Yay- tomorrow's Thursday already!

So we had our 4-day fall break, which was nice. I did NOT want to be here this morning, but the day got progressively better. It's frustrating to not want to get to work, but it's even more confusing that, at the end of the day, I'm ready to come back and do it all again tomorrow.

My favorite part of the day: pulling together a game (on the spot!) for a geography review. The kids really liked it, so I'll have to keep using it until it gets old. The basic gist of it: I split the classroom down the middle, and had the kids move their desks to the wall of whatever side they were on, so that the middle of the classroom was completely open. I put two chairs side-by-side at the front of the room, and called one contestant from each team. Starting with their backs against the wall at the opposite end of the room, the contestants had to run to their chair and sit down quickly. Whoever was in the chair first (without falling out!) had 10 seconds to answer the question. In the event of a tie (and there were several!), we had re-matches. For the re-matches, I made the kids work extra hard: they had to either do 2 runs (wall to chair back to wall to chair), or they had to do goofy things when they sat down (like cross their legs and put their hands on their heads). It worked well, and it definitely spruced up a U.S. state/capital review! Tomorrow, we do it with grammar.

Anyway, the day wasn't awful. I had to figure out how to explain the concept of mutliplying decimals by whole numbers, though. It's not a difficult concept, but it is TOUGH to explain to 9- and 10-year-olds!! At the end, though, even the 4th graders were getting it! It was nice to know that a lot of my kids actually learned something today.

For now, I make copies for tomorrow, and then off to massage therapy class. Idle life, no more!