Main Idea Kite

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Home-made Scratch Cards

Create your cards.
Paint using 2 parts acrylic silver paint to 1 part Dawn dishwashing liquid. 
Several layers may be required to cover text.
Glue to coloured cardstock.

Check out the source link below for powerpoint templates and more ideas.


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Teach children to cook... create healthy adults....

Want your children to grow up to be healthy adults? Teach them to cook....


I really enjoyed this article from the Province this week. It talks about involving children in grocery shopping and food preparation and cooking at a young age to help promote healthy eating and lifestyle. I find this to be very true, even more so as I teach Home Ec this year. Learning about the sugars in drinks and the Canada Food Guide and portions tat make a serving of vegetables for example. The article writes:

The occasional lucky person takes to cooking like a duck to water. But for most of us, it's a skill that needs to be taught. And the sooner children start to learn, the easier things tend to go.

"It has implications down the road," says Kate Comeau, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for Dietitians of Canada, the professional body that represents roughly 6,000 dietitians in this country.

"You can learn to cook as an adult ... but if we can start kids earlier, we tend to see healthier adults."

Tasks need to be geared to the child's age and abilities. Tearing lettuce is something a really young child can help with. Once they are able, getting children to read a recipe aloud provides opportunities to explain measurements and cooking terms.

Read article here

Holiday Word Games

Once a week I teach Grade 8 Humanities at the middle school I worked at last year. Today we finished off our World Religion presentations and then did some holiday word games. I adapted a few popular games and created a mix up interactive game for the students.

Here is how it went:

Two teams.
Bucket of themed words (We did Holiday movies, songs and items, which I prepared last night)
First person draws a word and then has the choice to either:

1. Charades - Act it out
2. Catch Phrase - Speak but not use words on the card
3. Pictionary - Draw it
4. Hum (songs)

The only real catch was that once someone did one thing (for example, charades) no one on their team could do it again until all 4 choices had been used, then we 're start' again and they can choose any of the four methods to showcase the word.

If their team guessed, they got a point, if they didn't (within two mintues) then the other team could 'steal'

They LOVED IT!

My favourite moment was when one student, who never speaks or participates in class activities (english is not his first language and he also has some cognitive barriers that make communication challenging at times, especially with his peers) but he got up and not only participated, but when he drew his item (a star) and the team guessed, everyone cheered (even the opposing team) and high fived him! Inclusion... I loved it!

What a great day!

We also did 'scattegories' I prepared a chart last night that looked something like this:

Letters:
Something Red
Christmas Song
Christmas Sweet
Christmas Dinner Food
Christmas Movie
Something Green
Stocking Stuffer

So we would do it "BOGGLE' Style and choose a letter and they had 5 minutes to come up with words. The trick was, that if somone else picked the same word, no points. If they had a word no one else picked, they got a point.

Fun word games leading up to Winter Break!

#FirstWorldProblems - put into perspective

Ah, First World Problems. If you live in a western country, for one reason or another, you’re probably guilty of uttering one of these phrases.

Sure, minor inconveniences can really make a day unpleasant, but when put into perspective, having cold leather seats when you get into your car during the winter isn’t the end of the world.

Not having clean water, however, is an entirely different story. In order to highlight what “problems” actually are, Water Is Life launched the “First World Problems Anthem” video last year.

The video consists of people in the Third World reading tweets that were labeled with the hashtag #FirstWorldProblems. The stark contrast is sure to make the line at Starbucks seem like much less of a big deal.

Read More Here

Retain Good Teachers

Advice for new teachers here

Neat presentation on World's 10 Most Dangerous Spiders

Saw this on facebook