Well, the bay and Koyuk River is completely frozen and people are enjoying hooking for tomcods, lincod, trout, smelt. It reminds me of the very first time I tried hooking with a hand made stick with fishing line wrapped the long ways. Esther and Ethel, two Elders, whom I adore, offered their hooking rod to me and I tried. I got one and freaked out because I was so excited. You all know how I react when I get excited. So good memories.
I mentioned in the summer that I was thinking of leaving AK and going to Oregon. God has changed my heart and am so thankful He has. I'm planning on returning to Koyuk next year! I love it here. I believe when I wanted to leave AK it was around the time Jason and Myra left and was very emotional.
The weather has been really cold, but not any snow except for a dusting. I saw the white Northern Lights once. It was incredible. I also the moon surrrounded what looked like a halo. Any ideas what that might be?
It's been fun cooking and baking...chocolate chip cookies, chicken lasanga, buffalo chicken soup. Wish you were here Dad to try it! I'm making boo cups with my kids this week. You make chocolate pudding mixed with crushed oreos, put in a cup, put in a dab of whip cream and two chocolate chips to look like eyes. The product looks like you have a ghost.
We will have a costume parade, pinnatas, and classroom party on Friday along with Trick or Treating! Will update. I do not yet have a costume. The last two years I dressed up in my rendevouz dress and mocs was an exercising grandma. Any ideas for this year?
Off to bed early tonight. I'm exhausted! Then work tomorrow and Bible Study!
Oh yeah....Christmas plans...God willing...I will be traveling to Galena to visit Jason and Myra. I will go home in the summer so I can have more time for quality visits.
Until later.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Fall Ed Conference in Unalakleet
Well, this post is for my friend Amanda, who said I should blog more than once a month and blog about the ed conference. Every year the kids get a week off in October because teachers all around the BSSD (Bering Strait School District) come to Unalakleet for a 4 day conference. The funnest part of the conference is sleeping on classroom floors with air mattresses and taking showers with my collegues, along with luke warm or sometimes cold water. Hmmmm....high school all over again!
This year I presented my first time with Heather. We presented what we learned from our Bridges in Mathematics workshop this summer. Heather did most of the presenting because she also went to a 5 day Math workshop the year before. I learned a ton from her! At the end of each day, I got to meet with Kindergarten teachers to share Bridges lessons and good questioning techniques. I was a little nervous but so excited to be sharing the new curriculum that lets students come to their own understanding.
All the participants, including myself, worked through problem solving together, learned new theory on Math. It was fun and challenging to do problems with others. First, I enjoyed seeing how others figured out problems and challlenging because I did not like problem solving in the past because I never thought I was good. But I'm learning that I am and everyone is a mathematician because we solve problems in our own way that makes sense to us and the power of working with others to grow as a math learner was neat also. What great concepts and ideas to apply to the classroom.
It was also fun to see friends: Amanda, Becky, other old co-workers, families I got to know in Unalakleet, etc. It was nice to spend time with co-workers. One of my favorite things to do was to visit the coffee shop every day to get a Macky Mocha with English Toffee! Yummy Yum Yum. They had a cute little puppy boxer.
Overall, it was one of the best ed conferences I've been too! I also took one hour sessions on learning about a new curriculum the district purchased for Unsafe and Safe touches. I'm excited to use it 2nd Semester, after I start and finish the crisis prevention curriculum I got last year. I also went to a session about how to communicate with parents about student's pacing with the standards and levels we teach. What a perfect time because parent-teacher conferences are coming up.
This year I presented my first time with Heather. We presented what we learned from our Bridges in Mathematics workshop this summer. Heather did most of the presenting because she also went to a 5 day Math workshop the year before. I learned a ton from her! At the end of each day, I got to meet with Kindergarten teachers to share Bridges lessons and good questioning techniques. I was a little nervous but so excited to be sharing the new curriculum that lets students come to their own understanding.
All the participants, including myself, worked through problem solving together, learned new theory on Math. It was fun and challenging to do problems with others. First, I enjoyed seeing how others figured out problems and challlenging because I did not like problem solving in the past because I never thought I was good. But I'm learning that I am and everyone is a mathematician because we solve problems in our own way that makes sense to us and the power of working with others to grow as a math learner was neat also. What great concepts and ideas to apply to the classroom.
It was also fun to see friends: Amanda, Becky, other old co-workers, families I got to know in Unalakleet, etc. It was nice to spend time with co-workers. One of my favorite things to do was to visit the coffee shop every day to get a Macky Mocha with English Toffee! Yummy Yum Yum. They had a cute little puppy boxer.
Overall, it was one of the best ed conferences I've been too! I also took one hour sessions on learning about a new curriculum the district purchased for Unsafe and Safe touches. I'm excited to use it 2nd Semester, after I start and finish the crisis prevention curriculum I got last year. I also went to a session about how to communicate with parents about student's pacing with the standards and levels we teach. What a perfect time because parent-teacher conferences are coming up.
