Monday, April 29, 2013

Birthday Celebration

This past Saturday was this handsome man's birthday

On Friday evening we went to dinner at the Gaucho to start off the celebration! That night we just hung out with friends at our house. On Saturday, we had planned on going fishing and shooting guns (a definite man day!) We ended up not having time to fish, but we were able to shoot guns! Trevor's family has a bunch of land in Coweta, so they have set up a "shooting range" for the guys. Here are some photos of the day!
Trevor using his new shot timer.


Katy shooting...so glad you were in town!!!

Trevor teaching me.

yes...I wore my new camo sweatshirt just for Trevor!

That evening we had an engagement party to go to...congrats to Mackenzie and Colin! It was a fun fiesta!!


On Sunday we celebrated with family by having a cookout at our house...we grilled chicken and everyone brought lots of goodies!

Trevor's favorite...cookie cake!

lots of food!
One of Trevor's birthday gifts...you would think it was Whiskey's birthday! :)

Thanks to all our friends and family that celebrated with us this weekend!! We love you all!!

Monday, April 22, 2013

Fraction Activities

During the school year I feel like I am scrambling to get everything taught before state testing. It seems like we just don't have enough time to cover all of the curriculum, so we are a mile wide and an inch deep! We were in such a rush to get through multiplying and dividing fractions, that I decided to go back and review those with the students before they move on to 7th grade. I decided to make some games/activities for the students, and I'm so happy with that decision. When the students are competing against each other, or there is some type of fun game involved, or when they get to work together in groups, the morale of the classroom changes entirely. So here is a breakdown of the activities going on in my classroom lately!

First up: Fraction-Opoly
Items Needed: Game Board (hand-made)
                         Answer Key (optional and hand-made)
                         Directions (hand-typed)
                         Dice
                         Index Card (to keep score on)
                         Game Pieces (I used coins-quarters, pennies, nickels, dimes)
                         Scratch paper and pencil for each student

Here are the directions that I have typed for the students to follow:
1. Put all game pieces on START
2. Roll the dice. Players go in order based on their roll from highest to lowest.
3. P1: Roll the dice and move that many spaces around the game board. All players must answer the question that P1 landed on to ensure P1 got the correct answer. When you are finished answering the question, make sure the answer you got is located on the Fraction-Opoly Answers page. If P1 got the answer correct, they receive 1 point. If they got it wrong, they receive no points.
4. Repeat step 3 with P2...
5. Each time a player passes START they receive 5 points.
6. Keep track of your scores on the index card provided.
7. At the end of the time period, the player with the highest score wins.
8. If you land on a question has already been solved, you must be able to find it on your scratch paper in order to receive that point. If you cannot find the question on your scratch paper, you must re-solve the problem.

I had the students play in groups of 2, 3 or 4 and all seemed to work just fine.

Next Up: Fraction Two-Ways
These activities came from "Developing Mathematical Fluency" Grades 5-8 by Grayson H. Wheatly. There are several awesome activities from this book, this is one of my favorites.
Items Needed: Fraction Two-Ways Worksheet laminated
                        Dry-erase markers
                        Erasers (I use baby socks)
                        Scratch paper and pencil


In this activity, the students have to be flexible on when to multiply or divide the fractions. And because the answers have to be correct going from both left to right and top to bottom, they can basically self check themselves. Having the students replace the word "multiply" or "times" with the word "of" really helped them in this activity. I was really impressed with my students mathematical thinking during this game!

Last Up: Fraction Memory
I just created this game similar to the game Memory that I'm sure everyone has played as a kid.
 
Directions Card
Items Needed: 40 index cards (2 different colors) - I cut normal sized ones in half
                             -20 index cards with equations on them
                             -20 index cards with solutions on them
                        Directions Sheet
                        Scratch paper and pencil 
I had two different colored index cards, 1 color has an equation and 1 color has a solution. Here are the Directions that I typed for the students:
1. Put all pieces face down, but group them by color.
2. The player whose birthday is next goes first.
3. P1: Flip over 1 card from each color group. All players solve the equation and see if P1 got a match with the answer card that is flipped over. If P1 got a match, they keep both cards and go another turn. If P1 did not get a match, flip both cards back over and continue the game.
4. Repeat step 3 with P2...
5. At the end of the game, the player with the most cards wins.
Hint: Flip over and solve the equation before you flip over a card from the solution side. That way, if you get a solution you have seem before and can remember where the card was placed last, you have a better chance of getting a match.

The students really seemed to enjoy all 3 activities and I was amazed at the amount of scratch work that each student had on their paper...
This was about half way through the hour and look how many problems they have solved! I can barely get them to write their names on their papers some days!

Hopefully if you are a teacher, this post will inspire you to create some games for your classroom! It makes the day go by so fast and I guarentee the students will put forth more effort...towards the end of the year, we are lucky if are students hear 1/4 of what we say, so have fun and play some games!!

Monday, April 15, 2013

Life Through An iPhone

My goodness, it has been an extremely LONG time since I blogged last! I would like to say that not a whole lot has happened, but when I look back through pictures it seems that we have been really busy!
Trevor and I got new phones about a month ago. Before, we were with Sprint and had Evo's, and to be completely honest, I loved my Evo, but Sprint was absolutely horrible in Tulsa. Our contract recently got over, so we decided to switch to AT&T and we got iPhones. As mentioned before, I really did like the Evo and I thought it had a pretty decent camera for a phone, but after getting the iPhone I didn't know what I was missing. The camera is actually really impressive, so much that I haven't really used my main camera at all...and if you know me, you know I'm attached to my camera!
So here goes the past month through my iPhone!...

During Spring Break we had to put down Trevor's childhood puppy, Rebel. He was one of the best dogs and we were so sad to see him go! But here is a cute picture of him when he was younger and a recent photo. RIP Rebel!
A few weeks back we celebrated some good friends Engagement at El Guapo's downtown Tulsa...here are a couple photos of the night!


We recently had to replace a board in our backyard....our neighbors and us always joke about how we need to make a doggie door between our yards because they have a couple dogs that love to play with ours...well I came home from work one day and found this...I really think they were trying to tell us to consider that doggie door!
Along with having to fix the fence, almost everyday we come home to this...so we (Trevor) has to fill in all the holes! We assumed Whiskey, being a lab, would dig and chew, but it does get a little annoying!
With all the rain recently, our yard is seriously going to float away!
And because of all the rain, our dogs have been cooped up inside and they love to play tug-o-war and growl as LOUD as possible and drive us a little crazy!!
We have made some yummy meals...
Tonight I'm trying the Pioneer Woman's Peach Whiskey Chicken...I'll let you know how it is!

And last week we went to the OSU vs ORU baseball game!


Trevor has been training Whiskey so often, that I have started going with him just to get some quality time in!

This past weekend we went to the Xtreme Fight Night

The following day/evening we went on a dinner date to Go West, did some yard work, and hung out with our neighbors!

We are somewhat redoing our front landscaping, so I'll post some before and after pictures as soon as we get things rolling! I love going to Lowes and Sanders and seeing all the bright colored flowers...I can't wait to get some planted in our yard!!
I have also created some fun math games for my 6th grade class, so if you are reading this blog and a teacher, revisit soon and I will have some games/activity ideas posted!

I hope everyone has a happy week!