Darr Family Blog – Page 24 – The place to follow the Darr Family

Mad Dash To The End

I thought things were busy before…but the last few weeks of school are proving to be craaaaaaaazy busy. There are projects, fun activities to plan, testing to finish, data entry, grades, class parties, awards ceremonies…I better stop before I start to hyperventilate, haha. I’m trying to think of what we did last week, but I’m having trouble properly formulating my thoughts. I think I’ll just caption my pictures and get a summary that way. 😉

Paul made a cover to sit on top of our stove. This is before it was stained…

…and this is after. He made it from poplar and the grain is absolutely beautiftul.

I really like the handles as well. Texas stars for the win!

I think this picture is from…Wednesday. I had drawn the piranha plant with the word “test” to give my students a fun graphic for “chomping” the “test” (they finished up STAAR on Tuesday), but I didn’t want to erase it (I was proud of it!), so I turned it into a school days left count down. It doesn’t count weekends, but still…it’s hard to believe that my time with my kiddos has gone so fast!

Abigail is a child who sometimes feels like she isn’t heard or seen. Maybe it’s because she’s the youngest, or maybe it’s because I’m working full-time, or maybe it’s because she sometimes has a hard time expressing what she wants, but when she feels overwhelmed, she tends to have meltdowns (especially at school when there is so much going on and it’s already a bit of a stimulus-overload to begin with). Last week, she had three days in a row with no meltdowns, so I took that kid out for frozen yogurt. We can do hard things and be seen. I’m going to keep trying to reward the positive and maybe we’ll have less of the negative.

Another countdown day: “‘M’ is for mustache”. She didn’t want me to draw a mustache on her. She wanted a mustache on a stick (a Luigi from Super Mario Bros. mustache, to be exact). Luckily I had coffee stirrer sticks and foam left over from some class projects.

So, I was attempting to take a picture of one of my newer shirts…

…and this bundle of awesome came bouncing up (not a figure of speech…she bounces. a lot.) asking to be in the picture. Who could say no to that?! Not me, that’s for sure.

Mother’s Day 2023: The little “What I Love About Mom” book is one with fill-in-the-banks and Joseph wrote down his and Abigail’s answers. My heart! There was also flowers, chocolate, chocolate-covered strawberries, a coloring book (it really is a stress-reliever, y’all), and…

…this necklace. It has their names and their birthstone colors.

I had one of my favorite breakfasts this morning: Greek yogurt with berries and granola. I love it when berry season rolls around!

I was looking for a picture to use for an art project I’m doing with my students and I came across this gem of me and my best friend, Tracie, that is probably 25 years old. You better believe this is the one I chose to use.

This is the art project my class is going to do. We’re going to display the shields at promotion.

A Busy Couple of Weeks

The past couple of weeks have been crazy busy. So busy that I didn’t have time to write a blog post last week…so here’s the make-up post. We’ve had dress-up days, Abigail’s kindergarten performance, STAAR testing, and I took my second big test (only one more to go…assuming I pass the one I just took). Now it’s just overdrive until June 1st, haha. Paul has been busy at work and with stuff around the house. We’re kind of just pluggin’ along, doing what we always do!

Fifth grade dress-up day. Joseph and I rocked our Harry Potter costumes.

Abigail had beach dress-up day and had loads of fun picking her own outfit for it.

She was in her element for the kinder performance. 🙂

They had a photo op area set up with little props.

She loves her shine-a-light books. If you shine a light under each page, it shows a hidden picture.

I love when these two play together nicely.

They both have a deep love for Mario anything.

Disney dress-up day. She didn’t want to be a princess (the dress gets in the WAY, Mom), so we opted for Ms Marvel, since Marvel is technically Disney. She loved it!

Teacher Appreciation Week was this past week. We had all sorts of goodies provided by the admin, PTA, and office staff. I got a gift card and a sweet note from one of my students and also got this “teacher survival kit” from another. It has different pampering items, snacks, water, a cup, and even a Target gift card. I felt so spoiled!

And the Skies Opened Up

This past week held some interesting weather: it was muggy, overcast, and just…blah for most of the week. Then on Thursday, we had a craaaaaazy couple of storms come through. We got more rain than the ground knew what to do with. Friday morning was interesting. The school had power, but no Internet or phones. I joked with the kids that it was like we were back in the 80s. They were not amused, haha. We persevered with working through worksheets I had, but luckily the Internet started working before too long. Then last night, we had even more storms with more rain. I’m grateful for it (even if the thunder startled me bad enough early this morning that I almost peed my pants, haha) because Texas really needs it!

In other news, state testing is coming up, along with some fun ways to help the kids review, practice, and relax right before the tests. We’re doing one test a week for the next three weeks. It’s goingto bean adventure, for sure!