Geocashing part 2

Well we got the handheld GPS, so we were able to go out on Sat and here are some of the pict. Don't want to give away too much with the location, but we were able to find 2 of the 3 we were looking for. Plan to go back out on Tues, :)

Geocaching!!

Funny story about geocaching. I came home (excited) and told my family about "treasure hunting" and explained the details. So we looked online near my area and found many caches right around us. My husband was VERY skeptical (kinda reminded me of Dr Meier's father) asking questions, saying who would want to go and do that? The more we talked about it, the more excited we became.
(my children and I)
My kids are on fall break from today till next Wed and I told them we would go "hunting" maybe this weekend. Well I didn't realize that my phone was not able to receive latitude and longitude, so I was disappointed :( 
My husband (secretively) said he did the research on it, got our family a username, and was going tonight to buy a handheld GPS so the family could go geocaching this weekend. Excitement again.
(I knew he would like it, but took awhile to admit that something he had not heard of, was really OK)
Anyway, I will take some pictures if we "find" one this weekend and post so you can see our excitement too.
We have a park within 5 miles of where we live with about 20 geocaches in it!! We plan to be geocaching as a family at that park till next year!!

Doesn't this snack look yummy??
It is made with colby cheese, apples, strawberries and swiss rolls.

Geography

There are so many ideas for teaching geography. I will be teaching about landforms this week and have come up with some great ideas for the students to remember the landforms of the world.
With the help of the internet, geography ideas are just a click away. There is no need to sit and read a textbook for lessons when we can get so many ideas and activities from teachers all around the world. (thanks to the WWW)
I love researching different lesson plan ideas because that means that I am trying to improve the students learning of a subject. I can be looking a one website and it take me to 3-4 others that are jam-packed with great, useable lesson plans.
We have stayed busy in Dr. Meier's class and I love the thought of always doing something new and different to learn about an area of social studies!!!

Blocksborough

Here is a small version of our town, Blocksborough.
Everybody did a good job on their buildings.

New link about social studies

I found a great link that is geared toward
elementary education using social studies
intergrated with other subjects. I have spent an hour just looking at all the teacher lesson plans. It is amazing what is available online for us to use to make social studies more interesting.
So here is the link...ENJOY
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/learn.jsp?lnkid=TNav:SA:home&ESP=SA/ib//acq/main_tnav_SA///nav/txtl////

~Critical Voice~

After reading the articles on having a critical voice, I realized that I needed to understand what a critical voice is?

The article says "to develop a critical voice, a teacher has to take time to analyze directives, mandates, and messages from whatever the source and then use that anaylsis to SPEAK UP about issues willingly and strongly to the power sources."

WOW-that's some pretty strong words!!

Every teacher will teach different and provide learning to the students in their class. If I don't know what my beliefs are, how can I stand up for my students. I have to be grounded to provide my students with an opportunity to learn.

I want to have an administraiton that is very supportive of my teaching, but as we have read in articles/journals that sometimes is not the case and then we have to see how far we will go for our students!!

"A teacher without the ability to think critically or to translate that thinking into a critical voice does a disservice to teaching, to learning, to students and to our democracy."