One of my favorite things to do it let children name things. Someone is having a baby - What should they name it? I just saw a bird - What is its name? I bought 8 hornworms for our classroom - What do we call them?
Welcome to Room 212 Diamond, Sparkle, Crystal, Starlight, Unicorn, Cookie, Narwhal, and Uganda!
After the naming took place, I made sure that each little buddy had their own home to live in with food. Today was the first day in their separate containers, and the first day the kids actually got to look at them up close.
Since I split my class in half for math - based on skill being taught/reinforced - I had 8 students in each group today (there is a cold going around)! Each student had a hornworm next to them during math, and the first thing I said was, "Ok, let's read our wormies our math problem."
They actually started pointing to the words and reading to their worm.
I am floored by how the whole shift of math changed to something frustrating, to something that could be easily explained to a worm. They were talking to their worms like, "Ok, look Cookie, you have to draw four ten sticks to represent 40." Excuse me? Where did these stunning mathematicians come from!?! I was impressed by their explanations and vocabulary - clearly understanding what we have been working on.
Working with the worms was a fantastic incentive to get their initial task complete, and I cannot wait to have them explain how to do triple digit subtraction with regrouping tomorrow - to the worm of course.
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