Sunday, November 11, 2012

October Teaching Ideas

Here are some more teaching ideas
Do you find that your greatest ideas come to you when you do not have a pencil and paper around! And my notepad on my phone is full, I guess I need to start carrying around a notebook and pencil!
In Science we were learning about adaptations. So I came up with this project of adapting animals in 10 million years. Here, she adapted a panda. They had a lot of fun making the animals, the room was a crafty mess, but the kids were really good at cleaning up after each day!
The kids loved these, all I did was put a piece of paper in a page protector and they were able to complete problems with dry erase markers!
Learning about 3D figures, I had all the kids bring in boxes (which then helped with making the adaptation animals) and they had to count edges, vertices  and faces. I encouraged them to bring in boxes of different sizes, and shapes.

So, a little back story before you read the next picture. We were learning about how DNA copies itself. A mini lesson with DNA for ya, A and T bases form together, and C and G form together, so when DNA separates down the middle A will always pair up with T and has no chance to pair up with C or G. The bases are like "puzzle pieces"  SO when I was teaching I told the students that when the DNA "unzipped" itself there were "free floating" bases in the cytoplasm drinking Diet Coke and eating M&M's waiting to get paired up. I was trying to give them a "visual" and they must have remembered it, look what they wrote for the essay portion on the test. I will not disclose the name! :)
oh kids remember the darnest things..

This lab is called Birds of Prey, they had to use tweezers to act as their beaks and pick up the "moths". They had to pick up orange, black, white, and newspaper moths and make observations of which were the easiest to pick up! 

Another lab was to cut a butterfly out of a magazine and hide them around the room and outside! A lot of the students found some really neat places!
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Here is a lab where the kids can learn about how animals have adapted over time. The students were given an envelope and I gave them different supplies, and they had to adapt their beak to pick up bugs of the air (popcorn) worms from the ground (gummy worms) and fish of the sea (raisins)

I try and do a "themed" bulletin board for at least one of the lessons I am teaching. This is for transformations in math, the students had to complete a "gallery walk", sketch and label what type of transformation happened! I used real-world examples (reflections in water, plants, and letters) along with math examples.
A student came up to me and said "Miss Koch, you can put up a flower and all the petals are an example of a rotation" I need to post a couple of flowers and petals, thanks student! :)


Teaching the coordinate grid! I will post another picture in November of the FULL wall!
HERE is were I got them all!
I also found a really neat website called Math-aids that has a lot of free worksheets! 
The joys of google!

I teach the kids a new language for saying thank you each week!

Challenges
One other idea I did was a game I made up called "Challenges" I laminated 10 worksheets (I made 2 sets) and assigned a point value for each problem. They then had to record the problems they did and add up their points. I have some pretty honest kids, so they followed the rules. I had all the problems on a table and they could only have 1 worksheet at a time. I also had them work in partners. The winners got to use my desk chair for a whole day!

Have you heard of BedTime math? It is so awesome!
In a short summary, Bed Time Math is a website that has daily math problems that align with today's news stories, or interesting facts that all deal with math. I sent a calender home and I have the kids and their parents, or the kids and their siblings complete it 10 times for November. It has problems for wee ones, little ones and big ones. Sometimes if we finish math or handwriting early I will post this on the projector. The kids love it!

That's all I have for October, I have some awesome ideas for November coming up! :)
Click here for September Teaching Ideas
Click here for August Teaching Ideas

-sunshine

Sunday, October 21, 2012

A Taste Of Fall and Apple Muffins

With Fall here I have checked A LOT off my "fall list" 
Making apple muffins is near the bottom so I am almost all checked off and need to start my "winter check list"!!! These were the MOST amazing apple muffins and they were so easy to make! The dough is AMAZING also! I ate more of the dough than I did the muffins!
 Guess who wanted one....look at those puppy eyes!

 Apple Muffins
Source: Girl who at everything Blog

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar (or use 1 1/2 cups for a less sweet muffin)
2 eggs
1 cup oil
1 Tablespoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups peeled, cored, diced apples (around 3 apples)
Brown sugar for topping (around 1/2 cup)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin pan with paper liners.
Cream together sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda, salt, and ground cinnamon (I never sift and they turn out fine). Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix until combined. The batter will be very thick. Add the diced apples.
Fill paper liners almost to the top, about 3/4 of the way full. Sprinkle with brown sugar.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-24 minutes. Makes 18 muffins.

Love fall nature walks!
Whenever I take a walk I have my camera in my right hand and Jovi in my left!





When we got home I tried to grade tests....but guess who sat on them! Took me a lot longer than planned!
-sunshine

Cousins

We went over to my cousins house for the Nebraska game! We also celebrated birthdays!

Look at the progression of Ryan blowing out his candles! If this were a 3 frame comic strip...what would it say?






I am always behind the camera, so there are rarely pictures of me! So when I found a full wall mirror, I found my opportunity! :o)
Beautiful Abby!



Sunday, October 14, 2012

Life

 
This is in Sundays paper today!
This quote is sooo true!
I am going to cut this out and laminate it for my classroom!
 
-sunshine

Friday, October 12, 2012

Emily's Birthday!

One of the best things of being at home is that I do not miss special events like this!
I was able to go to Emily's birthday! I had SO much fun to be there to celebrate with her!!






-sunshine

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Apples in the Fall

Irene and I took a day away from Omaha! We drove to Nebraska City! Only about an hour way. We went to Arbor Day farms and spent the day apple picking and wine tasting. It made for a wonderful afternoon. It was so peaceful and we had the most beautiful weather!







 And I had my candy corn nails! I LOVE everything about fall!!



With our wine tasting we ate Havarti cheese and Triscuits-- my FAV-- and Irene made wonderful veggie wraps! I cannot express how much I needed an afternoon away with no obligations. Sometimes if I stay at home for a day and think it is relaxing, but there are always dishes in the sink, bathrooms that need to be cleaned, or laundry that needs to be done. It was great to just sit, soak up the sun, and enjoy the wonderful afternoon!!!

So, what did I do with all my apples???
I had some helpers make some apple crisp with me!





-sunshine