Double-Dip Day

Wild Fall Aster

 

Oops. missed a day!  Yesterday and today I have been blissfully busy with quilt projects (no, the family room hasn't changed a whit, but this weekend I will at least organize those long stretches of projects on the floor).  Yesterday, after doing the usual daily round of chores and errands, I finished ironing the fabrics (shown in a photo in the last entry) for a Christmas project, and then I cut out enough of it to make at least four blocks (each block contains 9 smaller blocks).

 

Side Bar: Being ready for class is really important to me; if I'm not prepared, I waste so much time in the getting ready stages that I miss a lot of the learning and practing stages.  Plus I know what it's like to try to teach a class when the students aren't ready to learn what the teacher has prepared.  That's why "differentiation" (see definition below) is so popular with educators these days.  Sorry for the side bar! 

 

Anyway, by the time I had finished that I was too tired to do much else - including blog writing, but I certainly enjoyed the touch of fabric!

 

Today was a double-dip day!  First, I took a class up at Joyful (can't tell you what it was or show you what I made until after Christmas, but if you check out Joyful's class list you might figure out which one I took today).  It was a very successful class with a knowledgeable teacher.  It was Lynne Makrin's first experience with teaching a quilting class but as an experienced teacher she had no problems (we were all on our best behaviour, too!).  She differentiated very well, and by the end of class, we had all learned enough to be able to carry on with block making on our own.

 

Then this evening, ME and I went to Pat Cunningham's Applique Club at Log Cabin.  As usual there was the socializing and the purchasing necessary before getting down to the fun of applique, but get down to it we did.  Because I hadn't had enough time to prepare a "Birds 'n Urns" block, I took a basket block from - wait for it! - Farmer's Wife (FW) which needed a handle.  By the end of class, the handle was almost complete (I also had to unsew small sections of the basket so I could slip the handle through so it took a bit longer than I had expected). 

 

The reason I just "announced a la ta-dah!" for FW is the way I have avoided it for so long.  Signing up for the Applique Club wasn't merely an excuse to spend more time with friends or make new ones, it was done deliberately to overcome the inertia keeping me from completing some long-over-due projects.

 

Now you know why today was like a double-dip ice cream cone!

 

 

Differentiation:  The adaptation of classroom learning to suit each student's individual needs, strengths, preferences, and pace by either splitting the class into small groups, giving individual learning activities, or otherwise modifying the material.

from: http://www.education.com/definition/differentiation/