Hello everyone, It has been a very long time since I have been able to write anything. I’m sorry if you missed me. On the fourth day of school this year, on 9-11 to be exact, I took a tumble in the classroom and injured my shoulder!
The school year started out great, and I was so excited to be in First Grade in a Christian School. It was going to be a change from a public middle school, and even stranger being all the way across the country in Washington state instead of Georgia. Whew! I was very happy to begin a new journey.
Then disaster…
I was passing out take-home folders at the end of the day and tripped on a book. When I fell, I tried to avoid falling on a sweet little girl, and crashed with my arm outstretched like super woman.
Me, with beautiful flowers from my school.
HOWEVER, I am not super woman, and all the force of the fall went into my shoulder. It resulted in several injuries, and I was taken by ambulance to the emergency room. I thought I had dislocated my shoulder, and they would just pop it back in, but unfortunately, a broken humerus is not humorous. I actually broke the ball of the humerus in the joint, tore cartilage, muscle, and tendons, and impacted the AC joint. It has been a long recovery. After 6 weeks out of the classroom in a sling as the arm healed, I went back to work, and had to stop again due to pain. My doctor tried everything, but I ended up having surgery on February 9th to remove bone from my shoulder to relieve pressure in the joint. I just went back to teaching this week, although I am still going to physical therapy and will be for a while.
Although I was out a while, when I got back, I was greeted by the sweetest little get well cards. The class I have is just as sweet as can be!
One of the first activities we did when I got back in October was a trip to the pumpkin farm. Then we had a fun Fall Festival and I dressed up as a farmer. It was so good to be out of the sling!
My kiddos made cute little Minions to decorate our door. Our theme was ” A Minion Reasons to Give Thanks!”
I was still dealing with a lot of pain, but I wasn’t letting it stop me at school. We made these great turkey puppets for Thanksgiving and had a delicious Thanksgiving celebration.
Christmas was just around the corner. We made Christmas decorations for the classroom, like this door decoration make with tissue paper, contact paper and green masking tape.
At this point, the pain was too much for me to bear. I had to leave the week before Christmas, but I was able to attend the Christmas concert.
I was also able to come back for the classroom Christmas party, and I got this beautiful ornament from the class with all their names on the back:
I rested over the holiday, and when I got back, I had lots of artwork like this one to greet me. My kids missed me, and I had missed them.
It was January, the pain was not going away, even with lots of physical therapy and the doctor finally got approval to do surgery from the insurance company. A couple of fun things we did before my surgery is we learned all about penguins with my Penguins PowerPoint and made cute little penguins.
We also did a skit of Daniel in the Lions’ Den (which I wrote and is available in my TPT store), and we performed it at all school chapel. It was a great success!
We also had fun making my mini books for Groundhog Day:
The weekend before I went into surgery, I got my Nashville conference T-shirt from Teacherspayteachers. I was so excited, and hopeful that I would be healed and out of pain by summer!
After surgery my family and the school again showered me with flowers, prayers, and get well wishes.
I hated that I had to miss the 100th day of school and Valentines Day, but my kids had fun doing their projects. Here is one with 100 Legos!
So this week, I came back to school, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. We made shamrocks and learned about St. Patrick, and then I freshened up my bulletin board for spring!
So now I have brought you up to date on Mrs. Hayes’s Happenings! It has been a rough year, but the surgery was successful in that the pain I was having has gone away! I am still having other issues, but I am slowly healing and hope to be fully recovered soon.
So, I hope to get back to blogging now that I can type without pain, and share with you the wonderful things we are doing in First Grade! Right now, I am very excited because I am watching them graduate from learning to read to reading for enjoyment. My kiddos love reading and are starting to read chapter books! The other day when it was time for recess, one of my kids actually groaned, and said, “Recess? Aw, but I’m reading!”
SUCCESS!
We are working on telling time on analog clocks right now, and having lots of fun with my new telling time interactive PowerPoints. I use them with Judy clocks, and the kids love it.
So glad to be back…watch my store for a new freebie coming out this week!
Best wishes for success always,
Deborah
