I promised that I would tell all of you about The Princess' experience of being Teacher of the Day. The short explanation is that it all went really well. The Princess learned how to use "Google" and did quite a bit of research all on her own. I provided some additional research assistance, based mostly on what she had already discovered. For our main activity, we used a suggestion made by David. As I said, it went well.

We created a large map using this website (check it out, it is REALLY cool!) which showed Virginia and all of the surrounding states. We hung it up on the board, and The Princess told her class that they would be learning about Virginia today, told them where it was located and what it was surrounded by. We then started playing our first game.

We had printed a bunch of photos from the internet, and had found a matching photo or a "phrase" that went along with the photo. We let each child come up and pick one, and then instructed them to try and find the photo or the word that they thought went with theirs (another child had their match). We gave them two minutes to finish this task, and if they didn't have a partner by the time it finished, we just told them to buddy up with another partner-less kid!

At that point, The Princess called on one set of partners who stood up and showed their pictures to the class. The Princess told them if they were correct or not. If they were correct, they got to hang their pictures up on the board. If they weren't, The Princess asked one of them to sit back down, and then asked for the match that she was looking for. The two new partner-less kids became partners for the next round. While the kids were hanging up the pictures, The Princess told them what the significance of the pictures were. All the kids really liked this activity! I was surprised at how well we were able to hold their attention.

After we finished the matching game, we started our version of Jeopardy! The Princess and I had come up with a variety of questions about Virginia. Some were very easy, some, not so much. We played boys vs. girls, and the boys won by 5 points! It was a really close game.

I brought my crock-pot into the classroom about two hours before we were to teach, and started cooking cinnamon apples. OH MY GOODNESS... the room smelled SO good! We served the apples over ice cream. How does this relate to Virginia? Apples are a major produce in some areas of Virginia (Winchester), plus the recipe dated back to colonial times... not using a crock-pot of course! And Ice Cream? Well, the state beverage of Virginia is MILK, and you all know that you need milk to make ice cream, right?

Anyway, it was a pretty fun day, and her teacher was really impressed with our efforts. I was just exhausted after it was done!

Labels: The Princess