Day 72- Once Upon a Time....

Once upon a time, in a land no too far away, (it's just right down the Interstate from where I live in Ringgold) there was a magical land known to all as Clifton Hills Elementary.

It was a happy land, full of knowledge and promise of a bright future. It's in this magical land where we find General Delk's Army.

(What can I say? They're an excited bunch)

Now General Delk's Army had been studying geometric shapes during their math time, and they had some trouble finding one of the 3-D shapes they needed. This shape was very elusive and only wanted to show itself in strange places and situations; like birthday parties or construction zones. 

But the valiant (and stubborn) General Delk was not going to settle for anything but that specific shape. So she scoured the land (her house) for the mysterious shape. No stone, or couch cushion, was left unturned! But alas, none such shape could be found. After deciding to hang her head in defeat, for the shape proved too hard to find, in walked the Princess.

(That would be my daughter. She takes her Princess status very seriously.)

Behold! What is that on her Highness' head? Could it be?... Yes! It is! The shape we have been searching for! General Delk begged the Princess for permission to borrow the shape in order to share it with her soldiers, and the princess graciously granted the request. (After a payment of 3 Skittles)

And thus is the story of how General Delk found... the Cone.

No joke, this shape took forever to find. I know that my students had an image of a cone in their heads since they could name objects in everyday life that have the cone shape, but it's nice to have a physical point of reference.And, yes, I did wear the party hat for the entire lesson. :)

Building on our knowledge of shapes, we introduced 2 new vocabulary words today: vertices and flat sides. Now parents, think back to geometry in high school. Remember that a vertex is the corner of an angle.

Well, vertices is the plural of vertex. So, vertices are the corners of a shape. The flat side is also called the 'face' of a shape. In the picture, the red sides are the faces.

We looked at 3-D shapes and counted vertices and faces.
This lesson did not take long. My students picked up in the objective easily and we found ourselves with 20 extra minutes at the end. Never one to waste a minute, we pulled out the paddle boards and markers and reviewed fact families. ( I can tell my students are practicing at home! Yea!)

We always play boys against girls, and today the girls won! Being the good little soldiers they are, they demanded to know what their prize was for winning. Well, I was stumped because my treasure box was running low. But... my girls did seem to love the Princess hat. Hmmm...

Introducing..... the best and brightest of Clifton Hills Elementary... the Princesses of General Delk's Army!

The boys asked what they would have gotten if they had won, and I replied, "Well, you could have been Pretty Princesses too. It's a good thing the girls won!"

In science we watched a little of the video Ben and Me. We didn't watch the whole thing because we are not studying Benjamin Franklin as a politician, just as a scientist and inventor. The first half of the video focused on his inventions and research.

Watch the video and see if your student can name the inventions that Franklin invented, and what he studied.

We also watched videos that Mr. Russell made in his college classes on Benjamin Franklin. They were great, and my students loved them. (the music was fun!) Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Russell's permission to post them on this blog. I'll remember for tomorrow's post!

Our Daily Brain