It's been a while since I've posted anything, but the internet here has been troublesome the past few days. (No surprise there). Everything has been good though, for those wondering. Nothing too exciting since I'm just getting back into the swing of being back in school. Last weekend all of us went out to the Hole in the Wall for some drinks. It was a thoroughly fun night. I'm glad the group this year likes to go out and take advantage of the few places that exist in Anaco. As much as I love going to the beach house, it's just not something that's feasible every weekend when I have work and grad school, so it's nice to have people to go out with locally, too.
The kids have been great. They seem to have grown up so much. What they're capable of is much different then last year, and kids who were very difficult last year have improved. I love that I already know these children because I definitely can pick out the strengths and weaknesses of each child only three weeks into school. Having this knowledge of my students already is going to help me significantly in planning effective and interesting units for them. They're starting to adjust to the full day much better, but by the end they just can't sit still. They start looking around, tipping chairs, drumming the cable and humming to themselves somewhere around 1:30. We're doing a lot but it's definitely better to explain via cute kid pictures.
First, it's most fun to take pictures of the kids when they're doing art. It's kind of boring to take pictures of some other lessons, but art is always a good time. I have to teach art twice a week. One day I'm using art to actually teach some art concept, and the other day I'm using to relate to an author student or content area. On the art concept day we're learning what a silhouette is and some different ways to make them. Mainly because I like sunsets and they lend themselves to blending colors and making a mess. =)
The kids have been great. They seem to have grown up so much. What they're capable of is much different then last year, and kids who were very difficult last year have improved. I love that I already know these children because I definitely can pick out the strengths and weaknesses of each child only three weeks into school. Having this knowledge of my students already is going to help me significantly in planning effective and interesting units for them. They're starting to adjust to the full day much better, but by the end they just can't sit still. They start looking around, tipping chairs, drumming the cable and humming to themselves somewhere around 1:30. We're doing a lot but it's definitely better to explain via cute kid pictures.
First, it's most fun to take pictures of the kids when they're doing art. It's kind of boring to take pictures of some other lessons, but art is always a good time. I have to teach art twice a week. One day I'm using art to actually teach some art concept, and the other day I'm using to relate to an author student or content area. On the art concept day we're learning what a silhouette is and some different ways to make them. Mainly because I like sunsets and they lend themselves to blending colors and making a mess. =)
Marian, Dominick and Hakim painting sunsets.
Marcel working on his sunset.
Painted sunsets with the black silhouettes cut out of paper and glued on.
Art work hanging in the classroom.
Closeup. Middle one is my quick drawing/demonstration obviously. =)
One style with tempra paint and silhouette cut out of black paper and one style of oil pastel black silhouettes and watercolor back ground to learn about resistance.
The other kind of art we've been working on relates to our Eric Carle author study. Each week we read a new Eric Carle book and do some art relating to the book we read. I'm building up to truly imitating Eric Carle's art style, but at the moment we're just doing one or two parts of our painting in his style. It takes kids a long time to paint and entire paper, wait for it to dry, then cut out pictures from that paper. The art is looking pretty good so far. We've read "10 Little Rubber Ducks" and "Slowly Slowly Slowly said the sloth."
10 Little Rubber Duck painting. Each child chose a different sea animal that their rubber duck went past.
Cutting the leaves out of the painted green paper for "slowly slowly slowly said the sloth."
Cutting leaves and grass.
Marian is REALLY concentrating on correctly drawing her hummingbird.
In language arts kids have started learning their sight words. I've began calling them popcorn words because they "pop" up everywhere. To make practicing them fun I printed out and laminated Iphones that they can write on and erase. They get to write and "type" their sight words on the Iphones for practice. We're also reinforcing letter sounds. Each time I introduce a letter I have a projectable read aloud book that uses that letter a lot throughout the story. The kids get to come up and use a cool pointer to search for the words that begin with the letter we're learning. When they tap the board with the pointer, I highlight the word they found. They like this kind of "I Spy" game.
Carol practicing writing on the iPhone.
Marcel "typing" his sight words
We also have some bean bags which the kids are allowed to read and look at books on. They love them.
Dominick searching out the words in our projectable story.
Everyone intently trying to help search for words on the screen. They were at their tables, but they got so into it that they moved all their seats as close to the screen as they could.
That's about it for now. Obviously, everything's going pretty well and I'm enjoying being back. Hopefully soon I'll have something a little more interesting to post about. But for now, no news is good news and since everyone is already familiar with my kids and Anaco in general through my posts last year, there's nothing really good to write about.
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