2012 Olympics

Here's some of Lexi's work on the 2012 London Olympics, most of the printables are free from Teachers Pay Teachers, which is an awesome site!

I popped a whole heap of pages into a clearfile, and let Lexi choose what she wanted to work on...

First we did a "Thinking Rings" (based on de Bono's six thinking hats, which are conveniently the same colours as the Olympic flag) to find out what Alexis already knew about the Olympics, how she felt about it, and what we wanted to find out about -

This one you get to invent your own event - 

 Lexi's new event is called "Ice Pot". A winter Olympic sport, it is played on an ice rink, with two teams of 19 players. The players pass a diamond shaped pot of ice (ouch!) around the rink to their team mates, intending to keep possession for as long as possible, with one point per minute of continual possession awarded. First team to 20 points wins. Players aren't allowed to tackle opposition players, but the ice pot can be intercepted during passes. Additional rules are no pushing, no talking, no being bad winners. Rule breaking results in being sent off the rink & your team deducted one point.

Spot the theme -

 "What is one interesting fact about that country? Two volcanoes erupted when the olympics where on onese [sic]" Yep, two of our north island volcanoes - Whakaari (White Island) and Tongariro erupted during the two weeks the Olympics were on! And Lexi did our flag from memory too... I think it has blended with the Australian one slightly ;)

Lexi really loved doing this one! She's asked to do it again several times -

I can't remember where I found this - I think it was a lapbooking site - but you have to match the event descriptions to the name & image -

Lexi was dubious about this, but really enjoyed it once she tried it out, it's the classic 'see how many words you can make from these letters' concept, using "gold medal" -

This was Lexi's first ever foray into using wikipedia -

Designing your own medal -

 and symbol/flag -

This is a poem she has been learning -

 umm.. yeah...

and her event pages - 

 You'll see a recurring theme of seating (those square things), and encouragement to try or watch the events, funny girl.

 "all the other horse moves"

there were a few other things that were half done, but I think that ship has sailed ;)

I've put the event pages template (which could be used for anything really), and another, more complex, event description page up for free download on TPT here!

Feb 3rd - Poetry

Lexi has learnt her first poem!

(sorry, this camera has a really bad microphone, and a certain boy was determined to be pesky!)

She only copied it into her poetry book, and read through it a couple of times, two or three days ago, and we hadn't practiced our poems since. Today I told her to read it to herself a few times to help her memorise it, she did once then said she knew it now.. I didn't really believe her, but she was adamant that she did, so she recited it to me several times perfectly! Can't argue with that.

I was initially thinking that we might do 2-3 poems per term, but I think unless she chooses some longer poems (which is unlikely, since she isn't too keen on writing for long!) we're going to be going through a lot more than that!! We'll keep revisiting the poems we learn though, because it's not just about memorising then forgetting :)

Feb 1st

Lexi has started learning "Solitude" by A.A. Milne (from Now We Are Six, like there was any choice for Miss Just-Turned-Six!) for her current poem :)