Five for Friday- Measurement Olympics!

     It’s time for Five for Friday friends and this weekend is a LONG weekend!! We had a two week winter vacation and then two and a half "cold" days, so going back to work for a full week this week was tough!  We tried to make the week go quickly by having a lot of fun and I took a TON of pictures.  Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted a bunch off my phone today and I don't know how to get them back!  So, here is what we were up to this week.  Sorry for not having all the pics I planned on.

1. We started out our week with our Economics Project.  The short week, the week before, we prepared for our budget project and this Monday we went SHOPPING!  Check out my last post.  You can grab a freebie on here, too.  HERE  Half of my class designed inventions.  The other half were the shoppers.  The inventors gave commercials.  The commercials were GREAT!  Then the kids went shopping.   They bought anywhere from posters to dog translators, to eye glasses that will never break!  They practiced counting money and making change.  It was a great experience.  

2. What do you do to prepare in advance? This morning I went in early and made TONS of copies.   For me, it relieves a lot of stress to have copies ready in advance.  I love having the copies prepared so that I can pull them as needed.  When I taught first grade, since I had done it so many times, I would pull things that I knew I would use and prepare them in advance.  It makes it easy to plan when you already have materials ready. I have all my math homework and morning work copied for the next few weeks!

3. MEASUREMENT OLYMPICS! (These are the only pics I managed to save!!)  So when I realized I would be teaching some of the advanced math students around the time of the Olympics I knew I wanted to have some fun!  We are in the midst of the Measurement Olympics. Granted some of the activities are summer sports and some are well, made up sports (hula hooping?), but the kids are LOVING it.  Each event requires the students to measure in inches, centimeters, feet, and/or time.  The students are collecting data.  Next week we will use this data to create a line plot and analyze the data.  They are having fun and so am I!  

      I was looking online for some ideas and one of the best free packets I found was from Classroom Magic Blog.  Click this link to check out her packet. I did make some adjustments and obviously added some "new" events, but this was what I used for my jumping point.  We used her events and then added Hula Hooping, Jump Roping, Basketball, Sit and Reach, and Curling!

This is Sit and Reach.  I guess this is a PE activity for flexibility.  I had never heard of it, but the teacher I am working with thought of it.  The students lean forward and try to reach as far as they can.

The starting point and ending points for the discus throw.  AKA throwing a paper plate!  They loved this one.  It was interesting to see them come up with different strategies to throw it the farthest!

This is bad picture, but it is an action shot!  One of our sports was Curling.  Our version consisted of a cornhole bag being pushed across the hallway floor with a broom!  They LOVED this activity! 

And of course, no Olympics is complete without Jump Roping!  We had one student who jumped 95 times!

4. SO long Smartboard!  At my new school we do NOT have Smartboards in every room.  The good thing is that the Smartboards we do have are able to be moved easily from room to room.  When I first came to my school, my room had an Elmo, but no Smartboard.  I was teaching the lowest third graders and one of the other teachers was so kind to share her Smartboard.  Now, we switched math kiddos and I have the highest group.  I have since given her back Smartboard.  So sad to see it go, but I am happy to know that the kids who need that interaction the most will get to use it! 

5. Last but not least...two little words...  LONG WEEKEND!!  WOO HOO!  Enjoy your long weekend!

Hopefully, next week I won't delete most of my pictures!

-Michelle