Ice Cream and Multiplication Dancing?

What other profession encourages allows you to dance to multiplication raps and enjoy an ice cream sundae on Thursday afternoon?! Teaching is simply the greatest job ever. :) Our class enjoyed ice cream sundaes with robot and princess sprinkles to boot while dancing to these adorable multiplication music videos by HaveFunTeaching. Check out their YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/user/havefunteaching?feature=results_right_main

HaveFunTeaching has everything from math to literacy and the animations are beyond adorable. The songs allow the kids to move around which is great for your bodily-kinesthetic learners, the video aspect is great for your visual-spatial learners, and the music is obviously great for your musical learners! We probably should have eaten our ice cream before dancing... such is life!

A Stormy Afternoon

So, the other day it started to look a little ominous outside and while starting our science block we heard a little bit of thunder and saw a flash of lightning. A few students looked worried so of course the natural teacher reaction was to whip out the lighting nonfiction readers and learn about why this amazing process occurs. Most of the time, if we understand why things happen they become less scary- even to the smallest learners. 

Farm Yard Adventures at Aullwood

This past week we were lucky enough to explore the farm at Aullwood Audubon Center and boy was it fun!!! We learned a lot about agriculture, interdependence of animals, ruminants, the energy cycle, farming, and sustainability and even had a few misconceptions corrected by our awesome center/farm guide. By the end of the trip we had a better grasp on the importance of farms, where common goods come from, and how natural energy is harnessed to conduct processes on the farm. It was an added bonus that we were able to pet and observe some of the creatures that lived on the farm.

Mad About Money!

   We recently started our unit on economics and while our teaching objectives focus on wants and needs and understanding how money is used today the kids seem to be taking a more sincere interest in the history of money! They have totally mastered how to write a basic budget (chores and minor purchases), the numerical value of money, the difference between a want and a need, and even further they now realize that there are many types of money all over the world that have different values and a direct value relationship to our U.S. dollar.
    We did a whole class activity for which the stage was set in a time years ago, even before actual money existed, and each child was given a good and asked to come to the realization on their own that people would have to trade one thing to obtain another. To do this I simply gave them play things like dice (cheese), crayons (soap), play food, keys (metal for tools) and asked them how they would get soap and food for their family when all they had was metal or buttons. They then came to the realization that they would have to trade one good for another. The kids navigated their way through understanding "bartering" and came to the realization that sometimes they couldn't get a fair deal if someone was being a stickler with negotiation! Some of the little ones even discovered how to undercut  challenge their competition for better trades! haha! The kids were engaged in the process and were able to sort through the concept of bartering and understand that a standard value currency was necessary for people to participate in a successful economic community. This is just another fine example of why kids amaze me every day; they were able to sort through years worth of complex problems in a thirty minute lesson (kidding!). I wonder what the children long ago thought about the development of money?
    Parallel to the aforementioned, the kids are interested in why we use the money we do today instead of the gold and silver types of years ago. Someone suggested it became to expensive to produce the coins of gold and silver. This will be the next step in our investigation...