Happy New Year - Back to reality!

It was a great break and now it is over.  For some reason our illustrious school district decided that it was a good idea for teachers to have a work day yesterday (Friday) - I guess it wasn't so bad (I led workshops on using Discovery Streaming video and BrainPop to our teachers all day long) BUT it still was not a great way to end the vacation, made worse by me stepping over my sleeping children (they like to sleep in the family room during break - weird kids, I know) on my way to work yesterday.

In other news, I got this tid bit from Jen Robinson -  2009 is the year of SCIENCE - I love it!  Over at Loree Griffin Burns blog she gives us all kinds of resources to use in the year of Science. January is Process and nature of science month - the last two weeks of January I am doing my SNOW unit and we are making snow in the media center - I think this goes along with the theme.  February is Evolution - I might have to be creative on this one!

Also this week, the Cybils announced their finalists - and I am happy to report that I have actually READ a lot of the books mentioned here (which makes me feel better, the end of year best of lists were making me feel bad since I had read so few of the books mentioned!) Of course, I did end my vacation yesterday with a trip to the public library to check out a few of the books I missed!

And finally, now that 2009 is here I am getting really excited about my two author visits in March - Deborah Wiles and Nina Laden!  I love reading Deborah's blog and she had a great bit of wisdom for the beginning of a new year: 

" Real life, as Uncle Edisto tells us, is messy.  It's not organized, no matter how hard we try to contain it.  The best we can hope for is some semblance of sweet routine, and meaningful daily rituals."

Here is to hoping that 2009 has some routine, rituals and some sweet surprises in store!