Sunday Projects and a Columbus Day Project!

When I signed up to run a marathon back in May, I didn't think of how all this training would affect my teaching. Well, let me tell you...my productivity on Sundays has greatly increased, because what else can you do after running 18 miles in the freezing cold rain, but sit in your comfy clothes and slippers, stalking blogs and laminating! It's too painful to move, so instead I just move my fingers. I spent my Sunday pressing "pin" or "print" and  switching on the laminator.

I don't know about everyone else, but we have a half day tomorrow for Columbus Day, and then parent teacher conferences on Friday. That means way less teaching time this week, with a ton to fit in. So I had to get creative and really integrate across subjects this week. We had paced that this week would be the apple unit, which I love. I'm so sad I only get 3 full days to teach it.

Tomorrow I need to focus on Columbus Day, so I made this little shape review craft. I think its important for students to cut, and arrange shapes because it gives them hands on experience manipulating them and thus better able to describe each shape's characteristics (right angles, vertices, sides). I plan on doing this tomorrow because we really don't have time for math with the half day...it will be a social studies/math/writing integration. After the students create their Columbus ship, they will write about facts they have learned about Columbus. It's a simple task, but it hits everything I need to cover tomorrow in a short amount of time. If they come out cute, I'll have work to display in the hallway for parent teacher conferences too!

Here's my other creation from this weekend. Over the summer I put out a Facebook post asking if I could take anyone's old iPods off their hands. It seems with the overwhelming popularity of the iPhone, that people don't need their iPods anymore. WOW! I got a great response and acquired 4 gently used iPods within the week. So this week we will be gearing up for Listening Station (the right way, not the Starfall way). I'm so excited! I spent an hour or so reading Robert Munsch books and other authors we've read so far to my computer. I used Garage Band on my mac and it was a breeze. Now each Ipod has 4 books recorded on it and ready to go for tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes, but it was a simple idea, my friends (Thank you Kelly, Mary and Nicole!) got to help my classroom and I think the kids will love it!