Schools In!

Most Australian schools are back in action.  Next week the rest will follow suit (except for some flood affected schools) and before you know it we will be counting down to "Easter" break.  We always called it Easter break because it always coincided with Easter.  However, national curriculum, alignment of state education holidays and several other factors have resulted in a change in the timing of the first mid-semester break in the year.  I don't know why this is bothering me, it just is.

This week, the first week back has been very busy.  If you are a regular you are probably thinking "when is she not busy?"  and my answer to that is, "about two weeks ago." LOL

Year 8 and 9 students
think they are sooo cool.

Between flood damage, recovering from the flu, lost stationery orders, medical appointments, broken glasses, new glasses and a spot of shopping.  The new school year began.  I met my year 8 classes on Thursday and as always I will have to be on the ball.  One of my classes is almost entirely made up of "spirited" boys.  The other class is more balanced in terms of gender and much quieter.  In that group there are two boys who "enjoy participating in classroom discussions but sometimes require support to stay on task".  That's right people, I have already started writing their semester 1 report comments (LOL).  All in all, my year 8's are okay.  We have lots of work to do and they will discover what it means to be busy.

I had my first year 9 lesson on Friday.  They are a great bunch of kids.  All of whom I met last year when I was team teaching with TPK.  Although TPK has left (to teach at another school, boo hoo) and now I have a new teaching partner, I think she will always be TPK.  Anyway, we had a lovely lesson together just catching up and talking about the plans for this year.  I am really looking forward to working with these guys.

That's enough about school...

I bought a new air conditioner for my bedroom yesterday.  WOOHOO!  It was a delight to sleep through the night without waking up in a lather of sweat.  If you are thinking "GROSS" you might begin to have a sense of what I used to think when I woke up hot and wet.  ICK!  My new little friend is not-so-little and a bit noisy, but it does the job exceptionally well, so I'm cool, calm and collected through the night.  Well, I'm cool anyway.

My new laminator has been working hard and it has been nice to have posters and other decorations ready for school. Ooops. I wasn't talking about school- you just think I was. Did I mention that my stationery order got lost and it has only been processed this week, so my students still don't have pens or folders or notebooks?! We are using lined paper and I asked my new Teaching Partner to buy a box of biros when she was at office works.  Hopefully that will keep us going, but it is quite frustrating to think that I did my order in November 2012 and it still hasn't left the school yet.  How are we supposed to work like this?

Okay, seriously, no more school....

I returned to church today after a month of slacking off.  I wasn't really slacking off.  Last week I was sick and the week before Mum and Dad didn't go because they were at a wedding, so I didn't have a ride.  The week before the wedding, Mum and Dad didn't go because they were visiting people, I think, and the week before that I was going to go with Dad but he was sick.  So I had a good reason, every week.  Anyway, we started Junior Soldiers for the year and began a series on The Armour of God.  Each Sunday for the month of February, I will be adding a quick 'run down' here of the activities that we do around this theme.  The Junior Soldier program had only one week/ session on this topic, but it is such a rich (and important) passage for my boys to understand that we are taking our time to learn more about it.  The concept of "the spiritual realm" is difficult enough to grasp before you even get to the 5 items that make up the armour.

I didn't get photos of everything we did today, so I will show them next week.  We started by thinking about school (as we went back to school this week) and all the new things we buy to get us through the school year.  J brought along his soccer and boxing kits and told us all about the clothing and protective gear that you use when playing each sport.  We talked about the importance of each item and that if you don't have even one of them, you could get hurt or perform poorly on the field/ in the ring.  Then we read Ephesians 6:10-18 and as each item was mentioned we put labels onto my drawing of a soldier in armour.

So that's the latest... I think.
:D