Making ten with pumpkin seeds

Look at me blogging twice in one week! AND it's a Monday. I deserve some sort of prize haha. We have been up to our ears in pumpkins in my room since last week. My students are always more engaged in learning when I have a specific theme for the week (or in this case weeks) but this year's class REALLY gets into our themes. It's so fun :)

I just wanted to share this cute little game we made to practice our making 10 facts. My kids are getting really good at this skill but we definitely still need practice so we assembled this game at school and then they will take it home to play with their families. I made an apple version of this game last year and it was a huge hit!

First we sponge painted some small paper plates and let them dry. I gave them each a full plate and a plate cut in half. It works much better if you can find the plates that have the raised rim.

(Quick side note: why is it so hard to find small paper plates these days?? Has anyone noticed that? The ONLY reason I had these was because a mom just HAPPENED to bring them in for me one morning after pulling "paper plates" off of our wishlist tree. I have been to Publix, Target, and Walmart and it always ends with me stomping out of the isle grumbling about how you can't buy a simple plate anymore and people staring at the strange lady having conversation with herself next to the cutlery. But seriously, what's with the lack of small, white, paper plates in stores? There are plenty of ones with the weird designs all over them but I can't paint on those! Am I the only one having this issue??)

Ok rant over. To make the pumpkins we painted the front of the full plate and the back of the half plate. That way when you staple them together it makes a nice little pocket for the seeds.

So after the plates were dry and stapled together, I gave the kids a sheet of seeds with numbers 0-10. They cut them out and glued the matches to 10 back to back.

To play the game, all the seeds go in the pocket and 1 player pulls out a seed. They look at the number and say the number that goes with that number to make 10. Then they check their answer on the back. If they were right, they can keep the seed. If they were wrong, they put the seed back in the pumpkin and the next player goes. Play continues until all the seeds are out. Easy peasy.

Click on the picture below to grab file with the seeds. I made a version with numbers and with ten frames depending on what you need. There's also an instruction sheet to send home so the kids can play with their parents.

Happy Monday friends!!