Cleaning Up

I went into an empty school today with very mixed feelings. It was quiet and I got a lot done but the whole time I was there I was thinking about fellow teachers all over the US, wondering what was happening in their classrooms today and how they were dealing with questions from their children. I also spent some time looking around my room and wondering what I would do in the event that anything happened in our school. Where would I hide my children? Well, there's nowhere! I'd have to stuff them all behind my desk - we have no large cupboards or anything like that and the class door opens outwards so we couldn't barricade it. I've never thought like this about my classroom; I never thought I would have to consider this sort of safety when I entered teaching but the reality is I see things differently now - as do many of us, I suspect, no matter where we live...

So... the paint cupboard is now clean. It is amazing what you can find at the back of a small cupboard under the sink - and quite disgusting as well! However, I now know where all the paint brushes are, I know what paint I have, I found some very nice sponges for sponge painting and, thankfully, I discovered a very old and brittle gallon of black paint that had split (!!!) and was able to carefully extract it before it spilled all over the place.
I took down all the gold tinsel, relocated the snowflakes to the corridor bulletin board and hung up rainforest flower chains and some really pretty butterflies that I got when I visited my daughter in Florida. Ready now for the kiddie creations in January!

The desks, thank goodness, are now SPOTLESS. We had a "snow" day on Friday - the only snow we'll get in this part of the world - and cleaned the desks with shaving cream. (It works beautifully - guaranteed to remove anything except permanent gold marker!) To make it an educational activity we did a little bit of addition. :)
The girls got covered in shaving cream and managed to cover the bathroom sinks - the Grade 2 students came to report it to me so we had to all troop down to the bathrooms to clean up there as well. However, this cleaning activity was a lot more fun than my solitary cleaning of the paint cupboard.

Shaving cream addition

Our "snow day"

And this was trying to be NEAT!