I started work this week at the Ta-Wa-Si Recreation program. I am working the luxurious hours of 1 - 5 and spend the better part of my day outside, engaging with most of the same children I have spent the last 6 months working with. I enjoy that I can say, "I love my job" and mean it. You would have to meet and get to know the children I spend my days with to get it. They are such a cool bunch who continue to humble me with their perspectives. I have been working to find camps and activities of interest to connect the children to so that they can take advantage of the programming that is available to them. I thought I had a basketball camp lined up for a group of boys who love to shoot hoops and played on the school team, but some issues have come up causing us to look elsewhere. The YMCA is really great about making things work for these children so I am hopeful we can find something. I actually have to deliver the bad news to them today that the camp we had been talking about is now a no-go. Hopefully the fact that we are going swimming this afternoon will provide some sort of silver lining to the day, as I know they are going to be disappointed.
On a completely different note, this morning I committed myself to blogging and visiting my neglected Google Reader. Check and check! I had about 150 things that I had missed since I looked at it last. I am glad I scrolled through instead of marking everything as read because I found a really neat resource that I want to share with my fellow primary teachers. It was a post from Amanda at One Extra Degree about a resource she is selling over on TeachersPayTeachers. I had purchased her pirate themed mapping package during my pre-internship and loved her ideas, so when I saw her dinosaur themed word-work bundle, I was equally enthusiastic to share. The resource she has created is geared toward grade-threes, however I can see it working for my kinders in the fall. I am envisioning a centre with buckets of sand or dirt and rakes for the children to "dig-up" their laminated popcorn or sight words. Check it out and leave a comment about how you might use it in your classroom!