SNOW DAY!!!

WE HAVE A SNOW DAY HERE FOR NYC PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!!! (aka absolutely NO excuse for me not to blog)

Growing up, we'd have around 3 snow days per season it seemed, but here, there is NEVER a snow day. What does the city do when 1.1 million school-age kids are left at home with parents who may or may not be able to miss a day of work to care for them? It becomes quite a problem when it's on such a large scale. SO this is the first snow day in 5 years.. woo!

Last night we got hit with a classic "nor'easter" storm... lots of snow and very windy, straight up the coast (snow as far south as Georgia). The snow started at around 9 pm and continued through the night. I was up until about midnight (after a VERY exciting episode of "Brothers and Sisters") as I am almost every Sunday night... it's always really hard for me to get back into my weekday schedule. I reluctantly went to bed and woke up at 5:30 this morning to start the day.

I took my shower, checked the news, started the coffee, checked the news, blew dry and curled my hair, drank my coffee, checked the news, got dressed, checked the news and FINALLY there was the announcement! At first I thought it was a prank or maybe I was reading from an unreliable source (not that the local ABC station here would be inaccurate, but still), so I turned on the TV and didn't believe it until I heard the message from Chancellor Klein. Happy day!! I was then promptly flooded with about 6 text messages from various teachers about the good news... checked facebook and about 10 people had updated their statuses reflecting the March Miracle. Very happy and miraculous indeed.

Believe it or not, last night I was actually scared of the pending snow storm. Growing up for 21 years in Michigan you'd think I'd be able to handle it like a pro, but for some reason I just felt I could not mentally deal with trudging through more snow to work. So God definitely answered my prayers on this one. No mental anguish.. yippie.

In school related news, Quality Review is over which means we can all breathe a little. Last week was our first week back after our week-long midwinter break and the kids did just fine. Monday was a little rough but it's amazing how quick they fall back in place with solid daily routines. I've also implemented some new things in our day such as having a "Reader of the Week" and song of the week pertaining to whatever theme we're learning about that week (last week was doctors... this week "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb").

The Reader of the Week came about really organically... it's just something little Ms. Devil* did one day, and it was a great experience. Basically she just came up and sat in my chair with the book of the week, and after getting mad for about a second because she was being crazy and not listening, I saw how she was modeling reading and it clicked how important that is and how every child should get the opportunity to be the teacher and model doing something correctly.

Even though she's only an "emergent speaker", she did great and prompted all of the kids to point to the doctor in the picture and showed them "ears", "stethoscope", "doctor", "shot", and all of the other important vocab in the book. For me it was just like WOO she gets it!!!!

And I'll try to post more regularly, I really will. Hope everyone's having a great Monday!

PS: I'm super proud of myself for NOT going to bed after hearing we had a snow day... I figured it's better to stay on my schedule and get work done around the apt.... and so far it's been great!

*Formerly called "The New Girl"