Groovy Educator

Socks?  Teaching with socks ? Yes!  Socks can be a valuable teaching tool.  Here are some ways you can use socks to teach your child(ren) at home or in your classroom. Math Estimation -Fill a sock with several objects. Have your child look at the the sock and estimate how many items are in the sock without feeling it.  Spend time discussing what you observe about the sock.  Is it full?  Is it bumpy?  Does it lay flat?  Ask how these observations affect your child's estimate.  Dump out the objects from the sock and decide whether or not your child wants to change his/her estimate based on the new visual knowledge.   Check by counting the objects. Grouping -When counting the objects group them into 2s, 5s, or 10s.  Discuss why?  Come up with some reasons together as to why this might be helpful.  You can repeat these activities with items in the other sock. Skip Counting -Empty out the sock drawer and count t...

Lesson Plans are always evolving.  As the year progresses in first grade the time it takes to complete assignments change as well as the amount of time the children can focus on independently.  Group work becomes more productive as well. I've tried many different formats for my plans from hand written to having them completely typed.  They have also varied in length from five pages (one for each day) to two pages for the whole week.  Each year I tweak them, always trying to be more efficient and find the best use of time during the day.  I like my plans to be highly functional where I can refer to them quickly, complete them quickly, but where they also contain all the necessary information. For me I like a typed format where I hand write part of the plans.  Sometimes I like to work on them when I am away from the computer and this affords me the opportunity but it also saves me from writing the same thing repeatedly. Here are the plans that I am usin...