Day 76- It's getting old...

The 'it' to which I am referring would be the weather. It's been gloomy and rainy for almost 2 weeks now and it is totally effecting my students. We need to go outside!! Sadly, today was another wet and cloudy day, so it was another day for indoor recess.

On the plus side, in math the topic was so easy that we had 20 extra minutes at the end of the lesson! The topic was counting by 10s. I know, easy. My students heard the title of the lesson and went to great depths to explain why they didn't need this lesson.
"Mrs. Delk, we do this every day!"
"Mrs. Delk, I been doin' this since the day I was born!" (I highly doubted that.)

We made it fun, they earned tickets for their work, but their focus was on the math game that was coming. After the lesson, we got out the addition cards and played Around the World with math facts. We had two winners before we had to get ready for lunch.

 Congratulations, Ladies!

We started a new story in reading. It was called Moving Day and it was about a crab who had to move out of his old shell and his adventures in finding a new one. I'll admit, I have not been a fan of the stories in our text book up till now. They are good for skill building, like finding short vowel words, but they aren't exactly deep-thinking stories. 

However, with that being said, I liked this story. It had enough repetition that my lower readers could follow along and predict the rhyming words, it had good vocabulary and retaught antonyms, and it was on an interesting topic. (well, to my students at least)

 I had my students write these words down on an index card to take home and practice. I told them that I would test them over these words (reading them) during small group tomorrow, and it would be worth tickets!

These were the vocabulary words. We had the best time coming up with definitions! 

1. We used the word fancy, and I brought in Mrs. Custer (our Math coach) who was wearing a fancy Christmas sweater.

2. For plain, I pointed to myself. I wore a plain outfit of jeans and a sweater today. I would like to say that I planned it to match the lesson, but that would be a lie. I didn't want to dress up today in case I would have to wade to my car later. (it was pouring this morning)

3. For heavy, I had a student pretend that the unifix cubes I handed him were the heaviest thing he ever held. He was a good actor, his back was hunched over and he grunted.

4. For hide, I asked the kids to act it out.

 Dang, they're good.
5. For inside, I had a student go outside, then come inside. The book's definition was that to be inside, an object must be within something. We talked about how inside was relative. You can be inside the building, but still be outside the classroom.

I think you get the picture. Then when we read the story, we came up with actions to match the antonyms. I'll try to get pictures of those for tomorrow.

During center time, I had the kids all do the same thing. They made an 8-square on a piece of paper, then they had to choose 8 of the vocabulary words, write then and put them in sentences, and illustrate the sentence. I told them to do their best because 4 lucky students were making it to the blog!

 Great job, Soldiers!

Well, as I said before, we have been stuck indoors for a while because of the weather. My students are good about being entertained with simple pleasures like blocks and read-and-color books. But I was feeling in a generous mood, so I brought in some games I found at Target. So, now my students can choose from blocks, books, and matching games. I still have some female students who would rather play the sight word phrase game.

*REMINDER*- Tomorrow is our field trip! Be sure to dress warmly because we will be outside. If the weather does not behave we will reschedule.