Well, today we returned to school after a very short Christmas break. How about you? Did you return today? Tomorrow? Or are you one of the lucky ones who has off until next week sometime? Anywho, it's no big deal I guess. Returning for a 3-day week has its benefits I guess. It will at least give me time to get all of my mid-year assessments and running records done. It can also serve as a smooth transition back after a break rather than jumping in head first.
All in all it was a good day. My kids were super talkative and very excited to see one another. You'd think it had been weeks longer than the 9 short days since they'd seen each other. We took it easy, not starting too many new things. Tomorrow and Friday we'll get a bit more into things and then fully begin all of our subjects next Monday.
One of the new things we began today was time. Ahhhhh telling time. A biggie in 1st Grade. One of the reasons I enjoy teaching time, and money for that matter, is the fact that the kids get so excited. They feel special, like they've finally been privy to some grown-up secret. The ability to read and control time, and money. It's cute. Today we started off with the basics - vocabulary, how it works. time to the hour. You know, nothing too intense. Laying the groundwork. It did inspire me though to finally crank our the January Math Journals that had eluded me the entire Christmas Break. I truly meant to finish them and have them posted to TPT before the new year, but oh well.
So, given a new drive, I was able to pound them out today and I'm pretty excited about them. As I've blogged before, my kids do love Math Journals so much and I find they are a fun and easy way to reinforce some of the basic concepts we are working on in Math. This month I chose to work with both addition and subtraction word problems, time (to the hour and half-hour), money (pennies and nickels), and growing patterns. I intended on starting them Monday, but I may begin tomorrow. One of the first things my kids asked when they walked in this morning was, "Where is our Math Journal?"! Ahhhhh, I love me some routine! I was so proud of them/bummed that I wasn't prepared! That also served to kick me in the butt and get them done!
While I was making them I thought it would be fun to offer up the first week as a Freebie at my TPT store! You know, to ring in the New Year and to apologize for getting them out late! Click on the picture below to download the first week of my 4-week January Math Journals. That or you can head on over to my TPT store here to get it, or to get the whole month!
So, now that I have that finished I can begin working on some other things I've been meaning to make and post! Hopefully you'll be hearing about those soon. Until then I hope that you're enjoying the remainder of your Christmas break or enjoying being back in the classroom with your kiddos. Whichever pertains to you!
No comments:
Post a Comment