Giggles

I love my kids.  I do think of them as my children, and I hate it when I have to discipline them.  The first couple of days, I hadn't had them "move their leaf" on our behavior tree.  I thought I'd give them a couple days to warm up.  Well, today I had to have my first student move their leaf.  We were doing something for 90 seconds that required silence; not too much to ask for a second grader.  I had asked them to stop talking twice.  The third time I made the student move their leaf because as I turned around, they were looking right at me and talking to their neighbor.  I cringed as the words, "go move your leaf" came out of my mouth.  I hate doing that!  When your leaf goes to yellow, you have to pay me 2 Rigel Rewards (I know!  Don't you wish you could get a Rigel Reward?? :) so the student gave me 2 of their Rigel Rewards.  The good news is, these kids don't hold a grudge.  At least this one doesn't!  They still talked to me as if nothing had happened, which I was thankful for. 

This afternoon, the kids got to giggling so hard, they had me in stitches!  I love hearing them giggle, and I'll be as crazy as I have to be to get them to giggle.  The school is doing some construction around campus, and almost all of it seems to be outside my room and the windows in my room.  It's a fine line between, Do I open the window because it's warm and bear the noise? or leave the window closed and sweat; still hearing a little noise?  Today I had the windows open, but it didn't matter.  The kids had come back from PE class and were completely worn out.  We had about 15 minutes before a guest was coming to the class, so I took that opportunity to read them a story while they sat at their seats.  You have to know that in our classroom, I make the kids turn on their "listening ears" before we start class in the morning.  It's my goofy way of reminding the kids that I shouldn't have to repeat myself 12 times, that they need to be listening.  So, as I'm reading them the story, we hear this horrible noise coming from the outside wall in my room.  It seriously sounded like the wall was going to crumble!  It sounded louder than a jackhammer, but I couldn't tell you exactly what it was.  I told the kids, "Quick, turn off your listening ears!"  They grab the top part of their ears and make the *click click* sound.  It stops after about 20  seconds so I say, "Turn your listening ears back on!"  AS SOON AS I SAID THIS, the noise started again.  This scenario repeated itself two more times, and kids were just dying that the noise would start again after I told them to turn their listening ears back on!  I even waited in different time increments, and it didn't matter.  The kids were laughing so hard, we were all in tears by the end!

It's times like this that I hope the kids remember about me and about second grade...not the fact that they had to move their leaf earlier in the day...