If I love words, does that make me a nerd?

Am I the only one that thinks it is amazing that I can take the word OWL and turn it into LOW? Or the fact that if I mix my words around enough, I can make the word CHECK-IN from CHICKEN? All of the possibilities are endless! Currently in my 1st grade class we are doing a Making Words activity where I give them a set of scrambled leters and they try to make as many words as they can. Every set of scrambled letters ends up making a mystery word using all of the letters. They are so proud of themselves when they figure it out....and I am left standing with my jaw open at how impressed I am!

So for those of you reading this, here is your challenge for the day:

D C T R E O A E

If you can figure out the mystery word, put it in a comment!

Experimenting with Smile Box :)

Make a Smilebox recipe

Working out...Chinese style.

Early in the morning the other day, Dave and I finally decided to capture the true joy of working out in China. No need to pay any money for a gym, just go to the nearest park (or public area for that matter) and you are bound to find this "exercise entertainment". When we first came in the summer, it felt as though the entire population of Shenyang over 50 years old was in this park at 5:30am doing the splits, kung fu with machetes, and kicking around bean bags.

Now at around 7:00am, you can tell that the bitter cold has kept away most of the crowds to only a dedicated few.


Oh what fun we had acting like little kids....stay tuned for more 5 year old adventures :)

The BIG move!

So it happened. The big move has come and gone, and the progress toward a fresh start once again is just beginning. It is late at night, and both my body and my brain hurt from lifting and brainstorming where things should go. I had not realized how difficult it would be to lead a team that is asking you where to put things, when you haven't a clue where you want to put it yet! There was a lot of "that sounds great", or "whatever you think", or even "I don't care!" coming from my end. Hopefully they were seeing my smile underneath all of the commands :) Here are a few pictures from the pack up and moving out process.

In the new room (formerly the 5th grade)

As you can see, I have more "width" to this classroom which allows me to actually have a carpet below my whiteboard! Yay! I can actually have them closer to me when I teach. Sorry, I sound like such a nerd....but it is still exciting.

Dave also moved classrooms - he is not longer on the same floor as me which is sad, but he is loving his new "spacious" classroom. He is so optimistic about this whole thing...he secretly inspires me to be positive in all thing.

Now that we have off for the next two weeks, I will be planning on coming back in to my classroom and fixing things up...more pictures will be posted with the final touches!