University of Cheez-Its

FRACTION ACTION: Right out of the gates we took on some math. Today's topic - fractions. We did a couple of worksheets about halves and quarters. The kids were all over it. :)

N-O-V-E-M-B-E-R: I wanted the kids to write some words today and use their brains a bit, so I wrote the word November down the side of a sheet of paper and asked them to come up with words about November using the letters in November as the words' first letters. CJ immediately wrote No for the N and On for the O. I told him I was hoping for a bit more thought and creativity. He said, "I'm worried that I don't know how to spell long words." I reminded him that this wasn't a spelling test, it was about being creative and just thinking up words and doing the best you can on spelling. He was still wary, but powered through. In fact, he did really great spelling - for instance for the word "marching" (there are lots of parades in November), he got the m, a and r by himself. While wondering aloud what came next, I asked him which two letters make the "ch" sound and he immediately realized it was c and h. And when he was pondering 'ing' I reminded him that three letters make the 'ing' sound and he said i-n-g. So he spelled marching - a long word - by himself. I reminded the kids that once they learn the tricks, spelling gets a lot easier.

Which brings me to two of Annabelle's words - vacation and night. Silly, silly words spelling wise.
I told the kids they are just going to have to remember that often when they hear a word, what sounds like 'ite' is sometimes 'ight.' Likewise, when they hear what sounds like 'shun' at the end of a word, it's likely 'tion.'

We decided that it is very unfortunate that someone who didn't know how to spell decided for the rest of us how words should be spelled.

MONEY IN THE BANK: Eureka! I found a fantastic book about coins/money. Written by a former teacher, The Coin Counting Book is straightforward, logical and fantastic. It employs a really masterful mix of life-sized photos of coins, text and mathematical symbols to demonstrate the value of cents and such. Six thumbs up - I wish we'd found this book months ago.

DEEP SLEEP: A timely concept we covered today is hibernation.
We read a great bilingual book we got last week at the library, "Hiberar/Hibernation". We learned that only a few animals (for instance bats and some mice) are true hibernators - most animals (squirrels and polar bears) have some periods of wakefulness and some level of activity during their down time. This book had the English and Spanish text side by side, so it was fun (and easy) to figure out exactly what each Spanish word meant.

To expand our education, we went online to National Geographic's kids' Web site in search of more on hibernation. There, we read text and viewed photos of polar bears, and watched a neat-o video of a mother polar bear and her two cubs emerging from their ice cave after 5 months.

SNACK FACTS: While enjoying a late morning snack, Annabelle wondered aloud, "How do they get the cheese in Cheez-Its?" Good question - wonder if we can find out. Just a few keystrokes later, BINGO - an actual LESSON PLAN about how Cheez-Its are made (god bless you Internets). It's from a Web site by Virginia-based Agriculture in the Classroom which, they tell us, "is part of a nationwide effort to help teachers and students understand and appreciate agriculture—Virginia and the nation’s largest industry."
But back to Cheez-Its. Thanks to a WebQuest lesson plan, we learned that milk and wheat are the snack's primary ingredients and we learned a bit about how each of those goes from farm to factory. Much to our delight, there was a great investigation worksheet where the kids had to sample Cheez-Its and record their findings about their smell, taste, appearance, etc. The lesson plan even included a link to a funny commercial about how Cheez-Its are made (NOT!).

SOCIAL STORY SESSION: Today I FINALLY introduced a social story session at MPA. I swear I've been meaning to do this since Day 1 and I vow to do more of it in the future. Social stories are a great tool to help kids who are plenty smart IQ-wise, but who could use some improvement in, shall we say, the social graces when it comes to their daily lives.

I instructed the kids to each grab an action figure of their choosing. Annabelle chose an eyeball, CJ chose Shredder (of Ninja Turtle fame) and I found Zog, a golden robot, laying around. In our scenario, Zog and Eyeball were going out to dinner and Shredder was the waiter. As soon as Zog sat down in the restaurant he barked his order at Shredder. RUDE! as the kids pointed out. And so we went through a whole 'dinner service'. Along the way, there were lots of laughs due to Zog's really horrible table manners, and I'd like to think that there was also some social skill enhancement going on as well. That night, when we went out to dinner with my cousin Josie and her bf Chris, CJ and Annabelle were able to put some of their restaurant role playing to good use.