Geometry and Friday Fun

I had a great Friday.  The only thing that would have made it better was if  my student teacher would have been with me.  :(  She had to go to class at college today.  We finished up our Topic on three-digit addition and subtraction earlier this week.  We started leaning about plane and solid figures.  My student teacher is teaching math now.  (It is very hard for me to give over control to her.  I have major issues and obviously  my meds aren't strong enough.)  Since she was gone today I decided not to teach the next lesson.  I love teaching about shapes, so I let the kids make plane figures.  We then turned our plane figures into solid figures by adding height to them.  I saw lots of light bulbs going off above their heads.  When I asked them to make a cube, most of them said they already had and held up their square.  We talked about how plane figures only have length and width and solid figures have length, width, and height.  Here are a few pictures.

We also played this fun game.  I love our Envision math series.  Each topic has a game for the kids to play at school or home.  We played at school today.  The kids loved it!!!

I saw this idea on someone's blog.  I can't remember where.  If you saw it too, please let me know so I can give them credit.  Take a green, yellow, and red cup and stack them together.  Each group starts on green.  If they need a warning, move the green cup to the bottom.  If they need a consequence, move the yellow cup to the bottom.  My class knows that if they get to the red cup before lunch, their group will have silent lunch.  If they get to the red cup after lunch, their group will sit out for half of recess.  So far, no one has gotten to the red cup.  This is working extremely well.  I just walk over and change the cups without saying a word and their group's volume automatically drops.  This will be great for my student teacher while she is being observed by her university supervisor.  She is only supposed to use positive discipline.  This way she can warn them without saying anything negative out loud.  I have also been giving the groups that stay on green a piece of candy fruit.

After lunch we had Fun Friday.  We played Monopoly, iPad, iPods, Candyland, Let's Go Fishin', puzzles,computers, and with pattern blocks.

I can't wait to see what next week will bring.  Also, notice the poster in the picture above.  I have been doing this in small group with my kids this week and it really seemed to help some of them on their reading test today.  I am hoping to do a blog post on it next week.  Have a great weekend!!!