Trusting In The Lord For All Things: Old Friendships, Good Times and Card Making

I'm so tired tonight. I volunteered all day and had lots to do. The teacher I work for was out sick yesterday. When a teacher is out sick, she can get behind very quickly. So besides working with the kids, I was filing papers to go home, putting progress reports into envelopes, grading homework, completing reading assessments, and helping with non-standard measurement for Math.

I love working with kids, I'm just not used to it. The kids today were totally off the wall. They couldn't sit still, couldn't sit quietly, couldn't stay in their seats and couldn't concentrate. It was a very tiring day to say the least. I'm so glad I can help Emily in her classroom. It's a blessing to both of us.

I met a friend for dinner that I've known a long time. We've known each other 24 1/2 years. When she was fresh out of college she came to work at the building I was in. We were across the hall and quickly developed a friendship. She taught students with physical disabilities. I taught students with multiple disabilities. We started a candy company where her students made the candy and my students packaged it and stored it. Her students wrote ads for the morning announcements and mine delivered orders to classrooms.

We started this because we wanted our students to improve their social stills with each other and peers in general education classrooms. As a teacher of students with multiple disabilities, I looked for functional jobs to teach students. I came up with checklists to evaluate a student's work. We even video taped jobs and evaluated jobs as a whole group. Students watched the video to see what they did and didn't do.

One time we discussed a student wiping his mouth then not going to wash his hands. He sat there and told us he didn't wipe his mouth. So funny because the whole class watched him do it! LOL

Other jobs we had was to fill the pop machine, collect the coins and count and roll them and take them to the office.
Students delivered mail to staff mailboxes. They had to read and match names plus talk to any staff member they saw at the mailboxes.

Another job we did was to take all of the pages of the PTA bulletin and collate them and staple them together. These were the days when we didn't have the fancy copy machines we do now so they had to be done by hand.
After the bulletins were put together we had to count out the number needed for each classroom then deliver them. Again, this was another way students interacted with each other and staff members they might not know.

Another service we provided for the school was to pop and bag popcorn once a month and deliver it to classrooms. Popcorn cost 25 cents and came to us taped to a slip with the customer's name and room number. So many jobs to do for this.
What was great was we set students up with jobs they could do if we adapted them. One student couldn't use his hands and had a headpiece with a plastic pointer at the end. We taped a laminated sheet of paper with squares counting from 25 cents to 10.00. This student took quarters that were placed at his table and moved each one to a square and counted them until he got to $10.00. Then someone removed the coins and put them in coin rolls.
The look of satisfaction on this young man's face said it all. Loved looking at what a student needed to do and somehow fixing it so he could do it!

Fun times with lots of great kids. I can't believe it was so long ago.

Here are some cards I made in the last couple of days. Loving this sunflower and the wood panel background stamp.

I had a good time with these cards with the women. The first card this lady had a wine glass in her hand. I cut the glass out and added a sign, cuz she looked like she was waving.