Clearing out my classroom...or starting to at least

The end of the year craziness has begun! Today was the first big moving day for clearing out my classroom. Every time the kids left the room for recess/lunch/PE I was packing something up and loading up my car! We are down to just 7 days of school and of those 7 only 4 will be spent with us on campus. We have a teeny tiny school, so many big events are held off campus such as field day and graduation (last day of school). Plus we were able to sneak in one more "just for fun" field trip! So that means very limited packing time between now and the last day of school.

This was my living room 15 minutes ago! I just moved 15+ boxes into my shed where they are now stacked ceiling-high so I can shove more in there tomorrow.

I'm not quite sure how much more I have because there is a bunch of stuff in my room that will actually be staying there because I don't need/want it or it just plain belongs to the school. I know I need to pack up my classroom library, art supplies, posters/borders and find a big enough box for my binders because my set of banker boxes just isn't going to cut it for those.

On to life in my classroom this week...
I had the sweetest non-verbal boy shadow my class yesterday! Clearly my school was not a good fit for him, but if I taught non-verbal, he'd be the kid I'd want! He can't talk much at all aside from "no" but he was clearly bright. He is in kindergarten and could point to all his letters and numbers and could easily identify every single picture I asked out of about 50. I've actually never taught non-verbal, so just keeping him in my class for a few hours was a mental challenge for me to figure out how much he knew and could do. It would have been so easy to just let him play in the toy area all morning since I know our school doesn't take kids that can't talk, but I could tell he had something going on in his head and it was like a teacher game to see if I could teach a non-verbal kid on the fly! I used the kid-sized whiteboard for a bunch of different things, then I pulled out my rhyming puzzles for the pictures on the pieces to test his receptive language. He clearly knows what people are saying, he just has to respond in a different way. It almost made me want to teach non-verbal...almost.

I felt horrible when the mom cried after I talked to her about how we don't have the resources to help him. I almost started crying too! I had to explain that a 3 grade level split class without an aide just wouldn't be an appropriate place for him because he needs help to show what he knows without talking. I really hope they find a good school for him. The boy and his mom were so sweet!

I have another shadow student on Monday...a visiting kid the last real class day of school, this should be interesting!

Just for fun... a kid drawing of a monster that came to school. I think his question for the monster was "What are you doing a school?" I find it funny that if he could ask a monster any question at all, that's what it was. It just might inspire my next clip art collection! Hehehe!