Crazy week.
We spent the week building up to the UMC conference that Walden hosted this weekend. It was kind of hectic. Again, I didn't get much done in the way of formal language lessons, but we did do study of the bird in the afternoon, and we had fun with some projects. We made model birds on Monday (and Tuesday) out of Styrofoam and Model Magic, and on Wednesday we learned the parts of the bird and labeled the parts on our bird models. It was fun, and the students made some pretty nifty birds! The children are learning the disappointing truth that if you're absent on a day that we do a project, well, you just don't get to do that project. Sorry. REB was absent on both Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday she didn't have a bird to label. I had one that I had made as an example for the kids to see, and I let her label it. She handled the disappointment fairly well.
Thursday Kati did a wetlands lesson. They built a pretty awesome food web out of yarn. She is - of course - working on a smaller version that can be a shelf work (a three-hand work). It will be very cool.
Friday we went on our field trip. to. the. AIRPORT! It was super fun. We got to go into the flight simulators and then into a hangar where they got to get up close and personal with a small, two-seater plane. They even got to climb into the cockpit and play with the controls a bit.
Prep for the conference was kind of intense. We had regular work on Monday and TT on Tuesday, but on Wednesday we told the kids that we'd love it if they did some project work that we could put up for visiting teachers to see. We ended up with a nice crop of 3D fruit hanging in front of the botany shelf, several Africa acrostic poems by the geography board, lots of Rhapsody in A Color art projects on the art and music board and a few Division Design number puzzles above the counter. It was a nice touch! The kids enjoyed a couple days of increased freedom in work (usually art project work is reserved for after 10:30 AM), and our room looked great.
Kati and I did some heavy duty cleaning, too. Kati organizes and puts stuff away, and I'm pretty good at methodically cleaning, dusting, and straightening. I also did a little rearranging of furniture. I moved the art shelf to cover the yucky leaky wall, and grouped the tables just a bit differently. We now have three independent work space tables, a grouping of three tables with six chairs (yeah, we'll see how long that lasts) and a two-seater round table along with the low table and the snack table. With the two floor benches, we have enough space for everyone to eat lunch without anyone eating on the floor. YAY!
I went back to school on Thursday afternoon and spent five hours cleaning, and then we cleaned again on Friday afternoon - finishing up with a couple hours to spare. I went over into Teresa's room and offered my services. She was rather stressed. She's got a pile issue. The issue was dealt with, though, and everything looked AWESOME for the conference.
Which was pretty amazing, but that's a whole 'nother post.
No comments:
Post a Comment