One down. 17 more to go! How were your students today? Mine did a great job despite being tired. Poor things!
Let’s see… I got a new student. ELL and has a tracheotomy! Yep. Supposedly requires nothing from me….hmmmmm we shall see. But people, the gurgling sound is wearing on me already!! It’s not a pleasant sound! My newest monster is sweet and her mom was so sweet!! She kept thanking me over and over again!
And one of my monsters greeted me with sheer excitment: “Mr. Greg I am so happy to be back at school!” Me too monster, me too!!!!!
And then…the GREAT DIVA BATTLE OF 2012 finally came to a head today!! My monster who thinks she’s the boss of the applesauce was not victorious in the great diva off. People, in the middle of reading. Moosletoe (don’t mess with my favorite books!) she ( are you ready!?!). Turned her her back to me. And started having a conversation with another monster. Oh no she didn’t . Well, she felt my wrath. And I’m pretty sure she now knows that I AM THE DIVA OF MONSTERS INC. really!?! Didn’t even care that I was there. Humph!
Monday Math Minute!
I want to share with you my new favorite math manipulative! Are you ready?! It’s old school…but it’s a crowd favorite! Boys…girls…young…old…in fact, today I got asked a billion times..
“Are we going to get to use our LEGOS?”
That’s right Legos are now my go to math manipulative!!!!! Seriously, they are great for all sorts of math skills!
Right now, we are using them to subtract! Today we learned that subtract means take away or break apart. We counted 5 Legos onto our plates and took away 3. We learned that 5-3=2. This was such a great visual, tactile and CONCRETE way for my students to grasp subtraction. They could actually see and feel the taking away process! And we used our Legos!
We spent our last two weeks learning how to add with Legos. We learned that adding means put together and we were able to count red and blue legos and “put them together” to find our answer!
Legos are also great for composing and decomposing numbers! Give students two colors (I have red and blue!) and tell them to make six. Write the combinations on a class chart. You can repeat this with any number!
You can do patterns…counting…one to one correspondence…shapes…measurement…the possibilities are endless!!!
If you live near a Lego store (or you can go their website) you can actually buy Legos in bulk in the colors and sizes you want. For $15 I got a large container of red and blue square legos. I had enough for each child to get a set of 10 (5 red and 5 blue) and still have half of the container left!!
How do you or how could you use Legos in your classroom?
And it’s Monday so that means it is Silly Hat Monday in Monsters Inc! This week we are doing TH…as in THOOT ME NOW for teaching this so early in the year. WOW! Frustrating, but we did ok! So we needed a hat…and I whipped this THUNDERSTORM hat up this morning!!! And we can use it again for BR…brainstorming! HOLLA!
My American Gladiator name is now Thunderstorm!
And if you want to make your own Thunderstorm hat, click on the picture for the download!
But you have to share pictures of yourself wearing it!
And yes, it’s CYBER MONDAY! I just heard that 24 million more people are shopping online today and that online shopping will peak later this evening! Are you shopping online? Be sure to visit my store (which contains a kindergarten smorgasboard of selections and products for your monsters!) and get 28% off of your purchase!!!
