If you ask me, I honestly have no idea where January went. Christmas break was great for the first week (spent between Edisto Beach SC with David's side of the family and Northern VA with my part of the family) but the second week dragged. I came back home because my whole family got the flu, and you don't realize how hard it is to travel with a dog until you have one.
So Zulu and I spent the week hanging out, wishing David was here, and letting my broken toe heal up.
By the second week in January, my toe was feeling better and I was determined to get back into the gym routine I had pre-marriage .... Going everyday! Hey, I'd settle for any day, actually, since I seemed to have moved to Georgia and forgotten what a gym was. And in going and remembering how much I love it, somehow I got back on the track to teaching fitness classes...
So the past two weeks I've been taking as many classes as possible, meeting all the instructors and learning their individual styles, and sitting through some interviews and observations. I've done well; the next step is to meet the owner/manager for their interview. I'm well on my way to teaching Zumba again and possibly Power! (Fiiiiinalllllyyyyyy????)
And David is scheduled to be back in 6 days! So I've been cleaning and, as Padre said, "getting things done while he's gone that I won't do while he's here" (staying late at school organizing books, prepping our new reading and math blocks, organizing those last few things that we never got to when unpacking... )
Haha. Adepa drew this for me. Mrs. Richardson's Husband. I sent a picture of it to David and he said "she seems to be missing some concept of human proportion... I'm only a head and legs!" I said yes, that's why it's hilariously accurate (he's 6'3") and I hung it up. ;)
So if you think I've been slacking.. Well, you're not entirely wrong... Somehow in the months David has been gone I've found the time to watch the entire series of The O. C.... But that's just because when I finally DO get home from work/the gym, I walk the dog to work on training, prep materials for the next day while watching TV, and then fall asleep! Many of these recent nights I've been at school until 7. More on what I've accomplished in that time later.
But now I feel more in a rhythm. So let's catch up on some of the things we learned in January:
Writing was our unit on How-to Books. Somehow, despite having 1,000+ photos on my phone since the end of December, I forgot to take pictures of those. I will take pictures and do a post on that unit by the end of the week.
January, week 1:
Investigating the daytime/nighttime sky in science.
Number bonds/decomposing numbers in math.
Indoor ice skating in recess.
January, week 2:
Word families/blending onset & rime in ELA.
ash cash
Community helpers in social studies. We had a policeman, veterinarian, firefighter and cafeteria worker speak to us and show us pretty neat stuff!
January, week 3:
Learning about segregation.
Orange dots and green dots (or "greenies"), who have to sit at the back of the carpet, not answer questions, and fly owls down. (Don't worry! This whole lesson (minus the discussion about what happened and why) lasts about one minute. Then children who were greenies actually fly owls way up, get stickers and Mustang bucks for being good sports.)
Outside.
Inside! Oh, they're the same!
Children wrote their dreams for peace.
I bought some flowers on super sale when I saw them at Kroger. Kids are always giving me dandelions at recess, and I thought it might be nice to give them real flowers. I connected it to community helpers.... We learned about florists and floral combinations.
The boys got some too, but they didn't want their picture. They said that they made their bouquet for their moms.
We learned about addition and subtraction word problems in math and how to highlight the important information and show our thinking with a picture.
Problems throughout the week included the add-together strategy, take-away strategy, and both addends unknown strategy.
100th day of school Hershey Kiss scavenger hunt! Always a classic. ;)
Making a wheelchair out of 100.
Making a face out of 100.
Wearing our 100 glasses.
On the hunt!
Sharing projects made with 100 items.
100th day Froot Loop necklace! Counting.
"This is a lot of Froot Loops! I'm going to stop." "You cannot stop without 100! There are some still on your paper!" "Oh. Okay."
Roll the die to 100!
100th day snack.
January, week 4:
Guided math, decomposing the number 10 with two different colors.
Guided math, exploring more/less.
Go Fish field trip!
Posing with some fish.
We're on a boat!
In front of the wall of fish.
And now you're all caught up! We introduced shadows that last week, too, but will explore them more in depth this week. We also started our new informational writing unit, "All About."
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