Smiling's My Favorite

So often I get engulfed in the difficulties of life and let them swallow me up rather than pause to reflect on the beauty of the positive.  So, here’s my attempt at savoring the precious moments of life and making an effort at letting them outshine the negative.

Things that make me smile: 

*The fact that God sent his precious son to bear all of our sins.   The strongest kind of love there is, and he's offering it to us.  I know I will never be able to fathom it, but sometimes it just really hits me.

*When G (boy) breaks out into song randomly… my favorite: Party Rock Anthem.

*How L spelled the word August: Ogist (usin’ his sounds, man!)

*A girl took out 4 dollar bills and another child said that wasn't very much money, M replied, “Uh, yeah it is, she has 400 cents there.”

*When I had Christmas music playing while we worked, the whole class began to sing when “Silent Night” came on.  It was so peaceful and sweet.

*When I told S that he had a beautiful singing voice and R, who was standing right next to me started belting out some musical notes in her best opera voice.  Oh goodness… J

*When students go and sit right by Frizzle (our Elf on the Shelf) and start up a full conversation with him.

*The random hugs that I get throughout the day.

*This e-mail from one of my kiddo’s mom: "Thank you for all that you do and the care and love you display each and every day to the children you teach.  We so often take people for granted and we want you to know how much we truly appreciate you and are very blessed to have you leading X."  People do not realize how much these kids of words affect teachers.  This brought tears to my eyes and gave me JUST what I needed to get through the rest of the day, full of energy.

*This morning I heard a story about one of my boys who gave a quarter to a kiddo that didn't have one so he could buy a book from our book sale today.

*How R starts every sentence (well practically every sentence) with: “technically.”

*L was wearing a shirt that said “I didn't do it, my sister did,” and he told me “it’s a teaser.”  (love their vocab!)

*When kids come back from the bathroom with their shirts tucked into their underwear.

*When all my kids beg for me to read another story.

*When we were putting our fingerprints onto our elf applications to Santa, one kiddo put his entire finger (up to the palm) onto the ink pad and I said, “no, honey, just your finger.”  He looked at me confused and I realized how much we say that just doesn't always make sense to them.  He was doing it right according to my directions!

*My little girlie that goes to speech came back with a pencil and a note saying that she worked extra hard today so she could give me a pencil.  Later on the speech teacher came and told me that S asked if she could work hard to get a pencil for herself, and then extra hard to get a pencil for me too because I was having a rough day since M wasn't listening.  O.M.W.  How stinking sweet.  They put so much together in their cute little minds.

*G got 0 out of 5 addition problems to 10 wrong on her test last week, and after working so very hard for so long with her it was defeating.  But then, in a matter of a few days, she completed 10/11 addition problems correctly ON HER OWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Talk about a celebration.

*How G (same girl as above) has so much trouble identifying coins, let alone counting them up, but with the help of her parents and me pulling her in a group every day to work with her individually, she completed 6 counting coin problems ON HER OWN correctly.  I just cried.  And I’m crying now writing about it!  I can’t express how overjoyed I am.

*Frizzle (our Elf on the Shelf) gave us a mission to show kindness to one another.  Now, whenever a kid gets praised for showing kindness (such as offering to I pass out papers or hand their paper to someone else) there are always a few who, (while making eye contact with me) “copy” the act so they get praised too. J  Such cuties.  They’re really catching onto this kindness thing… I was actually going to fizzle it out because it seemed just like yet another tiny thing to manage, talk about, and plan, but they are really catching onto it.  Today I had so many reports of kind acts and I could see how it just lit up their little hearts!

*After hearing about our kindness mission and discussing how we don’t always get rewarded when we complete kind acts, this was R’s reply, “well, technically we do get rewarded because it fills our hearts up to the brim.”  Talk about cuteness.

*K comes up to me and says, “Did these {copies} take long to print?”  My reply: “no, not really.”  K:  “Oh, well you did a very nice job printing.”

*When the kids say, “Grabby hands don’t get,” as a reminder not to grab the papers from me when I pass them out.  Love how they catch on to so very much. 

That just touched the surface of the last few days in first grade.  By looking at the praises, the heaviness of daily battles really seems to diminish a little more.  Maybe I’ll get better at it and soon it won’t take much effort at all!