Caught Between The Scylla And Charybdis

A little Sting is a good way to start the day...

Lots more library lesson plans to do today.  I have planning mostly done for the older kids for an extended unit on mythology, and completely done for the little ones who will be learning basics like ABC order and library procedures and behavior, in and around getting loads of fun story time reading from me.  (Did I mention that I have dug up a pretty pink sparkly crown to wear for story time?  Here's hoping it doesn't pop off my wig...)

Today's work will be to firm up the first nine weeks lesson plans for the kids in the middle.  Hopefully, by the end of today, I'll have the entire first nine weeks mapped out well and ready to go.

Sometime this week, I promise to take some pictures of how I have redone my lesson plan binders and to put up a whole slew of ideas for other folks to use if they need them. 

The way that I have done my planning this year allows me to easily move things around week to week if the kids need an extended lesson on a particular topic. 

Am trying to make certain that we cover a lot of ground so that all of my curriculum requirements are met.  But I am not willing to sacrifice comprehension for speed, so I've built in the ability to go over the same ground if I need to do so by using interchangeable notebook pages that I can move around as needed to reinforce areas where I see that the kids need that.

The awesome part of doing things this way is that I will have a complete set of lesson plans for the year by the end of this, which I can then tweak as I go in the years to come.  It is a lot of work at the front end, but that is going to pay off in the best way as I move forward.

So far, I am really loving this set-up.  Only time will tell in the teaching on how it works for the long haul, though.


In any case, I will be buried knee-deep in lesson planning today (along with assorted cleaning and laundry and such, because that is never, ever done, is it?), to get things ready to go for the start of the school year.  Come Monday morning, it will be all about getting my library ready to go.  My shelves are horribly dusty, and my books need to be straightened and reshelved properly -- I got no reshelving or weeding done at the end of last year because of chemo, and radiation is going to slow me down at the start of this one.  Ugh.

It is going to be a flat out sprint for that, though, because I'm going to get interrupted every day for radiation treatments and then have to come back and work some more afterward.

Say it with me:  it is what it is, and it will all work out somehow. 

Honestly, I am just so glad to have something to think about that is not cancer-related that I do not even care how dusty and tired I am going to be by the end of this week.

(YouTube -- The Police singing "Wrapped Around Your Finger."  Hadn't seen this video in ages, from back in the MTV golden years.)