On the fly

Today's introduction to our crab/beach painting was amazing, even if I do say so myself. Like Sunday, I wrote the five colors we were going to use on the board, but then, as we started using the colors to make the wave-lines, I did a little math integration by asking the kids how many more colors we needed, and as we erased each color, I wrote the corresponding subtraction sentence on the board until we were finished. Handing the colors out one at a time and having the children take turns made the process go more quickly, and at the end, I tried to recall the Arabic word for zero (sif'fair), and the kids got really excited when I said I wanted to learn Arabic, and so we went through the primary and secondary colors (I told them they could quiz me on them next Tuesday...let's see if they remember). It was very exciting and brought back memories of Korea and the cross-curricular lessons I would teach there. I'd like to do more of it - at the end of the class, I felt really energized and excited about the lesson.