Just Chat - and some Math Fun

Tomorrow is our 100th Day of School! Normally we don't do anything in Year 4 (it's a Year 1, 2 and 3 special day) but this year we've decided to celebrate in a small way. I will post about it all later - suffice it to say that one of our activities involves a lot of skittles. :)

Today we accomplished quite a lot. I read all the class blog posts about Midsummer Eve that my kiddies posted on the weekend. We're reading a great book as our class reader - Tree Girl by T. A. Barron - and the main characters have just entered the forest on High Hallow Eve (aka Midsummer Eve or Summer Solstice). I had my students research Midsummer Eve or the Summer Solstice and then asked them to find out about Shakespeare's play about this special day. I was SO pleased with 99% of the entries. One child went way beyond what was expected - always a thrill when a student takes on additional learning! (One child researched Halloween - for what reason I know not since I specifically told them all on MY post that Midsummer was June 21st this year - so that wasn't quite so thrilling!)

So... great learning over the weekend - yay :)

We spent the afternoon reviewing Venn and Carroll diagrams. We did a quick review on the board then moved on to group work. I made some giant diagrams and then gave the kids plastic baggies with labels and sorting things - shapes, numbers and letters. We started with the letters and I wandered around and made sure everyone knew what they were doing - and also that EVERYONE was participating (I have quite a few students who like to watch others work!)

Student: What's half of 27?
Me: (completely at a loss) Why do you need to know?
Student: Well I need to sort the letters and I need to know which ones are in the 1st half of the alphabet so I need to know what half of 27 is.
Me: Huge silent sigh!! Say your alphabet and count as you go. How many letters are there?
Student: (after a minute) Oh. 26. So it's 13.
Me: Smile - and walk away (breathing deeply)

After I'd made sure they all knew what they were doing (alphabet knowledge not withstanding) they could, at their own pace, open up the other baggies and sort what was in them. They had to choose two diagram sorts to record - one Carroll and one Venn. It worked really well and the kids seemed to enjoy themselves.

What else did we do today? Well, we continued to work on our Perimeter Farms which are now in the "being decorated" stage  (I will do a proper post about them as soon as the animals move in because it is such a fun project! :)) - and I managed (finally) to finish 2 things for TpT.

I posted a freebie Adaptation Animal project (I posted about the project here on this blog) and also uploaded my Problems on the Farm pack (which has the Perimeter Farm project in it complete with photos :) )

 


Yay. A most productive day in total - and I have 100th day celebrations to look forward to tomorrow. Here's hoping for some good weather for our "exhaust the children 100 hop, skip, jump and slide race"!!