One of THOSE Mondays!

Yep, it was one of THOSE Mondays for me!  First of all, my son did NOT want to get up this morning which threw our timing all off.  Then, I get an alert on my phone that I had a Tier 3 RtI meeting that I had forgotten about.  I rush into guidance to find that our guidance counselor was already in another meeting.  I got her attention and she didn't have a meeting listed.  Our RtI facilitator was nowhere to be found, so I decide to head back to my room (keeping in mind that this is now 10 - 15 min. wasted), only to discover the parent in the front office waiting for the RtI meeting (so apparently, there was a meeting this morning).  About that time our RtI facilitator comes in and tells me she's spent the whole morning getting sick.  Greaat, more germs - just what I need!
  Anyway, we have the meeting (since mom is there) and when she pulls up the Tier 3 paperwork, it's blank (which makes me look like I didn't have my stuff together - which I did - who knows where everything I entered went...)! So now that the meeting is over (and I am walking into my room after the tardy bell), the day can begin.
    Our reading block went fairly smoothly (even with me winging my small group work because I decided to actually take Saturday OFF - go figure), and then we went to specials.  I start to get stuff ready for my math stations after lunch only to realize that I forgot to copy one of the sheets for my number sense center and that I'm one center short!  Soooo, I sat down at the computer and created a quick, no frills, spur of the moment activity they could do as a place value activity.  Basically, the kids pull a domino, draw it, write a 2 digit number using the dots on the domino and then draw a picture of the number using "sticks" and "squares".  Here's the worksheet - the first one is an example.

Domino Place Value

Like I said, no frills and spur of the moment, but maybe someone can use it...

Sharing always makes me feel better, so I want to share some of the things we did last week and are dong this week.

First, our story last week was Smile, Mike!  If you have the Treasures reading series, you'll recognize this story.  A cute little art activity we do with this story is to have the kids make sort of a self portrait of their smiling face.  On the back, they write what makes them smile.  They turn out really cute each year and we usually hang them on the door and leave them up for the rest of the year (although this year, we have the snowmen hanging around our door right now, so we might have to wait to hang them up).

Another idea to share - our pattern center this week.  I take centimeter grid paper and draw a heart shape on it.  The kids then color a pattern onto the squares inside the heart.  I allow them to choose any pattern they want (although I do limit them to 4 colors).  These make cute hearts to hang around the room and allow you to see quickly who is able to generate a pattern on their own.

Once everyone is done, I may mount them on construction paper, I'm not sure - we'll see! 

Hopefully you'll be able to use some of these ideas in your own room.  If you do use any, I would love some comments - you guys always make me smile!