City Skyline Arrays

I saw this in a classroom a little while ago

and I thought it looked like a fun way to teach math and art together (if you happen to be using array's to teach multiplication that is).

If your students are well beyond learning how to multiply here is another art activity with city skylines.

Community Book

I was in a grade 1/2 classroom recently that had written a very impressive (for that grade level) book about their community and it got me thinking... any teacher could easily do this!

Whether you live in a major city or small community you may just have to narrow your focus more. For example, if I had a classroom in the city and wanted to do this I might write a book about the community the school is in. 

The kids each wrote about a different spot in their community and wrote different facts about those places. For example they might write about the school they are in and how many classes or teachers work there. Or, the fire hall has this many firemen (women). Or, the grocery store gets its deliveries on Tuesday. 

Hopefully, it gets kids more interested in their community (and they might learn something new about it too! Plus, they get to work on asking questions or interviewing different people to get the information that they need.

Since it was a grade 1/2 classroom they also included a drawn picture of the place they were talking about. If it were older kids I think they could even take a picture with a camera instead (if they aren't interested in drawing/colouring anymore).

This Week Off From School

Another week off from school and another week of self isolation done.

It only took just over 2 weeks off from school and a big snowstorm before it finally happened... I cleared out both our fridges and totally cleaned them.  

I'm pretty happy with my work!

I also went to the grocery store in the first time in "forever".  I must say the one way aisles are confusing but it seems that they are doing a pretty good job at forcing us to stay socially distant from each other while doing necessary things (like getting groceries).  I shouldn't need to go back for at least a couple of weeks.

I made some resurrection buns - a good thing to keep kids occupied for a while and you can review the Easter story while you make them!  And I made some paska.

I put together those plastic Easter eggs with treats inside of them for my husband every year and send him on an egg hunt Sunday morning so I started putting those together.

 This is about half of the eggs I have.

I've been doing my basement workouts (and they are paying off... I'm not gaining weight during this isolation period!) and I've already walked 18km worth.  I predict that within the next couple of weeks it should finally be warm enough for me to want to go for a run.

Otherwise, we're doing fine over here in isolation.  

How is everyone else doing?

Kindness Challenge

Spring is here (and spring break starts tomorrow at 3:30)!

So here is a flower related kindness challenge (that could actually even work in the winter time because of the how this teacher is growing her flowers).

First, a bit of a backstory.  For Christmas I bought my husband an Aerogarden.  Which is a fancy hydroponic indoor garden.  We are growing tomatoes in ours (but I'll post about ours another time).  When I bought it for him I naturally tried to learn as much about it as possible and so I joined an Aerogarden Facebook group where not only did I learn about how to use our Aerogarden but how teachers are using them in their classrooms!

Here's what one teacher is doing:

It may be hard to read so I'll summarize it.  Basically, this teacher now has to Aerogarden's that she is planting flower seeds in.  Her grade 2 class has a kindness challenge in that when they see someone who's day needs brightening up they will come and snip a few flowers for them from their garden.

Awww....

How would you use an Aerogarden in your classroom?