Frenchie Friday

This week’s edition of Frenchie Friday needs a little bit of background:

In the Blue Room this week, we’ve been learning about the five senses. I was perusing our school’s library looking for some books about smell (which are hard to come by, believe you me), when I stumbled across a title:

“Alfred’s Nose”

Bingo! A book about a nose! I pulled it off the shelf, and GUESS WHAT I SAW:

*** FRENCH BULLDOG FRENCH BULLDOG FRENCH BULLDOG!!!!***

Shouts of “Frenchie Friday!” were heard throughout the school.*

I read it to the kids today and it was pretty much the best book I’ve ever read. Maybe even better than Little Pea. LOOK:

If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.

*Okay, they were heard throughout the library.

Where I’ve been

My most sincere apologies for being so M.I.A. for the past week. I don’t really have an excuse, but here’s what I’ve been up to:

I baked Flour’s sticky buns. Did you know they are made out of brioche dough? Did you know that brioche dough contains 2.5 sticks of butter?

Hands down, best sticky buns ever.

I took pictures of more birds. Why are birds SO fascinating to me? These guys were right outside my apartment window.

I made these butter-less, eggless banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for my class and received 17 out of 18 rave reviews! Does this make up for the 3 sticks o’buttah in the sticky buns?

Oh, and I signed up for a 15K.

WHAT?!?!?!

I debated putting this on the blog for awhile because I figured I would be SO embarrassed if I made a big deal out of signing up for a 15K (yes, that’s 9.3 miles) and ended up backing out. But, I finally came to the conclusion that by putting it out there I will have a bunch of people to hold me accountable. This is a BIG deal for me, because I’ve only ever run a 5K – and even that was hard. This race isn’t until July 10, so I have exactly 6 months from today to train. I can do this!!! Mike and Emily & Peter (the sibs) are signed up too.

Snow day tomorrow!

 

Reason #72 why I love my job

(I’ve lost count on the reasons why I love my job, so I picked 72 hoping it was somewhere near the right number…which is actually probably closer to 700)

As you probably know, I have one of the most fun jobs out there – or at least I think so. I teach preschool, which means I get to hang out with 4-year-olds, work with some awesome and hilarious teachers, and sometimes make pretend phone calls to Santa to whip the kiddos into shape.

BUT, that is only half of my day! For the other half, I babysit* for three totally awesome kids who are 9, 12, and 15. In my case, “babysit” actually means do really fun things like bake and go to the mall and sometimes even go on road trips to places like Ginny Gulch.

I have a fellow teacher to thank for setting me up with this sweet gig, as she left our school last year to have a baby and I took over both of her jobs – teaching and babysitting! Miss Colleen is one of the coolest people I know, and her baby Leo might just be my most favorite teeny tiny person out there. LOOK at him…

I’m on the “nice” list….

….right? Santa? Hello?

He is JUST too cute for words.

So yesterday we rounded up the whole gang, put “The Hamster Dance” on repeat (Leo’s favorite song, duh) and headed to Ginny Gulch, which is a mystical Christmas world just off of Route 1. Magical…

Every now and then I worry that my life is too fun.

15 days till Christmas, people!!!

*There are no actual babies and very little sitting involved

My job

Today, I asked myself once again…

Is my job for real?

It all started when I came up with the brilliant idea to have my class think up a Halloween costume for me. I knew they would have absurd ideas, and I figured that would just make it that more fun.

Here’s the list:

Cowgirl…typical.

Ghost…typical.

Blue, pink, and purple butterfly…typical, typical, typical.

What I didn’t expect was the two top-voted suggestions:

A buzzing dingbee and a STICK OF BUTTER.

Buzzing dingbee won out in the end with a vote of 6 to 5 (there are 18 kids in the class so you can imagine their understanding of “voting” and “math”), so that’s just what I’ll be…as soon as I figure out what it is.

As for the stick of butter…well, let’s just say my kids know me too well.

Reason #65 why I love my job

I received one of those most special gifts a preschool teacher can get – a portrait! One of my little ones handed this to me, announced “I drew this picture of YOU!” and promptly grabbed my hand and kissed it.

Uuuuuggghhh. Unbelievable cuteness. Sometimes I can’t even stand it.

Reason #64 why I love my job

I walked in to the library on Friday to find this gem…

JUST your standard gigantic cupcake birthday cake.

…that’s all I have to say about that.

Reason #63 why I love my job

Lately, we’ve been learning about farms in our classroom. It’s been a really fun unit; playing in the mud, “milking a cow”, making our own ice cream, and an upcoming trip to the farm! But we also obviously had to bake. For Christmas, Josie gave me these GREAT cookie cutters:

 cow,

 sheep,

 and bunny! 

I found the barn cookie cutter on my trip to Concord. Friday we spent the afternoon baking, decorating, and playing in the sunshine. And I get paid to do this??

Kudos to Ali for the adorable cow and sheep decorations. Here is one of the kids’ magical creations!:

Rain, rain, go away!

Here is the forecast for the next three days:

Rain, rain, RAIN! Go away!

Because we are inevitably in for another wet, messy week, I thought I’d share a recipe idea that will brighten any day!

Smiley Face Pancakes

Last Monday was totally gross, so Ali and I were trying to come up with fun rainy day activities. As usual, we decided on cooking! We were inspired by the rainbow pancakes from a few weeks ago, and came up with the idea of cheery yellow smiley pancakes! We added a little yellow food coloring to the pancake batter and sprinkled on some raisins to make a face. The kids loved them and they brightened up our gray day.

Rainbow Pancakes

This week in the Rainbow Room we’ve been learning about…rainbows. So, naturally, we needed to bake something rainbow-themed. Ali discovered this awesome blog post about rainbow pancakes, and we made them today!!

We were worried that it would take a long time but it wasn’t actually too hard. We used a basic pancake mix, separated it into 6 bowls, colored the batter, and cooked the pancakes one color at a time.

I had a dance party with the kids while Ali did the pancake-flipping.

Mini-stack for the kiddies.

Slightly larger for the teachers 🙂

Mmm, mm, goood.

I love…

…the way little kids think.

Yesterday at lunch, one of my four-year-olds turned to me and said, “There was an earthquake in Chile you know”. I was impressed – who knew that little ones pick up on stuff like world news? Anyway, the conversation continued…

“Want to know what an earthquake is? An earthquake is when the earth has a quake. A quake is a big ball that rolls in the earth, and bumps into Africa. Africa bumps into the rest of the world, and that is a quake. The whole world shakes.”

I LOVE that. A quake starts out as a ball that shakes the world. I need to revert back to my four-year-old mind more often; what a fun and different way to think of the world!