Adventures in Primary Teaching

So Matt and I have been teaching the nine-year-old's in primary for several months now and it can be such a challenge sometimes! The boys are constantly trying to be silly and make each other laugh. We often hear comments like " um..uhh...if Samuel the Lamanite was being shot at by arrows, would the arrows hit his bed? he he ha ha" What the heck does that even mean?! There is one child in particular that just...exasperates me. I know she has some learning disabilities, and I try to take that into account, but sometimes, I'm just not sure how to handle her. A couple of weeks ago we were practicing for our primary program and the poor girl was in a terrible mood! I was offending her left and right with my attempts at keeping her from breaking a chair or disrupting the practice. At one point she said, "That's the last straw!!" and angrily grabbed a piece of paper and started EATING it! I practically had to beg her not to eat the paper with her part in the program on it. This has become a new habit of hers. She's always eating paper! Should I let her eat paper? Should I just ignore this behavior? How do I distract her? I've tried talking about her pretty dress etc. Doesn't work. Thankfully, she really likes Matt and she listens to him most of the time. He has been sick these past couple of weeks, so I was on my own. Anyway, if anyone has any ideas for keeping nine-year-old's interested in primary, I would LOVE to hear them. I think I'm better off with two-year-old's.

Ahhhhhh!!!

When Matt and I got engaged, the thought of handwriting names and addresses for around 150 to 200 people sounded awful, and I truly thought it was when I actually had to to it. I was such a wimp! I had only experienced a fraction of the monotony, aches and pain that I have come to know over the past two weeks. Matt and I decided we wanted to make a little extra money so we could pay off our new car quickly, so we resorted to THIS!! It may not look like much, but that's 1100 envelopes and 8 hours of work. The processes involves signing and folding each paper, followed by hand writing each name and address and stuffing the envelope. We haven't even gotten around to the other 400 or so envelopes still waiting for us. We also have to seal and stamp each envelope. That part really isn't so bad, it just makes my back hurt. Though the piles of envelopes seam never ending, Matt and I work well together and I usually get a good back rub out of it. We get 12 cents for each envelope, so it's a pretty decent deal. This car better be worth it!