Knock, Knock...Who's There? *Freebie*

...ME!  I'm back!  I must tell you, there's no reason other than I've been sucked into two things - the game "Draw Something" and Catching Fire.  I just can't pull myself away from either one long enough to do more than a little blog stalking and a few comments.  By the time I decide to blog I'm too tuckered to type more than a few lines...

I just can't do it all friends, I just can't do it all...

Today I was visited by three teachers from England during Daily 5.  Man did my kids knock it out of the ballpark.  I think our new British friends were quite impressed with what they saw.  One of our third grade teachers swapped classes with a teacher from England a couple of years ago.  It was before I started teaching at this school - I so wish I had been there to pick her brain about teaching-life and life in general in England.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to debrief with them.  I'm curious if my teaching style and classroom management seemed worlds different from what they are accustomed to? I told them about my blog so maybe we'll see them around!

This afternoon we explored 3D shapes.  For some reason the kids found great humor in the word "polyhedra" {either that or it was just the aftershock of one cutie paTOOTie's "fluffer" that was blown with perfect timing...we were in the middle of talking about "gases"...admittedly, even I giggled - I mean really, couldn't have timed a toot more perfectly}. 

We started off by talking about various 3D shapes, noticing and indentifying faces, edges and vertices.  We closed the door a few times for dramatic flair.  You know you've gotta do it when teaching your kiddos big FIFTH GRADE WORDS...a hush comes over the room whenever I tell them we've got some big kid words to learn.  Inevitably somebody offers to close the door so our principal can't hear - likewise, somebody always lets the cat out of the bag and rats us out and tells another teacher or our principal that we learned the big words, but shhhhh, don't tell.

Then the kids were given a challenge:  To see which shapes they could make using these guys...

They came with our math program, Bridges, and they are called polydrons.  LOVE these things.  The kids love them too.  It was really interesting to hear some kids excitedly predict that they were SURE they'd be able to make a sphere while others just knew it wasn't possible but here they are discovering!!!

We didn't get any spheres but we did find out that there are triangular pyramids and square pyramids thanks to some fourth grade experts that helped us figure out the difference {I sent some first grade friends on a math journey to find the answer...Mrs. W. teaches first grade for a reason, and sometimes it feels like the math I'm teaching is NOT first grade stuff!!!!}.



After we figured out which shapes we were able to make with square and triangle shaped polydrons...

We went on a shape hunt around the classroom to find every day objects that are shaped similarly...

Note: cute coffee cozy on the Starbucks coffee...Staci!



We also recorded our findings here...

Believe it or not I'm not a countdown to the last day of school kinda girl.  Not that there's anything wrong with that - I'm one of those strange birds that never knows how many days are left.  I did, however, hear through the grapevine that we have 40 some odd days left.  Are you kidding me?!?!  I still have sooooooo much to teach!!!!!!  Unbelievable!

Gotta get rid of these shakes.  Must. Read. Book.  Must. Draw. Something. Now.

Toodles!