Blogs by State Link Up

Hi all,

Just a quick post.  Diane over at Fifth in the Middle created this wonderful blog by state linky.  So, I'm going to go ahead and join her.

I'm a Utah blogger!

I look forward to seeing where everyone's from and finding a few fellow Utahns.

Joell

It's Been a While...

Hi,

I had a lovely vacation in San Diego followed by parent-teacher conferences.  February has been crazy busy as it usually is.  We had Groundhog Day, the 100th Day, Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, President's Day and parent teacher conferences.  No wonder I'm so tired!

We are currently working on maps and I got the biggest kick out of a few of the maps my students chose to draw.  I just had to share.

She got the Utah "Yoming" and "Callorado" placements fairly right.  Love that she has an East and West pole, placed on the appropriate sides of the map.  "Areazona" is just to the northwest of China.  Texas is just above the South Pole.  Florida is above Texas, then there's Pennsylvania, Washington, and Logen?   California is just east of the North Pole and Mexico is west of the North Pole with Canada just below Mexico.  :)  

This one is a map of her bedroom.  I love the microphone, guitar and drums in the middle.  

And we have a nice little neighborhood map here.

This week will be a fairly calm week compared to the rest of February.  Hopefully, I'll get around to posting about the awesome ipad app I used.  Yes, that's shameless teasing and self-promotion there.

Joell

Stuff We've Been Doing

Hi all,

I took some pictures the other day, so I'm going to share some of the things we've done this last week or so.

First, in preparation for President's Day, we used A Cupcake for the Teacher's President's Day Craftivity.  We read Abe Lincoln's Hat and brainstormed what items we might put in the hat.  I took pictures of some of the work before they added the cover over their writing.

I would put my candy and one of my barbies in and letters.  (I love her attempt at commas--at least she's trying.)

I would put frogs in it because when they ribbit it will be funny.  (I love the bloodshot eyes!)

I will put my Batman Toy and donuts and my wallet and a candy.  (He's certainly prepared.)

We did a quick Valentine's Day bug project:  Lots of hearts and they assemble them into bugs.  I was too lazy to change the yellow background paper, but they still look cute.

As a bit of a follow up of an earlier post, we have been working on number sense.  We're now working on greater than/less than. I have to say this group is catching on to it very well.  We played this game.  Each player rolls a double dice.  The large die tells the tens, the smaller tells the ones.  In a previous game they drew and wrote the number.  Now they just write their numbers.  Then they both have to agree whether the first number is > < or =.  After 10 rounds, they circle who had the greater number and count to see who won.  We played it another day with the smaller number winning.  Finally, I'll add a greater than/less than spinner to determine the winner next week.  Here's how a couple of the pages turned out.

And finally, my co-worker made the greatest bulletin board.  I had to take a picture of it.  I won't have time to do it this year, but hopefully next.

The other day we borrowed some iPads from the library and used socrative for the first time.  I loved it!  It deserves a whole 'nother post, so be watching for it soon.

Thanks for stopping by!
Joell

Recess Duty Woes

Hi all,

I had recess duty yesterday.  We have snow and ice on the ground here.  I was standing on the snow which was fairly packed.  I yelled at  told a group of kids who were deliberately sliding on the slush to stop it or they were going to fall.  The next thing I knew I was on the ground.  I twisted my left ankle.  But the snow broke the fall, so I didn't hurt anything else.  I iced it last night and took ibuprofen.  Today as I taught it got more and more swollen.  So, I ended up at the clinic.  They took x-rays and determined it's only a sprain and not broken.  Be careful out there on your recess duty, especially on snow and ice!

The lovely ankle brace I get to wear for a week.