Catching Up and Balancing: Finished Open House, Started Instagram Project

   Despite all of my best intentions to write a blog post way before now, I just couldn't get my act together. Plus, I've been trying to have a little more balance to my life.  It's hard, especially at this time of the year, to stop myself from compulsively working on school stuff.  Want to know a big secret?  Most of the time, I really enjoy making school stuff.  I'm such a dork!  I don't enjoy correcting though, and would pay handsomely for a correcting fairy to swing by every day.

  I'm working on making sure that I work out at least 4 days a week.  I'm going to work on increasing the number of days when I can.  Yoga is helping me to balance myself a little more.  I enjoyed doing yoga outside yesterday.  

   Leading up to last week, I spent my time preparing for Open House.  It was just a matter of finishing hanging up kids' work.  For the last 2 years, I have purchased paper guitars for the kids to decorate with pictures that are all about them.  Last year, I taped them to the wall and it was a losing battle!  Every day, I'd walk in the room wondering which one I'd find on the ground.  This year, when the kids were working on their guitars, I had a light bulb moment.  Why not hang them from the ceiling?!  Why had I never thought of this before??  So I jumped up on a table to see how far the guitar would come down.  It seemed perfect.  So far, the guitars have been up for a week and a half and none have fallen!  Such a difference from last year.  

   Open House was last week and it went great, even though I was nervous.  I've been teaching for 9 years and I still get butterflies waiting for the parents to come in.  I hate public speaking and, even though I do it everyday, it's not the same.  It's so much easier talking in front of a classroom of kids.  

   Anyways, so now that Open House is past us I'm hoping that life will settle into more of a routine.  

   Last year, I wrote a grant to purchase 2 iPads.  I LOVE my iPads!  This year, my goal was to use them more often in the classroom.  Originally, I had wanted to create a Twitter account for the kids to use, but sadly, Twitter is blocked at my school.  So I had to figure out what else I could use that the kids would enjoy and probably use in their outside of school life. I personally thoroughly enjoy Instagram.  I checked  to make sure that it worked at school... and it did!  Yay!  I was psyched.  My next step was to make sure that my principal was okay with us trying it out.  Obviously, our account would be private.  He told me that he was okay with us trying it out, making sure that I got parent permission.  I presented my idea to parents at Open House.  Parents were so excited about the opportunity to have a daily window into our classroom.  I stressed that the account would be private and that it would be a great chance for kids to practice internet responsibility.  

   The parents have sent in their usernames so that I could approve their following us on Instragram.  We've had a wonderful time posting pictures of our day and creating the hashtags together.  Starting tomorrow, it will be the job of 2 students to take a couple of pictures throughout the day for us to post.  They will create the post, and I'll approve it.  I can't tell you how excited we all are for this endeavor.  

   I even made an Instagram worksheet for an activity in reading class!  I can't wait for them to see it!

   Do you use social media with your class?