"What is hiding?"

Holy first day back batman. We had quite a busy day. I'm so excited about some wintery fun things we are going to be doing in the next few weeks. Pictures to come soon. For now I want to share some more math fun :)

I got this idea from a math workshop a few years ago and it has become a favorite game in my room over the last few years. My partner teacher and I ran home from the workshop, cut out a bunch of L shapes from construction paper and collected all the colored dot stickers we could find in our drawers and made ourselves a full set for numbers 4-10.

It's basically the same as the "how many are hiding" game that we usually play with playdoh balls and a bowl but this time it's all on the card. They can see the "whole" number and one part and they have to figure out what part is missing. We talk about what they think is missing and why. It's super simple and yet my kids LOVE to play this game and get so excited when I lift the flap to reveal their guesses.  I keep some sets in my teacher cart to pull out as a math warm up and I also threw some in my early finisher tubs because the kids have a blast quizzing each other. 

They are really easy to make yourself with some paper and colored dots but I put a set of gumball themed ones for numbers 4-10 in my store if you'd rather just print and cut.

There's also a set for making 10 in my Penguin Math Unit.

 
I'll be back soon with some snowmen fun ;)

Hi...remember me??

*opens door...fumbles around for the light...brushes off dust*

Hi friends! It's been a LONG time! I always make promises to be a better blogger but I am really motivated this time. I have had a splendid Christmas break (and it's not done yet!) Seriously how great are the vacation perks of being a teacher?? Granted we need them desperately to keep from going out of our minds, but isn't it a great feeling to see people going back to work and knowing you have another week or so of freedom?

Anyway to help me get my own blogging butt into gear I decided to start focusing on some favorite math activities that I use in the classroom. Math was my favorite subject when I was in school and it is still my favorite to teach.

First up: number bonds. I really love using number bonds in the classroom. When I first started teaching it took a little practice for me to figure out how to introduce well and use them with my kids but they have proven to be a great tool to introduce and reinforce some key math concepts. My last school was a thinking map school and number bonds fit in perfectly alongside our work with brace maps and their "whole" and "part" concepts.


I start by giving them the manipulatives for their mats (in this case goldfish) and we tell number stories and move the fish around the mat to show how the 5 (or at this point in the year 10) can be broken down and then put back together. We have lots and lots of talking and moving (and occasionally some sneaky manipulative eating here or there haha).  It's really a great visual for composing and decomposing and can be extended easily to addition and subtraction concepts.

After the kids have gotten comfortable with the parts and the whole I start moving them into more "missing part" activities. For instance "if there is a 5 on the penguin belly, and we put 3 fish in the top box, how many need to go in the bottom box to get 5 all together?" We use number bonds all year in different ways as the skills get harder and the numbers get bigger.

You can find the penguin number bond mats and some practice sheets in my new little penguin mini math unit.

I'm off to the NC mountains to go skiing for the first time ever...say a prayer that I come back on 2 legs!!

Pete The Cat Subtraction

We have been working on subtraction for the last few weeks. I am just starting to discover the Pete The Cat books (I know I am WAY late to the game!!)  This week we read Pete The Cat and His 4 Groovy Buttons. I found this great freebie from the aptly named Peterson's Pad. I pulled out my button math manipulatives and let the kids model the word problems using the buttons.

Next we made this cute craft. I let them decide how many of Pete's buttons were going to pop off and they wrote the number sentence to match.  We just used short strips of paper with an accordion fold to get the buttons to "pop off".

Jumping into fall with some freebies.

We had a busy busy week in 1st grade. Fall weather is starting to make a subtle appearance and this FL girl is getting excited!! It was the perfect time to start learning about apples and my favorite season of the year.

I had a big Scholastic Book Club order a few weeks ago and I got a bunch of great new books. We really loved this one. My TA and I learned all kinds of new facts about fall that we had never heard before like why leaves change colors and why evergreens stay ever green. It's a great book to start your fall unit with.

We also read "Fall Mixed Up" which the kids loved!  It takes all kinds of facts about fall and twists them around in really funny ways.

 After we read the book I had them make their own mixed up fall fact. I got some really hilarious responses (which I totally forgot to take pictures of). It was a fun little writing activity that made them think outside the box a little bit. I made some writing paper to go with the story that you can grab here.

In math I am still really trying to get them comfortable with their making 10 facts. I found this idea through Pinterest which lead me to a post on Through The Looking Glass.  I adapted it to work for my kiddos. We sponge painted a paper place and a half, and I stapled the parts together to make a pocket. Then I had them color their ten frame seeds brown and glue the making ten facts back to back (so 6 is glued to the back of 4). I'm going to send it home with the kiddos with a note to parents to explain how to use the seeds as a flash card game for making ten facts.

They will look at a seed, say the number and then state the matching number that will help them make 10. I made a set with ten frames and a set with just the numbers. My kinder friends you could use these for ten frame recognition instead of making ten. You can grab the seeds here.

Much more fun to come next week. My kiddos are excited to keep learning about Johnny Appleseed and make applesauce.

Teaming up with Educents for an awesome deal!

Kindergarten teachers... are you tired?  {Silly question right!}  

Well... we know this time of year can be exhausting and yet you still need great resources to keep your students engaged in learning and so I am very excited to share this amazing opportunity for you to stock up with Educents!

Over 1400 pages of activities for literacy, math, and even a little social studies!

