A Blessing A Day

SO my "New Year's Resolution" (I hate saying that because it seems destined to failure) is to think of one blessing a day at school. One way that I have been a blessing or been blessed. My work place has been very negative and this is my way to dwell on the things I've handled well at the end of the day. On a similar note, I know a guy that instead of asking his kids "How was your day?", as kids give a generic answer of "good". He asks them, "What was one thing that you handled well today?" If they say, I got an A on my spelling test, he'll say well that's good. I'm glad you are doing well in school, but what was one tough thing that you handled well today? And his son would say, well, one kid was being left out and had no one to play with him, so I invited him to play with us. His dad would say, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You handled that situation very well. He puts the focus on his kids' interaction with other people, as opposed to focus on their own personal achievement. So this is my way to do just that. I won't record all of these, but feel free to ask what my one blessing was from the day. Today was rough, so they may seem small, but here we go. It may be a blessing in disguise.



1) I asked the kids about their winter break/Christmas. I asked them to tell me their favorite present or one fun thing they did over break. (I know kids want to talk about their presents, but the last part was my attempt to focus on time with people.) All the other kids talked about their favorite gift, but one child talked first about his aunts, uncles, and cousins visiting from Texas.



2) I'm working on blends with my 1st graders. For example, they can read "lip", but not "slip" (it comes out like "sip"). So today was day uno with blends. They also all need work on automaticity (think automatic) with three letter words. Most of them have been moving from sounding words out aloud to sounding them out in their head. My lowest student in this group, *Matthew, has not been sounding out 3 letter words in his head and saying the word, let alone 4 letter words. He tends to mimic what the other kids say and I've been thinking of moving him down to a lower group. At the end, to review the skill, I had each child read one of the words with a blend on their own. *Matthew sounded out the letters in his head and then said the word correctly! It took longer for him as far as processing time, but he was able to do it!

3) My mailbox was packed with Christmas gifts and cards.

4) A teacher said she had been praying for me over break and gave me a Christmas gift.

5) Dark Chocolate...one of my gifts! :)

I'll stop...don't want to get too carried away on day one...