Classroom party volunteers

Thank you so much to those of you who have already signed up to help us out with classroom parties and with other jobs for our classroom.  If you have any interest in helping out our class, please see this link to find out what jobs are still available.

As for weekly classroom opportunities, I'm still working on assessing the kids and will determine my need after that.  I'll keep you updated on opportunities as I see fit!

Friday Fun!

Each week we can earn time for some Friday Fun!  We do a variety of things, but this activity is typically one of the most popular choices and it may bring back some memories from your childhood!  If you take a peek at the screen, can you tell what my friends are watching?  It's The Brady Bunch!  Let me tell you, this show gets lots of laughs and giggles--especially when Mr. and Mrs. Brady show their affection towards each other! :-)  I predict that in the not too distant future, the kids will be singing the words to the theme song!

New math word...don't we sound smart!

We learned a new math vocabulary word today...EQUIVALENT!  See if your child can remember what the word means.  One of our goals in math is to understand that the equals sign doesn't mean the answer; rather, it means that what is on one side of the sign is the same as what is on the other side of the sign. 

After our mini lesson we did an activity that allowed us to put the concept of equivalency into practice.  We got to work with some teammates to find other ways to represent numbers with the help of a calculator.  However, there was a catch...one of the keys on the calculator was "broken" so the kids had to work to find ways to represent the identified number without using that broken number.  It was fun to work on this!

Learning New Math Games!

Today we learned 3 new games to play during our math workshop time!  There was a lot of excitement at learning and playing them.  

One is called Top It and it's just like the game of war you would play with a regular deck of cards.  Our cards were special math cards, but the concept was still the same!  

Another new game was called I Sea 10.  In this game there are lots of chips with sea creatures on one side and numbers on the other, with some sharks mixed in too.  Going around in a circle each person flips one chip to see what's on the back.  As more and more chips are revealed (hopefully with numbers on them!) it's each player's job to "Sea 10" by adding up two numbers and when they do they shout out "I Sea 10!" That player then gets to keep the pair who's sum is 10.  If a player flips over a shark though, they have to put back all the chips they've collected. 

Our last new game might look familiar from the outside but we're using it differently in our class.  Connect 4 is being used as Connect 10 where once again the goal is to make a sum of 10 using 2-7 chips that have numbers on each of them.  In order to make the 10, chips are placed in the holder vertically, horizontally, and diagonally (like a regular game of Connect 4).  The trick??  Players cannot look at the chips they are drawing!  

If any of these sound like fun family games for you, please let me know and I'd be happy to get you more information on them!  I love good strategy games for the kids!

This was our Top It station

I Sea 10...lots of fun with this one!

One board of Connect 10 with Mrs. Woods' help!

A second board of Connect 10...playing in partner pairs!

 

A Minty Fresh Kick Off Activity

We ended our first full day doing an activity with toothpaste!  As we set out to establish a positive culture and atmosphere in our class we talked about what it means to be a good friend.  The kids then went to their seats where they were each given a small paper plate and a travel size tube of toothpaste.  Their task was to squeeze out as much toothpaste as possible.  Thinking this was an incredibly fun task, they all went to town getting out all the toothpaste--they did a great job!  About 5 minutes later they found out their next task was to put all the toothpaste back into the tube.  I wish you could have seen the looks I got!  It was fun to see how each child approached that task!  After struggling for a bit, they all threw away their materials and we talked about how the toothpaste was like our words and the tube was like out mouth.  It was so easy to get the toothpaste out--and it is so easy to let words come out of our mouths.  However, like the toothpaste, mean/inappropriate words are not very easy to put back in our mouths so we must be careful how we use them.  I think this message was received, but as I told the kids...your actions will show me! 

The '18-'19 2M Cougars!!

Here we are!  So lucky to be able to work with these kids each day!  This year is going to be a magical one!