Tuesday was a Funday :)







These kids are pretty smart! I was watching them

build their bar graphs on the class's favorite

Christmas carols!



Sarah needed some help with her addition.
Boy did those blocks come in handy!



The Kindergarteners at Manzanita
 waiting for their audience while on stage!



Math was in process when I was entering the classroom, and immediatley Mrs. DeWitt asked me to work with Sherome, an African American boy who was not in class yesterday. He was really struggling with his additions including 45+27= because it required carrying the Ten's place over. All the other students were moving on to what ever they had to complete next while I sat with Sherome, and walked him through the addition using our fingers. Agian when we completed the sheet consisting of 9 problems, he was glad to bring it to the teacher and say, "I'm Done!" Mrs. Dewitt complained that she was not given enough time to teach today with specials that morning and an assembly coming up at 1:00. I remembered back to my youth, remembering that school was kept fun with all the activities we had. The youngsters sat on the cafeteria's floor while the adults were given rustic folding chairs that matched their pink and teal theme. I had to ask what year it was built, and Susan said that it was around the mid Fifties. This explained why I could not believe that all that made up their playground was a silver rod dome climber, sand and fields. She explained that the older students were escorted to the public park nextdoor's playgym because the school would not fund a new playgound for them. Back to the concert.... The kindergarteners sang "Must Be Santa", a new song to me, but a Christian song, none the less. I questioned why thy permitted religeous affiliation during school hours, and if anybody was Jewish per say. Mrs. DeWitt said they were predominantly Christain and Catholic, I assumed because of their ethnic backgrounds, majority of them must have been. Her class enjoyed it, but was very squirmy and needed some redirection of attention. I moved to the floor on the opposite end of her classroom to help set a good example by putting my attension on the stage. Sixth grade took the show and eventually included a song called, "Christmas Around the World" in which they tied all the December holidays together. This eased my tension that they were leaving out certain religeous views in the school setting. After thinking this through, I see that since they are all elementary students it is more acceptable to sing along to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" than it would be in my own high school, but it did not violate their freedom to religion that day.



The class and I patiently waiting for

the show to begin!



When class was put back into session, Mrs. DeWitt thought of a lesson on the spot, that again required the class to vote for their favoite Christmas song. In turn, "Rudolf" won, but all four songs were to be graphed by each of the students. She walked them through how to set up the axis and label the songs, but as I walked around the classroom there were quite a few I had to assist or suggest to in order to make it like Mrs. DeWitt's. All in all, the graphs turned out wonderfully, and I was left to stamp them with inspiring phrases. Oh, the simple times, when a stamp was the best grade you could get...



Here I am "grading" their beautiful graphs
with stamps that said Terrific!
I gave every graph at least 3 stamps
because they were so fun!