Spoiled!

Joe and I are SO spoiled! We have some amazing family and friends that send us goodies in the mail. Who doesn't love getting mail?

M and D send (on average) a package a month! (I told you we are spoiled!)
Well, now that we are in the final count down until it is time to say good bye to Korea, we talked M and D into sending one last package. M and D said that the last package would cover every holiday until we got home. And that wasn't a lie. 

Special delivery!

I love those two!

Look at all of those goodies!

Joe and I each got the goods to make our favorite birthday desserts. Brownies for me,  peach cobbler for Joe. All of the holidays were covered. Cadbury Eggs for Easter, four leaf clovers for St. Patrick's Day and even a very festive hat for the 4th of July! So many goodies! Our cupboards and tummies are full! 

Last month we got a surprise package from our friends the Brown's. Josh, Leah and baby Cooper sent us a package full of goodies.

Like I said our cupboards are full!

Thank you Brown's and M and D! We love all of the goodies!

More Instagram Love

You know I Love Instagram!

Here are a few of my favorite Instagram pics from the last few months.

        

       

        

        

       

           

        

 My favorite is the black and white of Joe and Eddie. Oh how I love my boys! And I love our Sunday cuddles on the couch. Joe said his favorite was the picture of our lock from N. Seoul Tower, over looking Seoul.
Oh and look at the personality in my little dog. hahaha It seems like in every picture I take of him he is showing off a different side of himself. I love that little ball of fluff!

"I can read them all!"

 You might remember Erin-Oh from her previous shenanigans.

Well, the beginning of the school year was March 4th and my schedule got switched around a bit. Now I get to teach phonics. It's not my favorite subject and it's not my favorite curriculum but we are working with it. Actually, we are working REALLY hard! Phonics is hard to learn and to be honest it's hard to teach. (Teacher friends:It's a very scripted program that is taught separately from any reading group)

We worked all week on the "en" letter combo sound. We have chants and songs, we sing, we read, we write....it has been a very busy week.

Erin let me record her reading our chant in class the other day.

I am SUPER proud of her. This is not an easy program to learn and she is really catching on. She has bought into all of the little gimmicks of the program and the rewards.

Not to mention she is the cutest little thing. Erin is so much fun to teach. She likes school. She likes learning. And, I can have fun with her without her getting too off track.


And we are now BFFS:

 This is her new favorite face. She makes it whenever she makes a mistake or is confused. If another classmate does something odd (which is often). This face is usually followed by "oh my".

I know the last time I talked about Erin-Oh she was trying to steal my husband. Lucky for me, she found a boy in her class that will be her new Prince Charming.

Valentine's Day at BIS

Although Valentine's day is celebrated in Korea, it is celebrated very differently here than it is in the US.

In Korea they have 3 different "love" themed holidays. Valentine's Day, White Day and Black Day. They are celebrated on February 14, March 14, April 14 respectively.
On Valentine's Day, men give chocolates to women.
On White Day, women give chocolates to men.
And on Black Day all the single people go out and eat noodles with black bean paste and celebrate/cry about being single.

Joe and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. I am not a big fan of forced affection so basically that means Joe is off the hook and, lets be honest, he's ok with that.

But as a teacher, I LOVE VALENTINE"S DAY!
It's one of those holidays that you can really get into without offending anyone. I always tell my students it's not just about telling someone you love them but even telling your friends that you are happy to know them. There are SO many great lessons to learn on Valentine's Day. Sharing, supporting one another, being nice to someone even though they may not be your best friend. I love Valentine's day!

Somehow I convinced my boss that we should have a Valentine's day party with the kindergartners. I planned the whole thing! An entire day of Valentines day fun!

In the weeks leading up to Valentine's day I sent a letter home to parents explaining how to make Valentines day cards and that we would be giving them to each other. I spent some time in each class making valentines and talking about how we need to make one card for each of our Friends at BIS.
The Friday before Valentines day during art class we made "mail boxes", to collect our cards. Those "mail-boxes" were a HUGE hit!

Are they not SO cute being all serious decorating their mail boxes? I think they turned out great!

     

        

       

        

       

        

     

On Valentine's day the kids played mail carrier and delivered all of their letters. It took them fooorever to deliver all of their letters. It was good practice with reading and matching the names from the cards to the names on the mail boxes. Some of the kids that finished quickly were able to help a friend deliver mail. Obviously it was super cute!

        

        

        

           

After the letters were delivered the kids were able to travel around the school from station to station on their own.

We had games in the gym with Mr. Joe
Valentine's day BINGO with Ms. Cathy
Face painting with Ms. Hanna
Manicure station with Ms. Ramos
Cereal necklaces and heart bracelets with Ms. Jessica and Ms. Vicky
Bead bracelets and heart hats with Ms. Stephanie

The kids traveled to each station, when they finished a station they got a stamp on their Valentine's day "passport".

           

        

           

           

        

 Some how the paparazzi missed Joe's station. But as you can see the kids are cute and they had fun!

Before lunch the kids all got to dig into their mail boxes and read their Valentines day cards. This was by far my favorite part of the day. The kids were so cute reading the cards from their friends. What I loved most was that each card was hand made. Cute little kid writing, with fragment sentences and "I love you's".

          

       

       

       

     

Joe and I each picked out and gave valentines to the kids. I searched Pinterest for the perfect teacher valentine. Joe picked a glow stick bracelet valentine that I found here. I made it pretty easy for him...all he had to do was sign his name. The kids LOVED his valentine. I think he out shined me. (haha, did you see what I did there?..he gave a glow stick..he out shined me...*shrugs shoulders*)

This is the only picture I have of Joe's little valentine. They were a big hit! The kids loved the glow stick bracelets. Obviously you can tell this kid LOVED it! haha

I gave CANDY! I love candy. And I knew that none of the children would think to bring candy. I found the the perfect candy bag label here. I wrote a little note, maybe 4 sentences to each student and stapled the note and paper candy bag topper to a little zip lock bag of candy!

        

 My favorite part of my valentines was watching the kids read the little notes I wrote to them. I used the nicknames I have for the kids and wrote something personal for each kid. It was fun to see them get excited about a note just for them.


It was the perfect Valentine's day party!