Geometry Vocabulary & A Funny Moment

      I don't know about all of you but in my district we are in the middle of our Geometry and Measurement unit in math right now.  And I must say that there are a TON of vocabulary words for the students to learn.  I made up vocabulary sheets for the kids to take home that match the anchor charts we have hanging in the room.  I wanted to share them with you now-just in case you are interested.  When I gave the sheets to my kiddos the picture box was blank and they had to fill it in with their own drawing.  If you are interested in a blank copy just let me know and I would be happy to e-mail it to you.

Lines and Line Segments         Angles        Polygons         Triangles        Quadrilaterals

        I also made a matching game with our vocabulary words.  The day after we went over the new words and worked with them and made our anchor chart and at-home study sheet I covered our chart and handed each student a card.  Each card (just a white index card from my drawer) had either the picture, the word or the definition and the three that went together had to find each other.  It was great!  I could tell who really new the words.  I also was able to see how their minds were thinking about the words.  For example, a couple of the "picture" kids and a couple of the "definition" kids both figured out the word and then tried to find the person with the word by saying something like, "I have the picture of the right triangle, who has the word and the definition of right triangle."  I would like to play it again but this time try a silent match up-since now we have had a lot more practice with all of the words . . . it could be very interesting. 

        At school I am a pretty organized person (OK, maybe not the closet but even in there it is organized chaos).  I try to put things back when I am finished using them and I train my kids to do the same.  This is really for two reasons.  I want my students to take proper care of things and also I want everyone to be able to find whatever it is that they need when they need it without having to organize a search party.  This has worked out great.  Even when I have a substitute the kids know to put things back where they go.  I may have accidentally transferred a little bit of my OCD onto them-but a little bit of OCD won't hurt, right?  So on to my funny moment.  At my school we have the privilege of having both a computer lab set up that we can take our kids to (on a rotating schedule) and computer carts that we can bring to our classrooms (also on a rotating schedule).  Yesterday was our day for the computer cart.  I moved my two HUGE stuffed frogs from their place underneath the word wall and went to go get the computer cart.  I had to move the two frogs because when I returned with the cart that it where I needed to put it.  By the time I got back four or five of my students had already come in, unpacked and were reading quietly in the hallway, this was before school.  And one of my little darlings saw the frogs out of place and put them back.  This made me giggle.  They didn't know that I had moved the frogs to make room for the cart they were just trying to take care of our room-which I LOVE!!!