Today was another good day! It seems like Wednesdays are like that lately. Math went well (we played War with Jacks, Queens, and Kings as well as A-10). I was pleased with the lesson overall. Tomorrow we are distinguishing left and right, which I'm a little nervous about...but we'll see! We're singing the Hokey Pokey, so that will be fun.
The most exciting part of today was my handwriting lesson. Whenever we don't have a letter for the week in Reading (like this week) I've been doing numbers with them. We did 1-30 about five times over the last few weeks, but today I gave them a real challenge: a blank 100s chart that they were to fill in 1-100. I told them at the beginning that I did not expect them all to finish in the 20 minutes we had before switching with Ms. Margie's class, and that we would have plenty of time to finish later. TEN OF THEM DID IT IN 20 MINUTES! I was ecstatic. The other 12 finished during centers later. All of them but four finished, and they went to 50 (which was good enough for me!).
It was fascinating to see them fill in the numbers. I have tried to show them the patterns in a hundreds chart before (how all of the numbers in a row start with the same number and all of the numbers in a column end in the same number) but it just didn't click until they were filling in the numbers themselves. By the time they got to the 40s, I saw a lot of their little light bulbs turn on, and they realized that they didn't have to keep counting on every single time...they just followed the patterns. Some of them even started filling in their chart going down rather than across, because they saw the pattern. I am just blown away by how they figure things out. That is why I do love math, but in small groups or individually. I get to really watch them and talk with them about how they find their answers and how there are so many ways to get the same answer. That's the best part about doing the Drops in the Bucket math with them during my small-group rotations, because I have them do the problems individually and then compare to see if they did it the same as or differently than everyone else. It really is so interesting to watch them compare answers and methods.
I'm feeling good right now. Wednesdays are nice. This week's all downhill from here! Seven more school days until Spring Break. :)
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