Baby showers at school

Have I mentioned how great my students are this year? Honestly, I'm so thankful to have the group I do during this stressful time and I only pray that my situation will be similar next fall when I'll really need it!

Ever since announced I was expecting, my students have been dying to throw a party in class. Mostly because they want to avoid having class for a day, but also to honor me with a shower of sorts. :)

So, I decided that the day before Spring Break would be perfect. Especially since it's an early release and classes are only about 35 minutes long. I made my Spanish kids take a vocab (spelling) quiz first and my French kids had to correct their homework, but after that was done it was party time!

Jessica (Adriana) came in before school and put up lots of streamers and balloons, color coded for each side of the room. Students had to sit on the coordinating side of the room: blue for boy and pink for girl. First hour was fairly evenly split, but second hour was totally lopsided: all the boys (+1 lonely girl) on the boy side and all the girls on the girl side! Third, fourth and fifth hours were pretty packed on the boy side. I think word had gotten out ...

She also brought two mylar balloons and that's how I announced in most of my classes. I held up the blue balloon but in one class I faked and held up both. You should've seen their faces! Of course I said I was just kidding but they were genuinely shocked for a split second!

In third hour, Ryan (Alphonse) brought some music (Les Mis soundtrack) and also prepared a little baby game for the class. I certainly surprised that he was so excited and now that I think of it, pretty much all of my male students were pretty into it!

In fourth hour, Jaime emailed me ahead of time and baked a gender reveal cake! I missed the moment so I made them re-create it. Kendall (Reina) is looking a little fake, but excited nevertheless. :)

In fifth hour, Caroline (Carolina) brought two rolls of ribbon: one pink and one blue. She went around and had each student cut off the length they thought would correctly measure my waist. Hope (Esperanza) got it almost exactly!

I gave each student two sheets of paper and requested that they give me name suggestions. I was impressed that most of them took it seriously and gave me some legitimate options! In second hour somehow bacon was brought up and of course it was suggested that I just name the baby bacon and I said that my husband would probably go for it since he loves bacon so much! So, as expected almost half of my students wrote bacon along with their real suggestion.

I also showed my sonogram picture to a few classes which, in hindsight, was probably weird but I gave a fair warning! The girls all oooooh-ed and aahhh-ed and the boys were all surprised that it looked like such a real baby when I was hardly showing at all.

I even got a few gifts from students which I was totally not expecting. Brigita (Brigitte) made me a very genuine hand-written card and made sure to make it extra colorful since she knows I like that. Jenai gave me a little gender neutral 3-6 month onesie. I'm doubting it was brand new but I was so shocked that she went to the effort of getting me a present! Meilene (Rosa) gave me the cutest little wooden train toy with a sparkly blue bow (how did she know?) and clearance tag from Wal-Mart. :) Honestly, have I mentioned that I have the best students ever this year?

Oh, and I can't forget to mention the FOOD! Usually students flake on bringing what they sign up for, but I think most everyone brought something. I was outrageous. And delicious.

Overall, the parties were hugely successful and I'm so thankful to have such a great group this year. :)