Tomorrow I will try to get up early and get to work early, because I have lots to prepare. We are done with Under the Sea (almost — I forgot to give everyone a real shark tooth to take home, so we will probably read a shark book at story time and then blow their minds by handing out the teeth), and so I will have to take all the books off the shelf and put up new ones, for our Wild Animals theme. I will, of course, label each book’s place on the shelf, so that the kids will know where to put them back when they are done reading them. We’ll probably read this book:
I also need to dig out my zoo animals files, to find the activities and art projects I have used in the past. Somewhere, hopefully in the IKEA box with the files, are my plastic zoo animals, to bring out for play in the block area. I need to go through my iTunes library to find all the songs I’ve got about animals and the zoo. (My son actually came in to wake me up this morning, and sang “Mama’s taking me to the zoo tomorrow” — and we did indeed go to the zoo today. I guess ten year olds still aren’t too old for the zoo.) So yeah, I’ve got to find that Raffi song.
The room needs cleaning up, as well. Tomorow we’ve got some muckety-mucks visiting the school to evaluate us as a whole, and they will be in our classroom in the afternoon, when Miss Mellow is teaching. I’d hate for a messy room to make a bad impression, so that’s on my list.
Because we are still working on counting to five, I will quick make some placemats so that the kids in the house corner can work on setting two, three, or four placemats for “dinner.” We’re going to fingerpaint at art, and I’ve got to find some numeral models to post there so that the children can try to write the numbers in fingerpaint. At the math center we are going to throw a giant die (I would really like to say ‘a giant dice’ but I know that’s only for plurals, argh) and play a game with a simple gameboard that I have to make…tomorrow before school. The new math song for the week (“Three Little Ducks”) has a poster to be located and posted.
I think I will have to stop at my favorite coffee shop on the way, and buy a cup of coffee as big as my head. This is an ambitious list, and I really, really, really hate to get out of bed in the morning if it’s before 7:30.
6 am, here I come.
Elbows, knees, dreams 
This is only tangentially relevant, but I call dice number cubes. That makes me feel better when I am only talking about one of them.
We did Goodnight Gorilla earlier this school year. The families had a lot of fun playing with the zoo cages made out of shoe boxes.
http://strongstart.blogspot.com/2010/11/goodnight-gorilla.html
5 AM wake up is standard here . . .
Jenny, I will follow your sage advice. “Number cube” sounds so much better than “die.” (Or is it spelled “di”?) Maureen, those shoeboxes are wonderful; thanks so much for sharing the idea. Gayzle, I don’t know how you can stand it.