Another day down!

Today's math stations were great! I love when things work out as planned with few speed bumps.  However, as excited as the kids were the past two days to start stations, the same excitement wasn't there today. Funny how it works. The kids were great at the transitions between activities which we worked hard on first term. I was very pleased to see them hanging on to these skills.  Here's hoping tomorrow's stations run just as well!

Two more school days this week!!!

Two days down and I can't wait for Friday! It's amazing how tired the kids are these past two days. But not surprising considering I'm in the same boat.  I felt like I really had to reach down to my toes to find the energy to make it through today. I always find on the days when the kids are tired, I use more energy to pull us all through the day. Here's hoping everyone (teacher included) in our class has a great night's sleep!!!!

On the plus side, the stations are just about ready to go and the kids are super excited. Their excitement is what has me working a little overtime tonight to make sure the stations go well. Here's a run down of what we're doing:
1. Guided Math - this will be a less on adding three numbers (tailored to the needs of my groups)
2. Calendar - a new month, a new calendar and questions for the kiddos to complete
3. Math game - a game focusing on subtracting from 12 (for 2012)
4. Sorting Station - sorting number sentences into three groups (greater than/less than/equal to 12)
5. Pattern block puzzles - a variety of different winter pattern block puzzles with the challenge to solve a variety of ways and record the number of shapes used.
6. Counting station - estimating and counting a variety of winter shapes (focus on counting a variety of ways to make sure you get the same number both times!!!)
7. Measurement - what is that mass of that snowman? We'll be measuring using pennies, cubes, rods, crayons and gems to see how many of each it will take to balance our snowman.

Today we went through each station and the expectations attached to each. Tonight's homework for me - make some fool proof recording sheets, tweak some instructions and put together the "I Can" charts for each based on today's conversation.  It's a lot of prep work, but worth it to see the kids so involved and excited!!!! Also, with 21 kiddies in my class this will take me up until next Tuesday!

happy Wednesday all!

First Day Back

Well today was the first day back for us! And boy was it exhausting to be in school all day! However, I was loving the Teacher-Librarian portion of my position today. There's nothing like the feeling of helping your fellow teachers and today I was able to do that!  It's also a great feeling to be "needed"!  I have lists of what topics teachers are covering, their reading needs, plans in the works for author studies and research stations, ideas for motivating readers and a to-do list to tackle. So all in all, I'm one happy teacher.

As for the afternoon, math went well and the kids loved the new math fact practice game I found from another blogger that I've been stalking. We're doing activities with the number 12 this week to welcome 2012 and the kids can't wait for stations to begin!!!!!  (They were disappointed that we didn't start today and even more so when I told them we won't start until Thursday - I want to take some time to review station protocol and the activities before we dive in. I LOVE that they are so into the stations!) 

The downfall to being back to school...not enough time to read other blogs and get great ideas for my kiddos!  I feel like I'm missing out on all the great things happening in the online world while I'm school!  Oh well, that's why we have evenings and weekends!

Happy Tuesday to all! Enjoy the rest of your evening!

Day Two...and I'm still at it

Well it's a dreary lazy day in my little piece of the world. Outside the wind is howling and the rain is falling and I'm not really motivated to get ready for school tomorrow. So a perfect time to spend an afternoon in blog land. I've been reading and searching for the past little bit looking for inspiration and have found a few great ideas for some Happy New Year math center activities.  There were one or two that matched my needs exactly, now to be creative and construct some of my own based on my curriculum outcomes. Here's hoping that by the end of tomorrow night I'll have seven wonderful math centers and guided math lessons ready to roll for Wednesday. Tomorrow will be a a bit of getting back into the routine and introducing a new monthly calendar and reviewing our weather graph and countdown to the 100th day. I'll also teach a new game or two if time allows.
Now...to pray that not a lot was forgotten over the past two weeks of vacation.  I know I'll need to do a little bit of reminding but hope there's not a lot of reteaching that will have to take place!

Happy New Year and Happy New Blog!

A new year and a new adventure for me! This year's resolution (for lack of a more inspiring word) is to create and maintain my own blog. I'll start with the promise to post something everyday knowing that when procrastination takes over I'll at least feel guilty enough to post a couple of times a week.  I'm sure my little ol' life will be exciting enough to write about every day but finding the time may be tricky.  This blog will mainly be about my adventures in teaching but I'm sure some of the ordinary life stuff will slip in from time to time. 
Well, now that I'm set up, it's time to post my first post. I'll try not to post a million things today and save some for the rest of the week.
Happy New Year to all!