Ike outside and marching in Place

Thankfully, I do not live on the Gulf coast of Texas, or else I would probably not be able to enjoy my sick weekend at home. As it is, living near Dallas, which is pretty darn far inland, I'm STILL seeing the effects of Hurrican Ike today. It has been raining nonstop all day long, and the wind is quite audible.

Earlier this week, my class and I were going over Place Value. The kids had only learned place value through the thousands (though there was some debate over whether they had stopped at hundreds last year, or thousands), but this year, they have to know it through hundred thousands.

Since my new room this year is MUCH smaller than last year, there just isn't enough space to play Place Ball. Last year, I had the kids run around, slapping the desks as if they were bases, and saying the name of each place as they went. No room for that this year. So instead we marched in "place."

I started the kids marching left, right, left, right, and we shouted out the places in time -- ONES, TENS, HUNDREDS, THOUSANDS, TEN THOUSANDS, HUNDRED THOUSANDS! It seemed to stick that day. We'll see how much remains in a couple of weeks.

Also, my thanks to Peter Jones at Great New Books that are a Must Read for his review of Learn Me Good.