gentle. She even mothered a runt kitten my mom brought home. I tried to adopt and tame a wild country cat once. It didn't work very well. He had a pretty bad attitude. Of course, some of that could have been because I named him "Sir Pork Chops and Bacon Grease." (He looked like a little pig when we got him...or so I always said.) I suspect the real reason for his bad attitude, though, was the fact that he had a tumor. Let's see...we had one cat with an even worse disposition...and another cat that pee'd in the toilet! It's funny. My mom thought my brother was using the bathroom and forgot to close the door. When she called to him and realized he wasn't in there, she took a look and saw the cat! One mentally-ill neighbor stole our cat for awhile. That was pretty sad. I'm not as fond of dogs, although I loved the dogs we had when I was little. Sometimes I think I might do more walking if I had a dog to accompany me. I have to get more exercise. The pounds really *do* creep on fast as we age.

My kids are sick today - stomach virus of some kind - so my husband is going to stay home from work to be with them. They're teens, so they're old enough to stay on their own, but my son was vomiting last night and I told my husband I'm concerned about him being alone today. I know I'll feel much better at work, knowing that my husband is looking out for the kids. In fact, my husband said that *his* stomach isn't feeling all that great either. I hope I don't catch this thing...

My favorite type of music...I love musicals. If I had the money to attend musicals (Broadway, off-broadway, local...), I'd go in a heartbeat. I love the music from Phantom of the Opera, and I sometimes listen to a Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers cd while driving in my car. I've always loved Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, and I liked Doris Day a lot, too. Julie Andrews, of course, has a phenomenal voice, and I was so thrilled to see her singing again (even though I know her voice will never be the same) in the Princess Diaries movies. I sang in chorus, choir, Madrigals, and some musicals in high school (and a select group in Jr. High), and then later with a local community group. It was so much fun. Then - one day - I just got tired of performing and stopped. My daughter (who inherited my voice) and I sang together for my a wedding anniversary celebration for my parents-in-law, though. I'm back to trying to find a voice teacher for my daughter again, too. Like I did from the time I was a little girl, she has a lovely soprano voice. Unlike me, she is a crackerjack at math. My son is good at science - also unlike me. My son is good with English - like me - but he doesn't care much for it. My daugher says that my son has a nice singing voice, too...but he won't sing for me. He's at that teenage stage where most of his replies are grunts. :-) How was school today? Uhhh. What did you do? Uhhh. Who's on your x-box earpiece? Uhhh. Well, usually he'll tell us who he is talking to online, but he guards his cellphone directory with his life. lol

We just upgraded our cell phones. My son and I got Chocolate phones, and my daughter got an enV phone. Of course, she has text-messaging and my son and I don't. I'm not sure the Chocolate phone was such a great buy. I've read some reviews online that indicate the screen sometimes suddenly goes blank. I'm still trying to figure out how to load music onto my phone. My son managed to put songs onto his phone, but he bought most of his songs from itunes. Most of the songs on my computer are the ones I downloaded from cds I own. I'd *love* to play games on my phone, but I'm not willing to pay for air time. We're trying to stay away from accessing the internet via the phones, too. In short, I guess I'll still end up using my phone mostly for emergencies - and to check the date. Whoop-de-doo... Well, we have to cut costs somewhere... I have an ipod, but I seldom get around to charging it, so most of my time listening to music is in the car.

If you belong to a coffee group and you haven't yet read and replied to my post about it, please do so. Thanks!