Crazy Hair Day and Crazy class pictures

Welcome to Third Grade...again!

Last year, my third year at The Vine Academy ( a home-school school that meets twice a week), I taught a combo 3rd/4th grade class with 6 third graders and 3 fourth graders. I had taught all the fourth graders the year before, so that was kind of fun having kids from one class for two years, but the challenge of teaching both grade levels was exhausting. I did have an aide without which I probably would have gone bonkers. Unfortunately the young, sweet, inexperienced aide who started off the year with us, quit at Christmas time, so we had to scramble over Christmas break to replace her. Her replacement was the pre-K teacher, a very strict, stern, mother-of-four who didn't tolerate the fourth graders slacking off. It was a huge adjustment for the fourth graders from the first aide to the second, but all-in-all, they had a good year and learned alot, at least enough to go on to 5th grade!


So this is my fourth year teaching 3rd grade at The Vine. Each year brings a fresh new class of kids and parents to get to know and figure out how to best teach them. I started off with 9 kids in my class, 5 boys and 4 girls.

One of the little girls (Hannah) had been the only girl with all those boys for the past two years and she had prayed and prayed that God would bring her some little girls to play with in her class. Her prayers were answered, but after about a month of school, her parents decided that it would be best for Hannah to continue this year working as home with her Mom. Although it was a tough decision for her parents to make, I agreed with them but Hannah would still be invited to be part of our class for all field trips and class parties and occassional art projects. Every once in a while Hannah pops into our classroom during the last 5 minutes of school and she is always welcomed by the kids and she is always glad to see them!

So let me introduce some of my other students for this year.

This is Holland (in blue) and Noelle (in pink). Shown below are Mikie (with Holland peering over his shoulder) and Samuel C. (in the green shirt) saying "HEY!". Samuel C. lives a long way from the Vine so he only attends our class one day a week.

At the end of October the school had "Crazy Hair Day" so the kids all came to school with the zaniest hair styles they could manage. At the end of the day prizes were awarded, but even if they didn't get prizes, the kids always enjoy getting to be a little bit crazy!

Crazy Hair participants were (L. to R.)
Sammy M (red & blue striped shirt), Timmy (closed eyes, brown shirt), Noelle, Milahna, and Holland.

Check out the mural on the wall in the background! Pretty cool, huh! This church has a very talented artist who painted each class room a different geographical location. One year our class was in the jungle. Last year we were in the midst of a high mountain range. And this year I think we're on a safari somewhere in Africa.

At the end of the day, one of the parents took a class shot for us.

First the nice pose...

followed by a totally silly pose.

It's a fun, sweet and interesting class with a lot of diversity in ability levels so I have my work cut out for me again this year. But so far, we're having a good time and everyone seems to be making so progress. Praise the Lord!