Another Hodgepodge of Sorts

Last week, Annah had a jewelry party so I got to hang out with my niece, Karlee. Look at her lips! She takes after her Aunt Lotty. :) You can't really tell in this picture, but she has her ears pierced too! I love it!

Ok, next, here's me on my last day of kindergarten. :( I'm reading a card from the kids and opening a gift from my cooperative teacher. I already miss the little darlings! That was last Friday though and I already got to see them today for a field trip to Capitol Aquarium. I forgot my camera, though. :( I'll see them in another two weeks too, for their kindergarten graduation. Can't wait!

Next day, Saturday, I had my credential program graduation. Here are some pictures. It was so much fun! Graduation was at Arco in the evening, then I went to Leatherby's for dinner, then downtown to celebrate.

Sunday night, I had a dinner at The Spaghetti Factory. After that, my friends and I went to R15 and Whiskey Wild to continue my graduation celebration.

Finally, here is Trevor giving his Akita, Chivas a bath. It was cute! Chivas is named after the alcohol, Chivas Regal, not the soccer team. (Trevor always tells people that, so I thought I'd share it too.)

On another note, I got "Carried away" last night and saw Sex and the City. I kinda had a love/hate relationship with it. (SMALL SPOILER ALERT!) I thought it showed Carrie and Miranda as way too forgiving. At the same time, I am happy with the ending. I don't know. If you're a die-hard SATC fan like me, you'll have to let me know what you think about it.

Camera Fun Part 2

I told you to frequent my blog to see more "camera fun" and I've pulled through. Here are two pictures and one video for you to enjoy (most of you will be creeped out by the last two "camera fun" items). I might be taking this camera stuff too far. You'll soon see why.

My little darlings and me.


This cockroach (or whatever it is) was getting eaten alive by ants! Trevor took this picture and it's like, the best picture ever. You can see all the individual legs of the ants!


Video of Trevor trying to put the cockroach out of its misery, complete with music and dialogue. The name of this video is, "Poor Lil' Bugga". Get it? :) Yes, one cockroach was harmed in the making of this video.


We'll soon see what the camera captures next!

Camera fun

I have a new camera. Well, I don't. But my Mom does. She's letting me use it though and I love it! I want one just like it. It's a Sony Cyber-shot, just like my old one, only this one is way better because it's 8.1 mega pixels. I've been playing with it a lot this past week, taking pictures and recording random video. Here are some of the pictures/video I've taken.

My decorated graduation cap. UTEC stands for Urban Teacher Education Center.

Our kindergarten classroom pets- silkworms.

Yes, those black things are silkworm poopies.

Silkworm video (I just had to.)

Our Ocean Life wall (The rainbow fish was my own lesson and the fish turned out great!)

There will definitely be more random pictures/video to come so come visit my blog more often. I'll probably post some pictures of my credential graduation coming up this Saturday.

Oh yeah, on another note...Nia, I just want to tell you how proud of you I am. Everytime I visit your class, I feel so proud. I really admire all you do in your teaching. Keep up the good work and please help me out when I get a job! :)

I'm done

Yay! My 2-week solo is finished! Only one week left until I'm a fully credentialed elementary teacher. Next week will be easy though because I don't have to teach much...Only about an hour each day. Also, it should be fun because I'm going to be observing other grades. I'm excited because I'll be observing another kindergarten and since I've been teaching this grade all semester, it'll be interesting to see how another teacher does it.

So, all in all, I'd say my solo went pretty well. However, there was only one really stressful day and it just happened to be today, my last day. It was not only the hardest day of my solo, but maybe the hardest all semester. The kids were crazy and because I had to stop and manage them so often throughout the day, I didn't finish all of what I had planned for the day. This was also the first time that happened. I felt like I was being so mean to them because they were acting so wild. We have story time each day, but that was one of the things we didn't get to today. One of my students asked, "Ms. Bautista, why didn't we read that book?" I said, "Because we were crazy today and we had to stop too many times so we didn't have enough time." I felt bad about this, but they were driving me crazy!

Anyway, I feel that my teaching career is off to a good start! I'm planning on applying to my school this fall because we have a kindergarten and first grade position opening up. There is also a long-term sub position because a teacher will be going on maternity leave. Wish me luck on getting a job!

A Good Day

To begin with, what made this day so good was that I found out I passed the RICA!!!! The RICA is this huge test that all new teachers must pass in order to get their credential. I was so scared I wasn't going to pass this test and I really didn't want to take it again for two reasons. A) it's super hard and B) it costs $130! Well, I don't have to worry about it anymore- I passed!!

Next, the other reason it was a good day today is because it was my first official (but I've really been doing all the teaching for over a month now) solo day and it went well. Part of what makes it "official" is that everything I'm teaching now, I actually planned. Before, I was teaching all of my cooperative teacher's lesson plans.

So, today was great. We made pinatas and ate pandulce to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the kids were well-behaved and my supervisor came in and gave me great feedback. We also acted out The Little Red Hen. Here are some pictures from class today. As you can see, I was dressed up for Cinco de Mayo.




So, I've had a great start to my two weeks of soloing. I have great confidence that the rest of the two weeks will go well. Wish me luck!