ATTACK......
Don't worry mom...no bear attack! As Sarah and I were walking our puppies up by the airport, we almost got attacked by a plane that we didn't hear that was right behind us! Brings back memories when Myra and I were walking on the airport. So, the attack story is a little more involved. Do I have you hooked yet? So Sarah and I saw this huge bird! An owl, hauk, no it was a falcon! We thought it was so neat swooping in and out of the willows and spruce and made jokes of how funny it would be if it tried to attack our dogs. Without thinking twice about it, the falcon left the airport and suddenly and secretly came back heading closer to Sarah and I, and her pup that is is the size of a small rabbit. I yelled to Sarah, "Grab your bird, I mean your puppy!" I was a little nervous as you can tell. So she swooped her up and I was in awe of how beautiful the falcon was and then Berry decided that she wanted to play with this big bird. So she started chasing it and barking at it. It was so darn cute, but I reminded her that is not a bird you want to be playing around with. The falcon hung around by Berry a while and I said a quick prayer. This reminded me of the time when I went duck hunting with Jason and Myra and Kemper and, I believe, an owl, was swooping after him. Both the falcon and the owl must have had nests close by.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Pokes, Musoo and Fall
Wow, can you tell how busy I've been with school; I haven't written in about a month! Since I mentioned school, I'll start with that. It's been going well. I'm learning how to just enjoy the kids' presence and not be so focused on the curriculum. I'm thankful for God for allowing me to turn from my frustrated feelings and not lash out. It's so neat because I believe I'm finally seeing the fruit of my prayers: that I would be free from that. The kids are doing an amazing job spelling by sounding out. This is much earlier than most years! The new math curriculum is fun! The kids made their own calendar pieces: spiders and ladybugs and figured out a way to make patterns and then they chose which one they wanted. The only downfall to to this curriculum is that it takes a lot of time to plan and make the materials. I also have to the curriculum I had already first then I can do the new one. This doesn't make sense to me because the same concepts are taught but just in a different way. The kids recently loved the Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle. It was neat to hear how much they remembered from reading it, I think in Head Start. So the last thing about school is the pokes. That is what the kids refer to when they get shots. So we went to get TB shots, iron, weight, height, vision. We brought our classroom puppet to help too. The kids loved this. As I sat next to them explaining what was going to happen at each step and told them to look at KinderRoo and sing stupid songs about KinderRoo and each student, they did spectacular! They had to bravest class I ever had!
Musoo...Eskimo word for wild potoato. I know most of you are thinking of small round brown vegetables but nope. I was invited to go musoo picking up the beach a couple of Sundays ago. We traveled by Honda on beautiful Fall day. We got to Coal Creek and used a handmade boat that brothers made a few years back to get across the other side. It was extremely tippy so thank goodness my dad taught me how to get in and out of a canoe. As the little boat filled up with water as each person went across with Tom paddling it was a thrilling adventure! We made jokes about how each one would fall and how that would be funny! Luckily, that didn't happen. We got across and got a quick mini-lesson on how to dig for musoo with a large pick ax from the Native that was with us (same woman I went fishing and boating with this summer). So Elvina showed us what the plant looked like, how to just dig and pry the tundra up and look for the twig like potatoes. It was like picking for berries; you didn't want to stop. It was quite the work out too because the ground was getting hard from the freezes we have had. It's really whitle inside and has a skin like a "white" potato does but it has a sweet taste. Yummy and all natural! We stayed out for four hours and got to see two swans, an eagle, and the reindeer being herded. What a day! I can't wait to order myself a musoo digger for the spring time!
Fall has been beautiful! The tundra has turned orange-brownish. The fireweed leaves turn bright crimson, others are orange, willows, alders, and currant leaves turn yellow and orange. The insects are gone! The mornings are crisp and the days have been sunny! Just this week the bay and the river froze over completely, but melted in the middle because of the warmer days and after the high winds left. I'm wearing my down coat already and starting to wear sweaters. I think it's going to snow tonight because of the way the sky looks or it might rain, but others don't agree. As Berry and I go for our daily walk, her run, she is disappointed to find her once "cool off dipping places" frozen over. She also got into this funny habit of going through one drainage pipe and coming out the other. It's cute to watch! Along with Fall comes spruce hen hunting, crane, geese, swan, moose, beluga, seal, and ducks. Kim's dog caught her a birthday spuce hen. Berry is going to have to take lessons. She did come face to face with a stupid spruce hen (like our grouse) in the drive way. The dumb bird actually was moving towards her! She loved chasing it and was bummed I couldn't shoot it. She also met up with it a second time. We scared it out the grasses. Yes, it really did scare me!
Three long paragraphs later and you have an update. Another post is next.
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