Oh Yes! Five For Friday

 This has been my first five day week in what feels like a long time due to scheduled days off for holidays or PD and snow days!  Wow....I'm exhausted.  But I wanted to share just a little from our busy week!

1. 

Today we celebrated being 100 days smarter!  It is not technically our 100th day of school.  But we base it off their number of the day sheet.  And this was the day that we finally hit 100.  This was one of my favorite shirts today.  All the classes (school wide) got to move around and do activities around the number 100 with different teachers.  There was so much energy in the school.

2.

I am all about themes when it comes to story problems (or math stories--as we are trying to call them).  I think they invest in the math stories more when they revolve around one theme.  Currently...we are teddy bear store owners.  Each group named their store.  We have "Bears R Us," "Scruffy and Jerry's Teddy Bear Store," "Bear Mart," and "Build A Bear."  Pictured above are the math story mats that they they get to use.

3.

I just have to say that whether it is a student or your own child (don't judge the Christmas pjs), when they realize they can read and are laughing out loud at a story they are reading...it is magical.

4.

I started a new book this week.  Has anyone read this one?

5. 

Monday is finally Leap Day!  We have been counting down all month.  Each day a new item has been revealed.  We started with information about days, then weeks, then months of the year, and finally we reached the countdown bags that included the images above.  We wanted to show the difference between one day versus 4 years of time.  We used the visual of the dots above to illustrate this.  My teammate has done a great job planning tons of activities for Monday that will hopefully help our little kiddos understand the importance of Leap Year.  Do you have anything planned?

Happy Weekend everyone!

Countdown to Leap Day...Week 1

I shared last week that we are counting down to Leap Day this year!  What a concept for our little kiddos.  4 years!!  Oh my!  They have only been alive for 7 years, so to understand the concept of 4 years and the importance of adding one extra day to the calendar...that is a big idea to wrap their heads around.

 As a math team, we decided to place a time object into each of the 29 bags.  We would remove the item each day, turn the bag around, and make a quick announcement each morning about the time concept.

Our first three bags were all about a DAY.  We wanted to reiterate that a day is composed of 24 hours and that we partake in certain activities throughout the hours of the day.

 Then we moved on to week.  We posted all the days of the week and a little image to show where that day is found on the calendar (I really like that visual!)  We also decided to lay out one full week (at the bottom) that shows a weekend versus a school week.  We are a K-2 building and we felt that was important for them to see.

This week will begin our items that are all about the months.

My favorite part about this so far...the kids "get on me" if they come into school and I have not posted the new item yet.  Oops!  But that tells me that they are watching, listening, and anticipating! 

Let the countdown continue!

Count Down to Leap Day

Yep.  It is a Leap Year.  That is kind of a big concept for our little ones because the concept of time is tricky.
They are very immediate creatures.  Thinking four years ago or four years in the future is hard when you are five, or six, or seven.  But we have some tricks up our sleeves this year to help our PreK-2 building understand the concept of Leap Year. 

 This count down is hanging in the hallway.  Each bag contains some object that represents or explains an aspect of time. 

Eeeeek!!  I am so excited.  Keep checking back to see the contents of these bags!