Project Life: March

We had a ton of fun visiting Salvation Mountain and the Salton Sea over the weekend. We actually ended up visiting Salvation Mountain on the day there was a memorial for the artist, which was crazy. For the memorial, the volunteers were passing out paint cups so visitors could go in and freshen up the paint as needed. Very cool experience.

Memory games + a love/hate relationship with the laminator

I’ve really been trying to come up with new activities for my classes. I don’t think I worksheet them to death or anything, but I do want them to come to math class everyday wondering what new thing they’re going to get to do. Some days are notes and straight up learning. Some days are all review. And some days there’s a perfect balance of new learning and activity that go hand in hand.

So technically scientific notation is not “new” learning for these guys. Or at least it shouldn’t be. But since we switched to common core in the middle of the year, and it’s officially an 8th grade standard now, I felt I needed to throw some sci no review into our polynomials unit. Scientific notation and exponents fit nicely into the beginning of polynomials, I feel. And my kids seem to have a good grasp on scientific notation right now, though we’re still struggling with nailing down those exponents. 

The Memory game was easy to make in InDesign. I made two versions. The blue, pictured above, is the beginner game, where all problems can be simplified by the kids in their heads. Things like 8 x 10^5 and such. The advanced decks are printed on orange and require some scratch paper because they consist of multiplication of expressions in scientific notation. And while it looks like you can see through to the other side, one of my kiddos quickly discovered the backs actually just picked up some of the ink from other cards while they were in a pile waiting to be laminated.

Speaking of lamination, let’s talk pros and cons. While I really like seeing these cards all nice and slick looking on the tables, the days of work to cut them out is kind of a pain. And I don’t even cut them out. My minions do. 

Anyway, I seriously had kids on the floor in the back of every class for two days cutting those things out. They love it, but I don’t love the constant mess and how seriously long it takes to prep for one activity. And with 8th graders, there’s no guarantee that even lamination is going to save these cards for next year’s kiddos. I’ve found myself much more often forgoing the lamination and just printing on card stock, sending a kid to the chopper to slice them out unevenly (perfection is overrated in 8th grade), and just warning the kids in each class that they have to last all day. And they always do, though they’re definitely more worse for the wear at the end of that 4th mod. Then I just toss them in the recycle bin. No storage. No planning weeks ahead to send them off to the laminator (ours isn’t on our campus). No planning days ahead for minions to cut them out. 

To sum up, laminating is overrated. But it’s so pretty and shiny! But it’s time consuming. Bleh. I guess I’ll keep my love/hate relationship with it for now.

Memory games + a love/hate relationship with the laminator

I've really been trying to come up with new activities for my classes. I don't think I worksheet them to death or anything, but I do want them to come to math class everyday wondering what new thing they're going to get to do. Some days are notes and straight up learning. Some days are all review. And some days there's a perfect balance of new learning and activity that go hand in hand.

So technically scientific notation is not "new" learning for these guys. Or at least it shouldn't be. But since we switched to common core in the middle of the year, and it's officially an 8th grade standard now, I felt I needed to throw some sci no review into our polynomials unit. Scientific notation and exponents fit nicely into the beginning of polynomials, I feel. And my kids seem to have a good grasp on scientific notation right now, though we're still struggling with nailing down those exponents. 

The Memory game was easy to make in InDesign. I made two versions. The blue, pictured above, is the beginner game, where all problems can be simplified by the kids in their heads. Things like 8 x 10^5 and such. The advanced decks are printed on orange and require some scratch paper because they consist of multiplication of expressions in scientific notation. And while it looks like you can see through to the other side, one of my kiddos quickly discovered the backs actually just picked up some of the ink from other cards while they were in a pile waiting to be laminated.

Speaking of lamination, let's talk pros and cons. While I really like seeing these cards all nice and slick looking on the tables, the days of work to cut them out is kind of a pain. And I don't even cut them out. My minions do. 

