Three Days of Relievers

At my school the teachers periodically get release days where they have another teacher come into their room for either part or the whole day and they get to go plan or work on other things. The teachers do not have to leave sub plans or any sort of schedule, the reliever that comes in just brings something for the kids to work on and any other plans of their own. You also do not have to leave any plans if you take a personal day. Well, this makes it very difficult to keep any sort of routine in the classroom. It wouldn't be bad for just a day or two, but because of my co-op teacher's schedule, I have had 3 1/2 days in a row of this. Children love routines, and mine are going crazy without theirs. We have done heaps of art projects and even baked buiscuits (cookies) today, but haven't done any reading groups, maths groups, handwriting, or free writing yet this week. It's been crazy!

Yesterday, we decided it was a good day to walk to school. We were all ready a little early and it was pretty nice out, so we didn't take our van. Well when we got to school a couple of the teachers informed us we were crazy because apparently there was supposed to be a big storm later that afternoon. As the day went on, there were some pretty dark clouds forming so we got a little worried. Turns out it sprinkled for about 5 minutes...thats their big storm going through. I even went home and did some laundry and hung it outside. It did get pretty windy later that night, but still nothing compared to some of the storms we see in Iowa.