Garden of the Day:
Worms!
Weeded these out of my garden, using a shovel:
And found so many of these! The best year of worms in my garden--ever.
Game of the Day:
Kid Quote of the Day:
My five-year-old, covered in dirt from playing outside, comes in and sits down next to me and waits for a break in the conversation. When addressed, he didn't even stall or stutter:
"What is the name of a six-cornered shape?"
Teaching Link of the Day
Circle the command words when you read instructions
A bit down in the instruction is a powerpoint presentation after a discussion of CUBE the question.
Sometimes it's interesting that there are actual people actually teaching the strategies that I always thought I developed on my own on the course of my education.
I never called it CUBE, but this is exactly what I do and how I do it, and what I teach, especially to students who have a terrible time minding the instructions in the first place.
Game of the Day
Assassin's Creed II
Teaching Link of the Day:
Teaching Link of the Day: The Space Station
Tell me about the space missions; tell me about machines
Tell me about dogs, the moon and adventures made of dreams
Tell me about rockets and satellites and photo shots
Tell me about the lives of the ISS astronauts
Game of the Day: Hide and Seek (cheat sheet for the one who can't quite get from Twelve to Thirteen)
Reading of the Day:
Granny Square of the Day: This is a bag made of 4 squares of City Market bags. I am NOT very good at crochetting plarn. Must practice if I care to get any better.
Teaching Link of the Day: Multiplication Pictures
I encouraged the drawing of pictures of things with parts and both the 5- and 7-year-old enjoyed the project. We used number stickers--of which I have many--in place of drawing the numeral, and the older wrote the equation where the younger just labeled the number of units, the number of parts, and the total parts.
Game of the Day:
Adventure of the Day: I took my little girl to a Cheerleading MIni-camp tonight. She said, as we were leaving, that she would like to do it again next year. The basketball game is tomorrow. The kids get the half-time. It's so excited.
Granny Square of the Day: Hodge-Podge-Scraps-of-Yarn
Teaching Link of the Day: Make a Word Search
It changes the handwriting because it's not about the flow of one letter to another, it's just letters next to each other being letters. It also requires concentration and patience to write other letters in the "blank" spaces. Use a grid, though, because without, lining things up is rather frustrating for a little one.
Food of the Day: Las 2 Margaritas. No pictures. It was gut-stuffingly delicious.
Game of the Day:
3 way Cricket. The one with the fewest closures won because he consistently hit multiples of 20 before someone could close it or catch up in points. Much fun.
Granny Square of the Day: Leftover yarn from a hat I made for my boy. Still had a bit left over after square one so I made another square and made it around to the last bit of string.
Teaching Link of the Day: Sight Word Bingo meets Othello
This game was so FUN! And not exactly easy, even for Teacher against Strategician 7-year-old. The 5-year-old enjoyed it thoroughly, and he can't even name the sounds of all his letters yet.
Granny Square of the Day:
Today's Granny Square represents a day. After several complements in the short span of an afternoon on my totebag made of knitted plastic grocery sacks, I decided plastic was my material today. I started this morning and stripped some newspaper sacks for the center. The next round--of grocery sacks-- I completed this afternoon, interrupted by a quick shopping trip for birthday gifts of the cake variety. The last round--trash bag-- I finished late tonight. The border green was the packing pillows from a birthday gift. I had exactly enough to go around in a chain, though I was tired and the chain is uneven.
So this was my day. I got up, read part of the paper, got some groceries, went to a birthday party, and came home to polish off the evening chores.
Game of the Day:
Password
Food of the Day:
kaluskis, koluskies, koluskys, I have no idea and I can't spell it to google it but it was delicious!
Teaching Link of the Day: PH
"phrase" cannot be pronounced 'frayz' because it doesn't have an F.
My fourth grade student told me this. We skipped the rest of the reading and read the words in the encyclopedia that begin with PH. Also, we replaced the F in F-words with PH. Phunny, huh?
This Day in History: First Mickey Mouse Comic Strip Released (1930)
"The editors never told me why all the sentences had to end in exclamation points, and I never asked, but I can think of three good reasons. One: not enough writers knew how to punctuate correctly, so the exclamation points simplified the chore to a foolproof system. Two: the exclamation point gave any sentence a seeming importance. Three: engravers making plates from the artwork were less likely to etch out an exclamation point. They could see it was something the artist had put there. A period they could mistake for something a fly had put there."
(Carl Barks; The Carl Barks Library of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories in Color, Album 38)
Games of the Day:
Movie of the Day: Aang: The Last Airbender
I am infatuated with this show, if I am infatuated with any show. This movie is coming out, and I am Totally and Entirely Thrilled. I thought it was coming, and then Cameron's Avatar came out and I thought we had been mistaken, but no! here it is! We are all going, both families, to the theater when it comes out.
Game of the Day:
Treasure Hunt!
and
Bomb the Ship!
and
Guess Who?,the Pirate Edition.
Food of the Day:
Dirt Cake with a Treasure Map. Thank you! It was so good, and everyone loved it.
This Day in History:
Thomas Paine published (anonymously) Common Sense.
It would do us a little good to review it.
Teaching Link of the Day: Dry Erase for Preschoolers
Many times we draw something for little ones to color or to watch, but it also goes that they should draw on their own as they're observing. If you use a dry-erase board as tall as your preschooler (less than 4' should do) then they can participate in a face-to-face drawing experience.
