More on the Board: Aaron and Reverence

I brought the boards with me to church in case I came up with a way to use them in our class. We didn't think of a way to use them in class but one of the children found it in my bag and wanted to play with it. I said that he could if we sat by him during sacrament.

That is how I found a place to sit during sacrament. The kids loved it...and that included Aaron...who drew this dinosaur. The boy from our class wanted to name the dinosaur "Ryker" so Aaron spelled it and the kid wrote it on the dinosaur.

Update: Aaron informed me that it wasn't Aaron who drew this dinosaur but rather, the little 5 year old next to him. Aaron just wrote "Ryker" in the corner of the picture.

Pinterest: Dry Erase Board

I found an idea for dry erase boards that you could slip papers into and write on top of. I thought that it was brilliant. They are made of plastic report covers and duct tape. If you leave one side open, anything can slip in there...so I did. I thought that it would be cool to stick different tracing papers in them.

I found a site that makes sheets of the ABC's for practicing letters. I mean...I had to use Photoshop to make it the way that I wanted it...but yeah...the site is still cool. And this is the JPG if you want it.

I finished these pretty quickly but I was scaried to bring them to school. What if the preschoolers hated them? What if they thought that these were dumb?

I was a little nervous today when I put them out to the kids (we almost didn't have time to try them out because the kids went to look at a helicopter...(including Aaron...actually)). Guess what? The kids totally dug it! I was so happy that it wasn't a waste of my time!
At the very least, I thought that the kids would have the back to color on if they hated working on their alphabet.
But no, they sat down and got to work on tracing their letters. It was actually freakishly quiet in the room...till they finished and yelled for teachers to come and look at the work they did.

This made me feel like I was kind of valuable at the preschool. Coming up with ideas and really being part of helping them learn. Love it! This is the best job ever.

Pinterest Date: Hot Springs

I've become addicted to Pinterest and it has really lit a fire under my butt to do fun and/or creative things.

I found an idea to put glow sticks in the bathtub and so I decided that it would be awesome to throw them into the hot springs.

I couldn't get a picture that showed how awesome it really was.
I had glow sticks hanging out in the basement. We've had them for over a year and I got them 15 for $1...and I only used 7 of them...so...it was a pretty good deal.

Even if the water is dirty and gross, I love going. It is a great place to feel warm in the middle of winter so...it is something that I would never give up.

New Goals for New Students (In Two Months)

Toward the end of the year, I start to look back on the year and think of what Aaron and I could have done better all year round with our callings and how we can improve next year.

This is going to be our third year in Primary and I'm pretty excited about it. The funny thing is...Aaron is too. He wasn't super confident when we first got this calling but then again, neither was I.

Working at a preschool and being in a lot of child development classes, has helped me look at what I'm doing even more and how I can be more effective.

This past year we worked harder on:

* Making sure we had opening and closing prayers

* Reading scriptures to the children right out of the Bible and Book of Mormon

Today I started doing things that I wanted to do next year to see how they would work.

* Start with a wiggle song (Not Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam...this induces screaming) that ends with arms folded so that we lead right into having a prayer

* Line leaders are picked while we are walking to the next class. This is a clear incentive to walk reverently because for some reason....children will do ANYTHING to be the line leader. So, if you are really good in the hall this week, next week is your turn to be the line leader. We had 6 kids today and they walked extremely well in the hall.

I'm also going to have a reverence chart for each kid next year. I made one on Photoshop.

They get to put stickers on if they are reverent and if they get 10 in a row, they get a new sheet AND a dollar tree prize. That means that they get the chance at 5 treats during the year...it might just be 4...but yeah...we aren't shelling out a ton of money but each week, the kids get to see that they are making progress toward an "awesome" goal!

Feel free to steal this JPG by clicking on the picture and simply dragging and dropping on your desktop.

First Snow Clean Up

Even though snow was really slow getting here this year, our trees hadn't started changing orange and falling into our yard. All the leaves were still on the trees...which made it very heavy when the snow got dumped onto them.



Our yard was full of fallen branches...so...it all looked really awesome. Nothing makes our home look better.
Aaron started cleaning up the yard pretty quickly. He can't stand it looking bad for too long.
Pippen came out of the house to "help" and by that, he meant that he wanted to stand in the yard and eat ice chunks.
Look at this tough guy.


We're really glad that the roof is brand new and we know that it can stand up to a lot of weight since we took so many layers of shingles off of it. It is so nice to know we are safe inside of our house. But check out the right side of the roof.

I'll zoom in.

Turns out that part of the tree was resting on the house for part of the night since the tree got too heavy. That might be a problem at some point and we wished that when the city came by a couple weeks ago to trim branches, that they would have asked us which ones we thought should go....since there are some that are dangerously close to the house.

One thing that is super awesome about the snow though are the adorable PUPPY SWEATERS!!!

Halloween Trunk or Treat

We had trunk or treat tonight at the church. It was the first one that I've ever been to!

Aaron dressed up as a sexy professor.

Oh wait...no. He always looks like that.
I was an Indian princess...or maybe just a plain Indian. I wasn't TOO dressed up. Don't ask me what I was doing with my arms in this picture...I have no idea.
It was a pretty fun night and a great way to give all of our candy to our favorite little ones (of the children that came). I was a little irritated by the number of adults who brought their kids but didn't pass out candy. I mean, I have ZERO kids and I passed out candy....which is probably why we were the only people without kids there...it is all starting to make sense. This activity wasn't for us.

Oh well. We went and had a good time anyway. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Stake Conference October

This was our second Stake Conference in the passed three months. Last time we got to see Elder Ballard. This time, we got to see President Monson!

Clarise and Geoff came with us because we had them over for the Halloween party. Everyone else stayed home because they were too tired. Which is WEAK because I stayed up till 4 and I went...and Clarise was sick and she did it.

Aaron and I looking happy with our blue eyes. (Do you like the baby in the back photobombing us?)
It was a super amazing meeting! I loved seeing the prophet and especially hearing what he had to say!

He talked about reaching out to people in our community and bringing them back to Christ. I will have to work on that.