Picture Pie and a New Idea

Hi all,

I've had a bit of a motivation problem since I returned from New Orleans.  It's been all I could do to get through the teaching day, so the blog has been neglected.  Not a good way to start a blog, but oh well.

Today I wanted to share some art/math my students did on Friday.  There is this wonderful book called Picture Pie by Ed Emberley that I picked up from a library rummage sale.  All of the pictures are made out of circles.  It's a wonderful way to teach or review fractions because students fold the circles to get halves, fourths, and eighths in order to make the pictures.

I have a document camera and a projector, so I took pictures of several of the pages from the book (since I only have 1 copy) and put up a slide show of those pages on my screen so the students could see how to make various creatures.  This can also be used as a center once the kids get the hang of it.  That way they can look at the book itself and make some of the more complex things.

Here's a few of the pictures my students made.  Sorry for any blurriness, my camera was  having issues.

And here's how they looked in the hall:

My New Idea

So, I went to the Salt Lake City Public Library today.  It's a wonderful place, of course.  The architecture is astounding.  I got myself a library card (I had one many years ago that was lost.)  I hit the children's stacks, and came across six copies of this book--just enough for reading groups.

This book (The End by David LaRochelle and Richard Egielski) tells a fairy tale-like story backward.  So, it starts with "The End" and "And they all lived happily ever after."  And it goes backward through the story.  I'm going to do this with my reading groups this week, and use it to review cause and effect.  If I manage to find the time tomorrow, I might make a page of links with each event in the story, so the kids can link the causes and effects together.  Then retell the story both backward as written, then forward.

I think I have made the links and you can get them here.  Let me know if it doesn't work. 

And finally...

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.  I am so very blessed to have a wonderful mother who taught me who I am and how to survive in the world.  To all the mothers out there, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day.

Joell