Today, we drew a truck. He drew the tires and we discussed what should be in the bed of the truck, and drew those things. *Erase* We drew a Bulldozer. He guided my drawing line-by-line verbally and with gestures. He indicated four wheels, a top, and a scoop at the front. Then he filled the scoop with rocks. It took him a very long time. *Erase* We drew a house. He drew the roof. He drew the door. It was more of a window. We talked about what a door was, and found one in the house. He drew a door on the ground. It was a bit short, but we worked it out. *Erase* We drew colors like a rainbow. They were mostly the same four colors, and one sweeping line had a flaw he had to black out intensely in one spot. I reminded him we could erase. *Erase* We drew lines and swirls of colors. He ran away.
Game of the Day:
The board is missing, the die is missing, two legs are missing, and a tongue has been chewed to oblivion. It does not function as a game, though it has the title and appearance of a game. I have hereby demoted the remainder of the game to Potato Head status. (I was just reading about Pluto. It seemed an appropriate analogy.)
Thought of the Day: You know who your real friends are when shit hits the fan and they're there to help scrub up the smelly, gag-inducing mess. And tell you that the stains don't really show.
Show of the Day:
I do not understand this show. No one's character seems to be consistent from episode to episode.
Adventure of the Day:
The children's first train ride, 4-hour round-trip (not counting for delays), to Glenwood Springs and back. The boy's birthday gift.
The first time I'd been on a train since Montreal in High School. The first time my husband's been on a train since Alaska when he was the same age.
Food of the Day:
If the vending machine doesn't have what you want, you can push the...Cow return? and get fresh beef.
Thought of the Day:
Light has Fangs.
It strings out from the edges of a form and it suggests glinting cones.
Light has Fangs.
Teaching Link of the Day:
Water Flow of Ice Covered Rivers
and yes, I really do ask these kinds of questions while roaming the earth enjoying it. I can't stop at "awesome," I have to define it.
(This wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for as this is not the kind of river, but Google is not forthcoming with the mind-reading.)
Word of the Day:
Statedly : At stated times; regularly.
This was our return-trip train-car number, interestingly, our departing-trip train-car number was 611. This is the secret-window in the access for changing this number, which is in the accessible restrooms.
Game of the Day:
How Fast Does the Train Go?
70 before stopping before Glenwood Springs
45 through DeBeque (DuhBeck) Canyon
80 through the town of Palisade
Teaching Link of the Day: Graph Paper
Standardized tests don't use lined paper. Nor do teacher's tests. They're all printed out on white paper with white space to show work in. So why in the world does every math curriculum encourage that math concepts be practiced on lined paper? Why the notes, neatly organized as if it were a book report? Use blank paper for math. There is more freedom in adapting thoughts and ideas, with a little arrow, a crossed out bit that didn't work, and the conclusion neatly displayed...somewhere...there it is. The chalkboards the great geniuses use don't have lines.
At the very least, use graph paper instead, especially for geometry.
Development of the day: I fell off a stool and cut the bottom of my foot on my daughter's desk. It hurts. A LOT. I have to stop falling off/down things. (I fell down the steps just before the New Year.)
Dictionary.com Word of the Day:
quotidian \kwoh-TID-ee-uhn\ adjective
1. Occurring or returning daily; as, a quotidian fever.2. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.
There are so many Project 365 blogs; everyone has caught the quotidian fever!
---Heather in Progress--- ---JonMagic--- ---your name here---
Game of the Day:
Teaching Link of the Day: Sentence Diagramming
When you have students who consistently mis-construct sentences, a diagram teaches them what to expect. This one is a simple, straightforward one. The site mentions that this hasn't been taught in classrooms for 30 years or more, but I got to be a lucky one who not only studied this early, but it eliminated the need for any further grammar drills after about the third grade.
I do it with a different color for each part of speech. This way a student has a narrow field of what fits in each spot, and they begin to recognize grammar patterns.
Game of the Day:
Two bored kids, a notebook, two pens. Each list 5 nouns and 5 adjectives. Switch lists, and go.
Thought of the day: Autistic Children with Brainy Parents
Evidence that the smarter you are, the dumber the people around you seem. If you live in a blue collar community with an average education, you may not notice someone with an odd learning or social disorder.
So who is normal? What does normal mean? Do children with autism get diagnosed only because they're different than the people around them?
Development of the Day:
Girl Scout Cookies are coming! Place an order with your favorite Girl Scout starting Friday! The new cranberry ones are delightful. There is also a donation option, and this year my daughter's troop is sending the donations to the Hometown Heroes (firefighters, etc.) and the Bloodmobile.
Family Development of the Day: My son is 5 today! I have no more babies. They have grown up.
Game of the Day:
The boy opened eight dinosaurs' resting places, carefully removed them from where they've fossilized all these years, and meticulously shoved the pieces together, following slot by slot, number by number. He and I made a Triceratops (it looks just like the one here! The joy of models.) and a Plesiosaurus, which happens to be one of my student's favorite creature.
Food of the Day:
Junct'n Square Pizza re: Spaghetti and Meatballs
Television of the Day:
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Teaching Link of the Day: Colorado Homeschooling Law
Colorado law states that you can teach your child all of school (from age 7 to 16) or part of school (for example, math). Your child can also participate in all school sports and extracurriculars.
What this means is that if your child is struggling in one subject bad enough, and has uncooperative or overworked faculty, you have every right to pull your student out and homeschool for that one subject. It's been done, it's legal, and it's fair.
Game of the Day:
Interesting Development of the Day:
I no longer have corporate competition. They closed their doors December 20th. I got my first call from one of their former clients today. Anyone have a loan so I can do an advertising push for the rest of their former clients?
Thought of the Day:
Pyramid schemes are better when you send books to the person named on the back of the letter, instead of a dollar. Or when it's edible, like Friendship Bread.
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