Legos and heading back to middle school

This week sees the start of two new journeys for me. Firstly, we have started a very large after school club initiative at my school. I'm really glad that the students have the opportunity to learn about so many different fun topics that can't be covered during the school day. I'll just name a few of their new options: Service, Chinese, Robotics, Cooking, and Running Club. Membership to particular clubs is determined on grade level since some things, like Service Club, just aren't as appropriate for the younger grades.

I am a proud member of the Lego Club! We are using the Legos as a form of math enrichment for a group of eight kindergarten and first graders. However, it is also a great opportunity to tie in some language. We started by making our own Lego characters and talked about our creation.

I wish I had a picture of my little Disney World tourist Lego, but my phone takes horrible pictures. The majority of the students made Lego Batmen so I would say that Batman has now overtaken Hulk as the best superhero.

Grab this fun worksheet from Whimsy Workshop Teaching at Minds in Bloom's Time Saving Tips page.

Once we finished our coloring sheets and snack, the group headed on over to the carpet to build their names with Legos. It was certainly an interesting challenge for the students with longer names. We ended up running out of Legos! In the end, though, we managed to find a way to complete our name builder worksheet for our club bulletin board. I am really looking forward to our future club meetings.

In other news, I am heading back to middle school! One part of working in a small school district that people don't tell you about as a graduate student is the fact that you may have to help take over part of a caseload for another SLP. I am helping out one of my coworkers who's caseload has gotten too high according to NC standards (our state cap is 50). Scheduling changes aside, I'm really excited to see if having this addition to my caseload will help spark some creativity back into my system.