Friday Nov. 7

At 5:55am, my alarm went off. I snoozed it. By 6:15 I had the cinnamon rolls in the oven for the kids' breakfast & I was eating cereal. Yawn...today came early!

At 7:00, my mom arrived to help w/ the kids. I had to boogie out the door. You see, today was the day that my school closes annually so that all the teachers can attend the Texas Conference Preschool Teachers Workshop in Longview, TX. Always fun & informative, I was looking forward to it.

We arrived slightly late because of construction, closed streets & general confusion, but we did get there safely. When we entered the building, the keynote speaker had already begun, so we snuck into the balcony of the beautiful Methodist church sanctuary & watched him do some funny magic tricks. I'm not sure what that had to do with preschool children, but we didn't have to watch too long. It was over pretty quick since we got there late!

My first workshop was titled Ideas, Ideas & More Ideas to Handle the Hard to Handle Child. It was taught by Gregg Catalono. LOVED this class. The guy who taught it was silly & funny, which I thought was going to be annoying at first, but turned out to really make the class GREAT. I'm still processing the info from that one. Lots of ideas!!!

The second one I went to was called Sensory Tables & Literature: A Sensorial Connection Between Literacy & Learning. It was taught by Kathy Mitchell Brown. LOVED this one, too! I'm a very hands-on type of learner, so seeing all the sensory table ideas really appealed to me. We did a lot of hands-on stuff to experiment with the ideas she gave us. Loved it!

We had a boxed lunch during our break between morning & afternoon sessions. Afterwards, I went shopping in the vendors room & actually found some Christmas gifts for my kids!! I won't type out what I bought on here, but if you want to see or would just like me to tell ya, email me. (Sometimes Savannah reads my blog!)

After the lunch break, I went to Pee Wee Chefs. I will leave off the teacher's name that led this class because apparently she's well known in the area for her classes that she offers to children & their parents. I was really looking forward to this one because my classes always love to cook. However, unfortunately I was disappointed in this class. The teacher was very soft-spoken and gentle natured, and (in my opinion) quite unprepared. She had 3 tables set up in the room for us to sit at when we came in. Each table was given a recipe to make, then we walked around to see the things that were made at the other table. When we were done looking, we ate our 'creations' & cleaned up. That took all of maybe 20-30 minutes. Each workshop was an hour & 15 minutes long. Um, yeah. That left us a ton of time. She had us play food/cooking-themed games after that. And they were so goofy. Seriously? Cooking charades for adult women who came to get information is not my idea of a good class. While I did enjoy the snack (the things we made!), I didn't get a single thing out of the class. Oh well. They can't all be great!

My last workshop of the day was Developmental Fitness: The Learning Foundation with Vicky Conaway. If you've ever been to a Brain Gym class before, that's essentially what this was. She talked about the exercises you can do to stimulate different parts of the brain, ways to correct behavioral or academic disturbances by movement & motions. Very interesting, even though the first 15-20 minutes went by SLOWLY as she gave all the medical jargon & background to what she was going to discuss. (If you don't know about Brain Gym, I'm sure you can find out more w/ a quick google search.)

Overall, it was a great day with lots of info to absorb & digest over the next few days.

When we got home tonight (about 5:20), I unloaded workshop stuff & immediately piled everyone back into the van to go get supper & then go to the grocery store. By 8:30 I was finally home for the day. :::Yawn::: I'm getting tired now. I guess I should be. It's nearly midnight. Time for bed!