I think for those who truly spend their time multiplying love and putting the shoes of another before their own, have a difficult time explaining just exactly what they do. For me, I realized at the end of today, that if someone were to come in and ask me what I did today, I would truly be unable to tell them. What did I do? I wouldn't know where to begin. I came in and ran to the copier and the copier had "low black toner." So I ran up to the computer lab and that copier was out of paper. I ran down to the office and grabbed a stack of white paper to be inserted in the upstairs printer. I printed and then decided to lay out all the Mother's Day projects on the ground so that when the kids came in they could get started right away. I taught math which involved a lot of word problems. I took a small group to go over the standard algorithm of multiplication because I realized they did not get it and then we ended with calculator sills mini lesson to prepare for fourth grade as well as an exit slip.
We took a bathroom break and drink break and came in discussing the poem Tyger Tyger by William Blake. I modeled a couplet poem and then the students tried their hand at it. Oh, and before we did that we wrote tiny phrases on sticky notes about all the adjectives we could think of that describe a tyger such as majestic or mysterious or enchanting. The students wrote their poems and we did end up sharing out. In between this subject and Writing and Reading, we had to take our spelling test except one of the students could not find his pencil, so after a class donation we were ready to begin. We tried to get the spelling test in before lunch (which we succeeded.) A few of my students were so far behind on projects, that they volunteered their time to come into the classroom. Actually, the whole class volunteered to give up their recess time to work with me inside, but I decided to make them go outside and play after a bit! All the while, I ditched lunch and tried my hand at making even more origami flowers than I could think of. We needed six per students and so far we had about 4 students left without any origami flowers! This was a bit of a problem! We managed to solve it though and the students finished and were on their way. The afternoon was a smattering of ending the Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco and taking our vocabualary test but also discussing new books, completing read aloud and then reviewing principles of gravity so that we could start the parachute project model.
By the end of the day I realized I had not had water. I had not used the bathroom since 8:00 that morning and thankfully all the gifts were completed. So sometimes when we are asked to multiply whimsy-true whimsy. It is hard to explain. Hard to imagine. It is tiring yet effortless. Not so easy to grasp. Endless love. Unexplainable whimsy.