We had so much fun reading Humbug Witch this week! It's a sweet little book with LOTS of adjectives if you're looking for good descriptive words. I posted a few free Listening Activities that I like to use with my class, if you'd like to use them. Just click on the pictures!
The kids are working on sight words like a BOSS! We use any magnetic space we can find to build words.
We made our own Hex-bugs to help us remember Hexagons this week. Last year, I cut out lots and lots of different size hexagons and had the kids decorate those. This year, I made one colorful hexagon on this paper and they decorated that. I printed them on cardstock. The kids had so much fun. It was handy that bugs have 6 legs and hexagons have 6 sides! If you would like a copy of the paper, just click HERE.
Last Saturday, some of us from school went on a Wine Tour. We had SO much fun. About an hour from where I live, near Ithaca, NY, we have some fabulous, fun wineries. We went to six of them. My sweet, sweet husband drove us all there. What a trooper. He's a great one!
(The bottom middle picture looks like we needed to be cut off, BUT we were just imitating our friend Leslie's attempts at selfie poses. She's a riot when she tries...)
My husband heard this TED Talk the other day by Sir Ken Robinson, and showed it to me. It's old, so maybe you have seen it, but I hadn't. I loved it. It's titled "How Schools Kill Creativity."
The talk is about 20 minutes, and worth every one of them, but if you don't have that kind of time, here are my favorite parts:
3:38- Drawing God
8:35-10 - Hierachy of subjects and the purpose of education (to produce University Professors...)
and my FAVORITE is at 15 minutes in (if you only have a couple minutes, watch this!) This is the story of Jillian Lynne's experience in school. She went on to be the producer of the musical, Cats. I won't give it away, because it's a story worth hearing, and one I will always remember. But I will tell you that the line I will remember forever as a teacher is, "She's not sick. She's a dancer."
Sometimes I am heartbroken seeing the way kids are expected to sit and do "paperwork" for so long. I can tell at five years old the children who have a real interest in mechanics and taking things apart, or art, or science. I have a little guy this year who takes EVERYTHING apart that he can get his hands on. He is so interested in how everything works, but I find I am spending most of the day calling him back to what we are doing (and putting back together what he's taken apart...). He has a hard time with letter recognition and writing, and gets frustrated easily, but could work with gears and little manipulatives all day long. I just wish I had more time to let him explore and foster his interests- and then, that those interests could be continued throughout the years. Instead, I'm afraid he will get so frustrated with some of the academics of school and not feel successful. I think I like this video so much because it's just refreshing to watch someone who "gets it."
Have a WONDERFUL weekend! Thanks for stopping by!
I love the pictures of the wine tour. Looks like everyone had a lot of fun. Great bonding.
ReplyDeleteYour number two has my wheels turning on some things in the classroom... hmmm... And I have a little guy like you. He's going to be great at doing his "thing" one day, but he's gonna have a bumpy time in school. We know so much about them so early, don't we? sigh. See you around. Kathleen
ReplyDeleteKidpeople Classroom