2.  From my store you will get my Fall Math Mini Bundle.  You will love all the math activities that you can use with your kids all throughout the fall months!

But that's just one product.  With this bundle you get 24 products from some other amazing sellers as well!  So we have linked up blog hop style for you to see what's included in this great bundle from Educents!  So hop on to the next blog to see what else is included!

If you love what you see as much as I do, go ahead and head on over to Educents to stock up!  

iPad fun :)

So I have an ipad this year to use in my classroom and I am LOVING.IT.  I know there is a ton of potential that I have not even begun to explore yet, but here are a few of my favorite things about using it so far in my classroom.

One of the 2nd grade teachers at our school told us about this app called Too Noisy. It is a noise level gauge that is a great visual for students to see when they are getting too loud. We use it all day long in my room.

 

If they really get too loud, the "glass breaks" and an alarm goes off. Then the gauge resets itself and the sunny skies come back out :)  My ipad case is magnetic so I can hang it up on my whiteboard for all to see but many times I use my AirPlay feature on my computer and project the image up on the screen during work time so it is nice and big for them all to see (more on that later in the post).   I also really love that in the pro version, there are preset levels that you can choose like "Class" "Group" "Quiet" and "Silent" and then within those levels you can adjust the sensitivity yourself.

 The only downside to this is when I forget that it is on and then I stand right in front of the iPad and "break the glass" myself. The kids always get a kick out of this. We have a chain link compliment system in our room for whole group compliments. When we break the glass too many times we lose a link but if we make it through the whole day without breaking it once we get 5 bonus links (it's only happened once so far so it's a VERY exciting goal haha).

My other favorite feature of my ipad is using Airplay which connects my iPad to my computer screen. I have been using it this week during math journals as a way to share. I set up the Airplay feature, turn on my camera, and hover my iPad over my student's work. They can explain their thinking from their desk and everyone can look up on the screen and see it nice and big :) The kids LOVE this and it is a great way for everyone to get a good view of each other's work. I am excited to explore this idea as the year goes on. This is a fuzzy picture that I took myself (holding my phone in one hand and my iPad hovering over a math journal) but you get the idea :)

 Now I will be honest, I have no idea how the Airplay is set up because we have PC's in our rooms (I always thought it was an Apple thing), but somehow the iPad's can be connected. Greg over at Kindergarten Smorgasboard had a great video post explaining another way to connect your iPad to your computer so it can be projected on your screen and I'm sure there other ways to do this that I haven't discovered yet.

What are some of your favorite ways to use your iPad in your classroom?

I hope y'all have a great long weekend. I have some exciting news coming up next week so stay tuned :)

Today's number: calendar routine.

I'm gonna be totally honest with you...I have sort of a love/hate relationship with calendar. I really really want to love it (and lately I do). I know there are so so so many skills you can incorporate during this time and it really is a good way to start off the day but I usually get to a point in the year when it all just seems the same. I added this "Today's number" routine to my calendar last year with my kidnergarteners but I've really amped it up this year with my firsties.  It really can work with either grade level. Each day we have a special number that we look at and discuss in various ways.  I love that there are so many different conversations we can get into and skills we can hit every day.

I usually start off by using either the number of days we have been in school or the date. In Kindergarten I looped back through 1-10 and eventually 1-20.  So far this year we have been doing the date. We start off by building the number in the ten frame and we do a quick number talk about what the kids see in the ten frame. My kids this year started out pretty reluctant to actually talk out loud about numbers so far so we have really been working on this every day.

Side note: My calendar is mounted on my white board so I use 2 sided magnetic counters and for other sections I just write directly on the board...it gives me more room to move things around and play when we hit a "teachable moment"...more on that later in the post.  Last year I had each section in a long pocket chart and I used laminated paper with dry erase markers. 

So after we talk about the ten frames, we move down to the dominoes. For smaller numbers I actually draw in the domino dots.  Sometimes I have them build both sides and give me a combination to make the number. Later on I fill in one of the sides and they have to tell me what else is missing to make the number.  With the bigger numbers I have been doing this week I have just been having the kids give me combinations and I write the numbers in (mostly so I don't lose their attention while I draw 14 tiny dots with my marker). The tallies are pretty self explanatory. On the day I took the picture (at the top) we were talking about groups of 5 and also groups of 10.

My kids have REALLY been enjoying using our money pocket chart and coming up with all the different ways to build the number using coins. Yesterday they started saying things like "you could get 16 cents by giving someone 2 dimes and getting 4 cents back". Love that! For the before/after we are sequencing the numbers. This day we were also counting by 2's.

For the popsicle sticks, again I usually do how many days have been in school, but this year I have been going up with the number of the day and we just keep adding and regrouping.  I have a great routine for popsicle sticks that really works wonders but I'll have to save that for another post.

Like I said, one of the things I love about this is how we can go off on different tangents and find a million little teachable moments. Today when when we were doing our combinations to 19 1 student said "17 and 2" and the next one said "16 and 3" that started a whole conversation about number patterns and we ended up identifying and extending the pattern.

It really makes it easier that I do this on a white board so I can slide things around and create more space to work and write.   I also found these great magnetic pockets at lakeshore last week that hold all my "stuff"

You can find the red headers for ten frame, tally, domino ect in my polkadot calendar set.
It also has some bright days of the week and months of the year headers.

And you grab the domino template and sequencing boxes from google docs.

Happy Monday friends :)