Pencils, Cards, and Stolen Bucks

What a day! Today my kids have inspired a list I'll undoubtedly be adding to in the future.

Things my Fifth Graders Have Taught Me
For When/If I Have Kids of my Own

# 1 Don't waste $$ on expensive school supplies.

I wish I had a counter on the pencil sharpener to count the number of pencils I've sharpened this year. Boy have I seen a lot of interesting pencils too. The kids eat chew on their pencils, cut them with their scissors or karate chop them with their hands, break them in half, leave them places, misuse the lead, take them apart, or over-sharpen them. They get new pencils, and the pencils are gone in the blink of an eye. Just like that. Most of the kids just don't take care of their supplies.

I will say that becoming the queen of the pencil sharpener really helped this year. We went through two pencil sharpeners before I had this revelation, but, hey, who's counting? Right? Fortunately my pencil sharpening days are numbered for 2010-2011, and I'm not a bit saddened by that. Bring on summer vacation!

Today we celebrated how absolutely amazing and wonderful our school secretary is. Last year we made a beautiful card that I loved [see above] and I think she liked (loved?) it also...

So this year I tried to do something similar. We wrote our "[Name] is..." sentences, I typed them, the kids made illustrations, and we glued everything into an accordion-style book. The kids enjoyed it.

In other news on the Western front, we had an incident involving stolen SOAR bucks today. While they were actually stolen a few days ago, they turned up today in the hands of someone who purchased them for $5 (real money). Unfortunately, my little lady didn't mark on or put her name on all of her bucks, so I wasn't able to return all of them. (Only 15 out of 155.) We'll see what happens to the perpetrator(s) tomorrow, I guess.