Field Day

I have so much to post, but there never seems to be any time! Today was field day and needless to say, I'm exhausted! Luckily for us, it was overcast the whole day and stayed very cool. There's nothing worse than a scorching hot field day and overheated kids. Yuck!

Right now I'm working on a manipulative math center to teach >, < and =. We're going to be trying it out next week and I'll let you know how it works. For me, this has always been one of the hardest topics to teach. Either they get it, or they don't and for the ones who don't it is so hard to help them! I can get them to the place where they answer correctly but I'm never sure that they understand the concept. I was playing around with different ways to teach it when it occurred to me that Popsicle sticks would be perfect! I showed the students that >, < and = are really just two lines that we move to show which side is bigger.

Wow! What a difference! After just a few tries with it I saw some real understanding from a group of kids who were lost before. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier! I'll definitely take some pictures next week and write a longer post about it. Right now, I'm going to bed!!!

New look! I'm completely new to this blogging stuff but I'm starting to get the hang of some of it. I was able to customize a few things today and gave the place a new look! I'm hoping to work on the Theme 2 Focus Wall tonight and should have it uploaded and ready by tomorrow. I'm still working out how to put a picture of it up here for you and let you click it to get to my TpT store. It's been a big learning experience!

I also took some time to redo my Jungle Themed Number Cards. I had originally done them in Publisher but for some reason it wasn't acting right. It took forever just to move things around on the screen. I did it again in PowerPoint and it worked much better. I uploaded the new version just now:

It's done! My room is finally cleaned and I'm ready for summer. I wasn't the last teacher standing but it was close! I always start my summer with great plans to work on something school related at least a little each day. Of course, I'm always surprised when August rolls around and I haven't done nearly as much as I wanted to. I did spend what was left of this week just relaxing and it was great.

Next week I have mentor training for two days. My mom is coming to watch the kids--they don't know yet and they'll be thrilled!

I was able to get my fist few products up on TPT. My freebie is a 120 chart. I noticed as we switched to Common Core this year that all my math supplies came with 100 charts. I was also surprised to see that when we started on numbers from 100-120 lots of my kiddos were stuck! They could count it out loud but much of the time would write 99...100...1001...1002! I had a great morning work paper from Made in 1st Grade (I think it was in their March Madness Morning Work) that had them write the numbers from 1-120. We did it often! In the end they got it. Yea! Anyway, I decided that for next year we would forgo the 100 charts and start the year with 120 charts. Hopefully seeing the numbers around the room and on their math folders will make the process much easier next year.