Treadmill Update & Weekend Plans

I have been running on the treadmill everyday since we got it-three days in a row! Nothing that will qualify me for an olympic team, but a good sweat nonetheless. :) Yesterday there was a thunderstorm and I was running, not having to put off the run until the lightning stopped! Today the wind was crazy: a wind advisory all day, and I had already run on the treadmill. :) So far, so good! :) And I got the runs in before I headed out to substitute teach in kindergarten.
Speaking of the kindergarten, I found a couple ideas I liked and wrote down to hopefully use in my own classroom someday.
Here they are:

• word detective: having sight words on cards (the, and, said, etc) placed around the room, using a magnifying glass they "hunt" around the room like a "word detective". There is a song they were playing that I'd have to hunt for, or I can make my own version! It was fun for the kids, can be modified for older children and they also had to look in books for the words, which was exciting when they found it!
• money races: in relay lines, a pile of coins on a table, and an amount to find. They had to find 57 cents, for example, headed to a coin pile and went and sat back down. The "winners" were the kids who got their amount right, instead of the line that wins!
• Read Chair for My Mother to talk about helping others and get the students started on a writing activity, but I also saw a lot of potential in the book, that I hadn't heard or read in ages. I saw potential for an activity that lead to money, as they save coins in the story, and bought a chair...you could have them think about money they save, look up items in catalogs, make change, and more. There was a fire in the house in the story, which could be used in fire prevention week-October, I think, or talk about how you might feel if your favorite things were lost in a fire. Responsibility, and hard work were themes, too.

Onto the weekend plans, as I'm running out of time before I go cook dinner: My youngest and husband have a pinewood derby race for Indian Princess (YMCA tribe), my oldest will have a Girl Scout Cookie booth, selling the cookies at a local grocery store tonight, and my youngest also has basketball tomorrow.
Things are busy, and it is making time fly by. Our youngest has grown 3/4 of an inch in the last month, as well: they grow so fast!
Hope the weekend goes well!