How interesting to rediscover this Blog after quite a few years.

 I am working from home today, doing PD (Professional Development). I am interested in earning my Google Educator Level 2 certification. One of the first lessons I encountered when I began the training was to create a blog post in Blogger. When I logged into Blogger, here was my old tiny blog waiting for me. I didn't remember which site I had used to write about a couple of creative moments from several years back. I'm suddenly driven to try to write again with all the other distractions of the day. This feels extremely satisfying...

Computer Lab

I decided to share some of my classroom ideas with the world and this old blog of mine seemed like a good place to put everything. I'm going to start slow and see how it goes.

My latest inspiration came from a Pinterest picture:

Pinterest Classroom Clock

I was excited as I pondered what inspirational word I might be able to fit on my clock wall but when I got to school, I realized my clock was part of a "double-o" situation. I looked through my wall of windows into the library and saw the same clock situation in there. "BOOKS" instantly popped into my head and I ran in to tell my librarian, "You need to do this!"
I was feeling a little bit bummed about my own clock but later that night, my word came to me and it was so obvious.

Google!

This is a computer lab after all and a Google Classroom. So there you go, lab teachers! I hope I've inspired some of you.

Beholden to a Spider

Beholden to a Spider

When the geraniums came in to spend winter on the big coffee table that my Aunt Nancy gave me; the low, green table that matched a china cupboard and some other odds and ends of furniture that I vaguely remember from the spare room at my grandma's where my mom stayed when she left us. A round table that is so big and so low that no one knew what to do with it and besides it has a cigarette burn on it, I spotted a golden spider in one of the plants. He was very small and drawn up into a little box shape and I was busy trying to fit all the pots in the big window and on the table to maximize the southern sunshine and I figured he'd make his way off soon.
He was still there a few weeks later when I pulled some of the yellowed leaves and old blooms off, hanging on a tiny zigzag of web between two pink geranium blossoms.
Today I had to pull off a good deal more yellowed leaves and shriveled blooms, including the two now dry spires his web spanned. I gently set him down, still perched on his dried pink stem, into the center of the plant. It's too cold to put him outside now.

Before and After: Basement Stairs Project

I have been annoyed with our basement steps since we bought this house 14 years ago. They were covered with blobs of construction adhesive and drywall paste and paint drips. The basement remains unfinished but the kids do have a rec room area and we all traverse the stairs daily. Several years ago, we sealed and painted the basement floor and carried the gray theme up the steps. We glued rubber treads down for traction and they're functional but still ugly. I may have just made them uglier! This stairwell is a work in progress.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

Well? How did I do? It was free because I used paint from previous projects. I left the treads alone and only painted the risers. The kids all smiled when they discovered it. The husband just thinks it's trippy (no pun intended).

Next up for the stairwell: Paint the walls, hang some pictures (another project), paint the door we installed and finish the drywall around the framing.