Anyway, I seriously had kids on the floor in the back of every class for two days cutting those things out. They love it, but I don't love the constant mess and how seriously long it takes to prep for one activity. And with 8th graders, there's no guarantee that even lamination is going to save these cards for next year's kiddos. I've found myself much more often forgoing the lamination and just printing on card stock, sending a kid to the chopper to slice them out unevenly (perfection is overrated in 8th grade), and just warning the kids in each class that they have to last all day. And they always do, though they're definitely more worse for the wear at the end of that 4th mod. Then I just toss them in the recycle bin. No storage. No planning weeks ahead to send them off to the laminator (ours isn't on our campus). No planning days ahead for minions to cut them out. 

To sum up, laminating is overrated. But it's so pretty and shiny! But it's time consuming. Bleh. I guess I'll keep my love/hate relationship with it for now.

Project Life: First Week(s) of February

Things that happened this week:

We started using kale as salad bases * We went to Jen and Justin’s with dinner for them, then brainstormed their family photo session and blew up pink balloons for Trinity’s birthday the next day * my students’ schedules switched around for the new semester and I lost my awesome homeroom * Got a haircut and color * Worked from bed, with Jack’s help * Completed 2nd quarter parent-teacher conferences.

Supplies: Liz Tamanaha’s Project Life Midnight Edition and Elise Blaha Cripe’s Seafoam Edition, Ali Edwards’ CK font, arrow card from Just Izzy Design (color altered by me).

Project Life: Week 2(ish)

Week 2, huzzah!

Supplies: Liz Tamanaha’s Project Life Midnight Edition and Elise Blaha Cripe’s Seafoam Edition, Ali Edwards’ CK font, and the small calendars are a free download from rubybows.com.

Project Life 2014: Week 1(ish)

I’m super excited to start this project all over again. I actually can’t believe I kept it up all last year. It was pretty questionable at some points of the year, but somehow I was able to go back and fill in the gaps on long breaks. I think part of the reason it took too long for me last year was keeping it up week to week. It had to be too perfect. What if I didn’t have enough photos that week? What if nothing really interesting happened that week? I got stressed over that stuff. This year I’m letting myself off the hook of perfection as far as timing goes. I’m going for more of a monthly look this year. It’s loosely week-based, but if I took a picture on Wednesday one week and don’t have room for it until the next week, I’m going to be okay with that.

I’m really excited to have the Midnight edition to work with this year. I think my layouts are going to have lots of blacks and grays and yellows. For the most part I’ll just be posting my digital images, though I am doing actual print layouts. I’m actually doing the digital layouts because I like to have a game plan before I start playing around. Believe it or not, it takes less time when I have a digital version to go off of. And it helps me when figuring out what images to print and in what format.

Off the top of my head, these layouts used: Liz Tamanaha’s Project Life Midnight Edition and Elise Blaha Cripe’s Seafoam Edition, Elise Blaha Cripe’s quote cards, and Ali Edwards’ CK font, and the small calendars are a free download from rubybows.com.

Dorky 8th Graders

Today was a good day.

I LOVE my 8th graders this year. They are too funny.

They're also all super dorky. But I'm dorky, too, and I think that's why I love them so much. They just are so innocent and have no shame.

For instance, one of my boys today told me about how he was googling me the other day. Now, I know my kids do this (one reason I don't have my last name anywhere on this site, or I'd be hearing it on Monday about how I called them dorky), but usually they don't tell me they've done it. This kid was super excited because he found all Chris' and my wedding pictures online. What thirteen-year-old boy is super stoked to tell his teacher that he found all her weddings pictures online? One of my silly, innocent thirteen-year-olds, that's who.

Now I do know they've found my Instagram. I don't exactly hide it. All they have to do is find our photography website and they can access it from there. Last year I knew kids kept tabs on my account, but no one ever said anything, except an occasional slip of asking about something I'd done over the weekend before realizing they'd seen it on my Instagram, and not heard about it from me, which always tipped me off to who was following me. This year the following is not lurking in the shadows. I get likes from several students, and one likes everything I do within about ten seconds of posting about it. I'm not sure how he does that...