September 15, 2016
What it's like to get 20 six-year olds to line up without breaking the room or themselves:



Yep, not gonna lie.  I do this.  I start out all cheerful and then 10 minutes later when Johnny still won't put down his glue stick and Suzie will not stop licking the table my voice changes.  My personality switches.  And sweet Mary Poppins morphs into the "we're not playin'" teacher voice.  

I mostly do this because I like my schedule.  I have it down to the minute and when I have not allocated an extra 5 minutes for table licking, it drives me up the wall.  I can feel myself tensing up when I know that because it's taking an extra 10 minutes to transition, we're not going to get to that amazing activity that I spent 30 minutes searching for and an hour copying and cutting.  

I'm really trying hard this year to abide by 3 words:  Let. It. Go (sing, Idina, sing).  These kiddos are 6 years old.  They are amazingly weird little creatures who are just acting like kids and who really just need time to grow and learn.  Instead of letting myself get so stressed about what the kids are doing, I've tried to just let the schedule go at times and take that time to practice whatever is going wrong.  If the kids are not lining up quietly, then they sit down and we try again.  Calmly.  Sanely.  And we keep doing it until it's right.  

It's easy to start thinking about all the things we have to accomplish with these kids before May and when we're taking extra time to practice routines like lining up, it can seem a bit overwhelming.  But I know that more will get done in the long run if I just take the time now to get it right.  So as far as that cute Pinterest activity that I wanted to do for my social studies lesson? Let it go.  Or I could always just whip out my Batman voice.