While at Faithbuilder’s Teacher’s Week this past summer, I met some wonderful young ladies from Canada who happened to be my roommates. One of them told me about a teacher she knew who taught his students how to divide fractions by “flipping” a student upside down. She said that she didn’t pick a student up herself, but would use a teddy bear in class and flip the bear upside down. After I told my husband this story, he decided he could also handle picking up a student and “flipping” him. Here is the result.
Kyle stays the same. Trevor flips upside down. Multiply. Laugh. Remember. Make learning fun. (Thanks Delores!)
One of our main playground pieces of equipment expired recently. The school board graciously bought us four more disc golf baskets. What a great game. Not so much competition, just everyone trying to do better than they did before and encouraging each other.
We have had several dark, dreary, rainy days this past week. However, that doesn’t mean our school days have to be dark and dreary. We have enjoyed playing Occupation. Here are some of our student’s creative “jobs”.
the SMBI singer
the missionary
the orphanage worker
the chicken farmer
the nurse
I like to keep the job list and write the name of the person who picked it beside their “job”. Then at the end-of-the-year slide show, I show a picture of the person with their “job” written below their name. Here is an example.
And I cannot leave out the auction. Many friends, family, and church members showed up making it extra fun and special. Some of the more popular items included sketch pads and colored pencils, glitter pens, crazy socks, and brain games. These are all good things. We try to encourage the students to request educational, edifying items. We have not been disappointed.
Legos are great if they are the “City” types. So many of them have monsters and unedifying junk, but these are the good ones. Our sons have spent many creative hours playing with these. This youngster also won two fribee golf discs and is holding his auction bidding stick in his hand.
Last year one of the families showed up on auction day with a “Mystery Box”. It has been a favorite of the students ever since. Now we have a “boy” mystery box and a “girl” mystery box. This young man found the box packed with all sorts of goodies like snacks, bike lights, flash lights, candy, a Dr. Pepper, and a $10 Target gift card. The girl box had a blanket, slippers, lotion, candy, flowers, and cash.
Dolls are a great way for little girls to practice being moms (not fashion queens).
January gets a little chilly, so the students have been spending more time inside, and they are getting more and more creative. Several of the girls were bringing their dolls to school, so after the boys made the attic their “club”, the girls turned part of the sewing/kitchen storage closet into their orphanage.
A few days later they made the area outside the closet into a play area for their dolls.
Next they added a store complete with diapers, baby clothes, books and toys. They spend and count out fake money too.
Then two of the younger boys requested band-aids. They had become the orphanage doctors.
This morning I found the girls had added a restaurant to their grand establishment.
It is all creative, edifying fun. And I do hope some, or all of them, end up helping in an orphanage someday if that is what God has for them to do.