Monday, February 25, 2013

Snow Day in Texas and Monday Made It




We had a snow day today.  The kids were super excited, but I had mixed emotions.  Snow day today, means we make it up on one of our pretty spring days.  :(  We only ended up with about 3 inches, but at my parents house 1 1/2 hours north received 15 inches!!  Here is a pic from their front porch.  

 

I should have spent the day catching up on school work and looking up new ideas for my next unit, but I got a little side tracked watching my kids playing Just Dance on the xBox.  :)  

Last week we started our measurement unit.  Measurement is so hard for kids and so I've tried to find everything I can to help make it easier.   In the past I have always done Gallon Man.  He's really cute and a fun project to do in class.  However, he's hard for the students to recreate on the test, because they can't always remember how many of each to draw. 




Then my coworker and I came across Gallon Land.  I love it because it has a cute little story and diagram to go with it, that is super easy for the kids to recreate.  

In the Land of Gallon there were four Queens (quarts). 

Each queen had a prince and a princess (pints).

Each prince and princess had two children (cups).

Each child had eight owls (ounces).
 


We added the owls (ounces) to our story because they are asked about ounces in a gallon several times in our unit and it's not included on our math chart so we wanted a way for them to remember ounces in a gallon.  It's not on this graphic (it's on my school computer and we are snowed in today.) But we wrote in 8's in each "C" to represent the 8 ounces in a cup.

I then had them write the story and draw the graphic in their journals.  (I'll try to add a pic of one of my student's journals when I get back to school.)

Here is the powerpoint I created to show the story of the Royal Land of Gallon.



3 comments:

  1. Wow that's really cool! I never thought it snowed in TX! XD We are lucky, we have to have more than 2 snow days before we have to make them up! Anyways, I would always get confused on gallon man, but my 5th grade teach did it like you do now with the gallon land story. Now I get it.

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  2. I love finding middle school teachers to follow. I didn't think it snowed in Texas either! Thanks for sharing-I'm your newest follower.

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  3. I just found my way here from Teaching With Moxie. I am a middle school teacher--I currently live in MI and am looking to relocate to TX. (So I don't want to hear about it snowing there--shush!) I will definitely be back--I love sharing ideas!

    Bethany
    http://mrsrosselitsteachingcorner.com

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