Real Life Things

I promised myself that I would sit down and write about this tonight. One of the reasons (although there are several) that I have been so busy lately is that I have been teaching CCD at church on Sundays since the end of September. At first I wasn't sure I really wanted to write about it online or not, but I decided that I would finally, as I'm starting to settle into the job.

The basics: I've been teaching the kindergarten and first grade class. There is a total of 7 students - 5 regular ones (regular in that they come often LOL). Part of the whole thing has been that there is no set curriculum for me to teach from. I have admittedly been bitter about my CCD education - it was more of the 'rainbows and collage' school of thought rather than content - and so I want to be sure that I teach them something.

I may have written about it before on here, but I'm also in the process of taking classes so I can teach. When I started teaching the CCD I hadn't had any time in the classroom as an observer or aide so I had no idea how to approach these young children (they're 5 & 6!). This past week and a half I have been observing in a 1st Grade in a public school and I realize how I have been trying to teach them beyond their years. But I am learning. I actually had a nice art project this past Sunday, except only 3 of the students were there. I packed supplies into little baggies and I will give the other students them next Sunday.

I actually have a picture of the finished product, but I have it on my computer and not the one I'm on right now. I'll follow this post with the picture later this evening. Its a little 'shrine' that they made. I pre-pasted a picture of Mary and Baby Jesus (Our Lady of Pompeii I believe) and I also attached a copy of the Hail Mary on the back. What they had to do then was decorate it. Since its only an hour class I had to make sure to leave plenty of time for them to drive before mass. I had purchased from Hobby Lobby bags of blue and green glass medallians (I don't know what else to call them, you'll know what I'm talking about when you see them), small sea shells, river rocks, and those little twisty roses. When you see the one I did it looks much worse than the ones the kids did. I sort of haphazardly attached the items, and then decided that I should try doing all the different ones to make sure they'd work. So when you see it, it doesn't look like a 23 year old did it, it looks more like a 3 year old did it.

Any way, with having no set curriculm I spend most of my Saturday preparing for Sunday morning. And with my class, doing observations, and the two part-time jobs I haven't had as much time to devote to my blog - something I want to change. Its not so much that I haven't been online, its just that I've been tired and don't feel like writing anything. You can probably tell that I am tired because this post has ended up jumbly, but at this point I'm just feeling good that I've gotten it written down.