First day in the Ladybugs!

a little woodworking

a little selling

a little flying

a little engineering

a little foot painting

a happy bunch of Ladybugs!

It was a busy, happy day on our first day of the new school year.  We welcomed a bunch of new Ladybugs and got reacquainted with some old friends.  The only tears we saw were shed when the kids had to go home!  That's a good thing!

Looking forward to meeting our new friends!  We're almost ready for you!

Final post of the year.

September 2013

June 2014

See how we've grown!  It's been a great year!  Thanks for being part of it.

A room full of authors!

The Ladybugs have been working on writing their first hardcover book.  They thought of a story, made a story board, illustrated their story and either dictated their story or wrote the story themselves using their own spelling.  They have been so excited about this project!  Tuesday, the Serpent class came in to read our books and write comment cards.  The older kids are so respectful of our younger students.  They read or listened attentively and then wrote kind, encouraging notes.  After the Serpents left our room,  I asked the kids how they felt when the big kids read their books.  "Good", "Happy", "Proud".  Wow!  That is powerful!  Imagine the impression the big kids made on our students.  Think about what this means the next time one of them is asked to write a story.  Most likely, they will be excited about the process, they will expect to be successful and they will remember the first book they wrote.

Tomorrow, three more classes are coming to visit.  We can't wait!

Beach Day

Beach day was a wonderful celebration of the end of the school year.  We had beautiful weather and lots of helpers.  Before we left school for the beach, we challenged the middle schoolers to a match of  1,2, Nim.  I'm happy to report the Ladybugs won more than they lost and the middle schoolers were amazed!  Then they stuck around to read us a story.

Field Day

We had a beautiful day for field day.  The sun was shining and it was just warm enough to play in the spray park.  It was a fun afternoon!

Differentiating Math in the Ladybugs

This has been a big week for math in the Ladybugs!  We have moved into some higher level thinking about numbers and sums.  The books we have been using are "One is a snail, ten is a crab" by April Sayre and "1+1=5, Unlikely Math" by David LaRochelle.  Both of these books are terrific resources and starting points for exploring different ways of looking at addition problems.  The kids have been very successful figuring out the new problems and they have even been teaching the older kids how to do this math.  These books have provided us with the perfect vehicles for differentiating math in the Ladybug classroom.  Some children are counting with a one to one correspondence, some count by 2's, 5's or 10's; others use multiplication to figure out the answer.  Each child was able to use the method that best suited them to solve the problems.  One of the things that became abundantly clear was how creative and eager these children were to solve the problems.  The activities allowed the children to think outside the box and enjoy doing math in a way that made sense for them.

this one is counting by 2's

Sometimes it's more fun to show the big kids how to do it!

Sometimes the best part is sharing the discovery with someone else!

Adding legs

"feet"

"legs"

5 starfish legs plus the number of legs we know an octopus has

this child is counting legs

this one counting ponytails