"You have brains in your head"

In the midst of all this sightseeing and people visiting, I swear Brad and I actually do work. Brad has had a lot of changes at his job in the last 6 months, mainly him moving around to different positions (he really needs to update everyone on all that). And I have been teaching.

I thought my third year of teaching might bring me more free time outside of work, considering I am more experienced and actually know what I am doing these days. Wrong. I've decided that school is all-consuming, no matter what. Even without grad school to overwhelm my time, teaching is never-ending. There is always more you can do, it's merely a matter of finding that balance and knowing when to stop. So I still have weeks where I am doing school work every evening and other weeks where I choose to ignore it and leave it at school. Case in point - this picture of me grading papers while at an Iowa State football game watch.

That being said, it isn't all work and no play in second grade. I teach with four other great ladies and we are always up to something down our hallway! It certainly makes it not so lonely to have a person working beside you when you are at school wayyy to early or wayyy too late. For Halloween, we all dressed up as characters from the "If You Give A Mouse..."books. The Moose with her Muffin never made a picture, but here are "If You Give a...Cat a Cupcake, a Pig a Pancake, a Dog a Donut, and the classic Mouse a Cookie."

One of our big projects we all did this year was an election unit in the last few weeks leading up to election day. We taught our second graders the history of our government and then continued on with the three branches and how they work today. Of course, we didn't want to bring politics into the classroom (and by that, I mean, what our students had heard their parents say at home), so we learned all about the electoral process using George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The kids had to choose who they thought was the best president and then we had a big vote. It was fun to see the students get into the whole campaigning and debate side of elections. And they really enjoyed our makeshift voting booths we set up for the whole school to join us in determining the winner. Who knows, maybe my students will actually somewhat remember the electoral process after that. A teacher always hopes!