School's A-Waiting

Alright, I'm a terrible blogger.  The summer got away from me!!!  Too much part-ay-ing, or really vacationing!  Florida is the best.  Remind me when I'm rich to move to the gulf.  It is such an inspiration for painting.  (soon I'll post pics of my newest paintings of my summer)

Meanwhile, the countdown is ticking till the beginning of school!  How does 2.5 months just fly by?!  Crazy.  I've been teaching English for a few years now and decided for a change.  This year I'm on to new venues...music.  K3-4th grade to be exact.  While I love music, I've never taught it before.  But I had the lovely task of finding a curriculum and studying it over the past few weeks.  Kodaly wins!  The best part is he was Hungarian and so am I!  I'm hoping his blood is in mine and somewhere things will click and I'll magically get the hang of his ways...

Anywho, been thinking of how to do my music on a cart.  More to come on that one as I tackle it next week when I go back.

But....I would like to share a friends idea on classroom management.  For her when a class does well, they get to put a giant jellybean in a drawn jar on a bulletin board.  The class at the end of the year with the most beans wins a party.  I love positive incentives!!  My twist is I found a picture of a jar of jellybeans online, stretched it to make it fit a page, printed it, cut it out.  I'll color code each jar lid (for my crazy organization, each grade gets a different color) and put the class teacher's name on it, then next week I'll go and laminate it.  I'll then put them all on a metal ring, attach it to my cart, and when a class does well, I'll put a sticker on one of the jellybeans on their class jar.  I may even be so bold as to give extra stickers to extra special classes.

Here is the jellybean jar:  Click and save.

So that's my thought for the day.  Thought I'd share as ideas are beginning to fly again!!