Bit by Bit

Phew. I have a VERY rough outline of my unit for holes finished. It's suppose to be 4-6 weeks long and I'm afraid I'm trying to cram too much in and it's at 5 weeks right now. That gives me a little wiggle room if it ends up being 6 weeks long. I'm always afraid of things taking less, so I plan too much.

Another way I am preparing for weak planning is by having activities for the kids to work on in the free time. I'm putting together a project menu that I'm calling "Green Lake Grub." It'll have different projects for the students to work on in their free time and on dedicated work days. They will each be "cost" a certain amount of money and the students have to spend maybe $10 by the end of the unit on their meal. If they spend more it can be for extra credit. This way it's differentiated completely, and also gives me a little wiggle room in my planning.

I can not believe how much work I still have to do for all of this. I'm so glad my teacher got me started on this a long time ago. Maybe she didn't know, but I over think and over plan things to the max, so it's good for me to get started early.

I do admit though, I have done NO planning for math. I believe that once I get this unit pretty much out of the way by the time school starts, I should be able to focus on math then. I have the text book to fall back on for this subject, and I will be able to integrate some of my own ideas and styles into that, rather than having to come up with everything from scratch in the way I have for this Holes unit.

I've even figured out a way to incorporate a guest speaker (hopefully), storytelling, music, poetry, food, science, and social studies into it. I thought about doing math, but I could only think of one thing to do and I'm afraid the math would be too complicated for them at this point...I'll have to do some more research into that. Anyway, it's going to be great!

I'm just re-leaved I have SOMETHING done right now.

I also will need to put together my "get to know me" bulletin board before school starts. I'm hoping Mrs. Coyne has me come in next week perhaps on one of my days off to see the room and the bulletin board so I can get started.

SO nervous and SO excited. AHHH!!!