No Worksheet Wednesday!!!

We did it, and I must say it was a SUCCESS!!!  Now just a little disclaimer, it was only a 1/2 day and 6 of my firsties were out today.  

Our morning started, as all our mornings start with our Morning Tubs.  If I am being completely honest, I just realized that there were worksheets in one of the tubs..opps!  Then we headed off to Music. It was after Music, that Operation No Worksheet Wednesday began.

We started by playing, Clockworks.  Since we were a small but mighty group today, we were able to divide into 4 teams.  Each team had a white board, marker and eraser.  Team members had to take turns answering the question from the game, working with their team to determine if they all agreed on the answer and revealing it to me.  Clockworks is a great telling time game that has various levels.  The kids loved it and it was a great chance to practice our team skills, as well as our telling time to the hour and elapsed time skills.

Next we pulled out our Judy Clocks!  Once again, we were able to work in our teams and together they had to create the time that matched what I wrote on the Smartboard.  I decided next time, I will put together a little powerpoint of various times.  I can jazz up the power point with pictures to correspond times of our day, maybe even add music.  Just a little more engaging then simply writing the time.  I was impressed by how well they did!

We finished up Math with a little Hula Hoop Time!  I saw a few different versions from Pinterest and decided to tweak it meet our needs.  For this activity, we headed back to our tables and worked with our table teams.  Each team got a hula hoop, numbers for the clock, and an hour and a minute hand.  Our Special Ed Teacher and I had to give great instructions on how to place the numbers, we decided we will add velcro to the hula hoop, as well as the numbers for better placement the next time.  I think I will even connect the hour and minute hand with a brad, as our firsties were struggling to keep them together.  I told them a time and they had to create it on their clock, every team that got it right earned an m&m for each team member.  As I walked around, I heard the words every teacher loves to hear.."this is awesome.."

We moved on to Science and tuned into Think Central for our digital lesson on Weather.  Our district uses Science Fusion.  We started the digital lesson on Monday and were able to finish it today.  The kids are really getting into Weather and I was glad to hear some great questions that will drive our instruction further.

After we wrapped up the digital lesson, we celebrated one our own's birthday!  Then it was time to pack up and head home, well the kiddos headed home and I headed to meetings!!!

Today was a great day!  I really enjoyed the opportunity to go worksheet free.  However, I have a LOT of planning to do before next Wednesday.  I realized not only how easy it is to just rely on a worksheet, but how much I need to OVER plan and get a lot of rest the night before, because No Worksheet Wednesday kept this teacher on her toes!!!