Inauguration with 4th Graders...

While M was off celebrating at the actual Inauguration, someone had to go to work - yes, that would be me. Although I have been dreading the day for weeks it turned out to be a wonderful day. I had 12 out of my 19 students - the upper school had a whopping 50 out of 750 students, CRAZY! We began our day putting our desks in one big table that we referred to as the dining room table, we talked about rituals at Morning Meeting, we moved on to some fun with presidential math where we compared the weather of all of the president's Inauguration days using our knowledge of minimum, maximum, range, mode, median and mean. We talked about rituals and took a look at LBJ's journal notes from his Inauguration Day that we turned into skits - they had a blast and I have realized that I will be providing more opportunities in class for them to create skits...they LOVED it! After an indoor recess because it was to darn cold to go outside, all of the 4th graders gathered in the cafeteria to watch the Inauguration. To watch my children staring, mesmerized at the screen was something I will never forget as I got to sit next to my colleagues. What I felt was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day because every other school appeared to be closed in the DC area and I had to go to work and was not able to go to the Inauguration festivities turned out to be a most spectacular day. And to top it off my friend T and I hit NO traffic, that's right - NO TRAFFIC! After dropping T off after school (by the way we got to leave early, a perk of working a dual curriculum school and teaching in the mornings on Tuesday's) I was on my way to lululemon to watch the parade with my girls, but who do I spy on my way - M of course! I picked him up, we popped in the store and then made our way home where we camped out on the couch and spent the afternoon watching the parade. It has been a day that I will never forget and I look forward in watching Obama lead our Country!