I Like to Move It!

This week I've found my kids to be rather antsy. The weather is changing, we are between. Halloween and Thanksgiving, whatever excuse fits- they need to move.

I love Go Noodle. Love, love, love it!  It's perfect for when it's too cold to go outside for a four stop obstacle course or a quick recess. The songs are fun, the track and field events are energizing, and on the whole Go Noodle gets kids moving and gives me a bit more focus time afterwards.   And while Go Noodle can't conquer curriculum as much as I would like, it's a great jump start into creative thinking!

Part of our math experience for the week was exploring arrays. Students built array posters, they drew arrays, they created arrays with counters, and, most actively, became arrays.

Using their dry erase boards, we headed to the open area in the Fine Arts Wing to spread out in arrays. With 18 Thinkers in math class, we were easily able to build arrays for 18, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10, 9, 8, 6, and 4.  Yes, we threw in a few prime numbers as well.

Giving the kids the go ahead to actually be crawling around on the floor? Let's just say they have quite the solid understanding of arrays.

This week also brought out the food chain. Literally. We started by playing a food chain game using pre-determined and created food chains. It was a nice introduction. Then we kicked it up a notch. Each Thinker was given a mini poster with the name of an living thing on the top.  Their job was to use the resources we had in the room to create a poster about that living thing.  Basic needs, habitat, and adaptations were required (and even though we hadn't studied adaptations yet, well, they figured it out and gave themselves the front loading for next week!)

Them we got to move. The living things, while the kids thought they were random, we're carefully plotted parts of four food chains. Their job? Figure our how to create those chains. This got them moving and talking and problem solving and reasoning, and most importantly, learning!

There are so many ways to make movement an everyday part of learning, the more ways we use, the better!