Monday, January 6, 2014

Cold Day...Monday Made It-January

Can you say frigid?  Well, I can honestly say even that adjective is not adequate in describing today's temperatures in central Iowa.  When I got up this morning the windchill was a grand -51.  Yes, that is a negative sign :(  Needless to say we did not have school and won't tomorrow due to this lovely (yep-that was some sarcasm) winter weather.  I didn't mind the first snow day or even the second-they extended our winter break, but tomorrow will be our third day and it is only January 6.  I don't want to be in school in July, so I REALLY hope Mother Nature takes pity on us and sends Spring soon.   I am ready to head back to work and my children are a quite tired of being cooped up in the house in each other's company, so they need to go back to school too.  Ok, no more whining about winter. On to the more important stuff.

Since today was a free day and I was in the mood for school, I jumped on a couple projects that have been bubbling in my mind for a bit.  Knowing that it was Monday and I could link up with Tara over at Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It was also inspiration for my craftiness :)  So here's a couple of the projects I got done today.

Monday Made It #1: Homemade Broccoli Cheddar Soup and baguettes. Yumm!  Who can resist a hot bowl of soup on a cold winter day? Not me!  I'd recently pinned a copycat recipe for Panera's Cheddar Broccoli soup and decided today was the day to test it out.  You can't have homemade soup without fresh bread so I decided to try my hand at baguettes while I was at it.  Both turned out tasty, though the bread wasn't as pretty as Panera's LOL.  I love the smell of fresh bread baking!!

Monday Made It #2: Math Daily 4
Last week I read a post by Tina over at Mrs. Croft's Classroom about how she does her math workshop.  I really liked her set up and got to thinking about how it might help me solve a few problems in my own math block. We switched to Everyday Math last year and all I can say is I am not really a fan.  I feel like my high kids are being held back and my low kids aren't getting enough practice.  Before this switch we had been doing more mastery teaching and I felt like my students really knew their math when they left my room.  Anyway, after reading Tina's post I thought I could work at putting something similar in place in my classroom.  We already do the Daily 4 in reading, so the kids are familiar with the concept of rotations.  In order to hit the ground running with this, I put together my rotations board.  I plan to introduce each rotation (Meet with the Teacher, At your seat, Technology, and Hands On) one at a time and practice them just like we did with the Daily 4 in reading.  We'll make our I can charts to go along with each one.  I am really excited to try this out.  I'll try to come back and write up a post or two about how it goes.

Monday Made It #3- States and Capitals Foldable for Social Studies Notebook
This year I am trying to use an interactive notebook for Social Studies.  I have one that I feel pretty good about for science and thought it would be a good concept to put in place for Social Studies too. Unfortunately it hasn't been going very well.  Since I alternate between science and social studies and I knew I'd be starting a new SS unit after break, I've been trying to figure out how I could make a foldable that students could put in their notebooks to help them with the states and capitals.  I FINALLY got something to work and I must say I am pretty pleased with how it came out.  Each page has a spot for the state name, capital and abbreviation.  I filled in some of the information but students will have to fill in the rest.  They will also color the in the state on the map to help them work on state locations.  We always make a set of flash cards for each region, but I think having the information in their notebooks will be helpful too (especially for my young ones who are organizationally challenged LOL).  Once I figured out the set for our current region of study it was easy to put together ones for the rest of the regions.



Monday Made It #4 New Reading Daily 4 chart
After making the chart for the math rotations, I decided I needed to revise my reading rotation chart to make them match up a little better.  You'll notice a few blank spots on the board....my dog Faolan  decided he should help and managed to snag a few pieces while I was switching the laundry.  I'll have to do a reprint but thought I'd better pick it up and play with the puppy before he chewed up something else.

Overall it was a pretty productive day.  Now it think its time for bed.  I hope all my blogging friends are staying warm...anyone in the warmer states if you could send a little heat this way  that would be great!

3 comments:

  1. Wow, you really did get a lot of done with your third snow day! I'm so sorry for your frigid weather. I won't tell you how cold it was when I woke up today (in Los Angeles). Hope the weather turns well enough to have school in session--looks like you have great materials!
    ~Lucy at Kids Math Teacher

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  3. Love the foldables for the states! Will they be available in your TpT store?

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