Happy November! (w/ math freebies)

We made it!  October was crazy, but I made it through. While, I love all of the bats, ghosts and pumpkins, Halloween and October just aren't my fave...

But November and December ... L.O.V.E.!!!

So we kicked off November with a bang these last two days, take a look :)

I made a few new math tub activities centered on addition using the count on strategy:

BUMP... my kids had never played this game. They thought it was pretty cool!

+1 Cover Up... can I just say that I use those dollar store mini plastic cups for everything!

Turkey True and False

You can pick up these math activities HERE, but take note: there are no recording sheets. We use this as our "Friday Free Choice" time... only they have no choice, because I tell them where to go and what activity to... Oh well... they love it anyway and it lasts a quick 30min, two stations 12 min each with 6 min to clean up :)!  I rarely have the kids using recording sheets during this time, because I walk around and check in on each group and recording skills/participation.

We also dug in on Cara Carroll's Pint Sized Presidential Unit. I am so glad I own this! It is worth every penny...

We started with If we were president and completed the craftivity

so cute!

On Tuesday we will hold our election and the kids are already buzzing about it!

Have a great week :)

Polar Pals on TPT!

I just posted my Polar Pals Math Activities unit on TPT. I hope you check it out!

 

I'll be back soon with a great holiday activity! 

Fact Familes Freebies!

Happy Monday!

We started fact families right before we went on Thanksgiving break, and I should have known my kiddos would come back not remembering A THING!

So we will be spending a LOT of time with fact families in the next few weeks. I usually teach fact families with two different frames for building the facts.

We start with the house. The kids LOVE this one... don't ask me why... maybe its the roof? We slide it into page protectors and use dry erase markers to make fact families, after I give them the family numbers.

click the pic to download

Later, after they have gotten better at building the families on their own, we use this really simple frame. Not as fancy, but it does the job!

click for this one too!

And now for the good stuff! I made a fun holiday themed fact family matching game/center, and it can be yours for the low price of FREE! Happy cyber Monday :) Just click the pic so that you can download the fun!

*** Update 11/30/2011: Since cyber Monday is officially over, you can now find this cute little  fact family activity for sale on my TPT page! I hope you check it out! ***

Math Tubs!!!

We kicked off math tubs this today! I was very excited to do this. I haven't done math tubs before, so this will be a fun adventure this year. It is a good thing all of you bloggers out there are up to sharing your ideas, because they have made planning math tubs much easier!

I am going to do tubs on four days of the week (not on our early release day... there just isn't time). I have groups of five or six and they meet a new math tub each day. Today was day one and they had so much fun...

This game came from the brilliant Mrs. Carroll at The First Grade Parade... our school isn't hip to color printers so I used some fabulous note cards and a sharpie to write the numbers... The kids were practicing their number recognition and counting skills. They read the number, clipped the correct number of pins and had a partner check.. and easy no-fuss tub :)

 This tub matched up with our math lessons this week.. Roll, draw, add! The kids rolled the dice to provide the first number, drew the subsequent pictures, and added them together. They did the provided problems on the front and made their own on the back.

My kids just love patterns! We have been discussing AB, ABB, and AAB patterns, identifying the A and B as well as the pattern unit. At this tub they patterned, traced, and recorded the info!

The last tub (of which I did not get a picture of... darn!) The kids used number cards to order least to greatest. Each child in groups of three (or four) chooses a card then they work together to order. I had an aide to check their orders. Simple...I love simple :)

And to end with some exciting news for or school this week... author T.E. Watson (I Wanna Iguana) is coming for a visit. We will be attending an assembly on Thursday. The kids are super excited to meet a "real author"... pics to come :)