Here are some new Literacy and Math Activities I introduced last week:

I used jumbo popsicle sticks and wrote our sight words on them.  I then colored one end of the stick red or blue.

I used clothespins and labeled each one with a letter in the words.  I also color coded them with red and blue.

The children pull a stick and make the word using the clothespins.  The colors on the clothespins are supposed to match the color on the popsicle sticks. 🙂  There is one clothespin for each letter–the children can make all the words without using clothespins from other words. 

Gingerbread Man dice toss is available in my Gingerbread Man Math and Literacy pack.

We are also working on measurement so we measured these gingerbread men with candy “rulers”.  This activity is also in the same pack.

The kids were thrilled when I added 3 different versions of The Gingerbread Man to our iPods!  We are listening to The Gingerbread Boy, Baby, and Pirates. 🙂

This activity is see it, build it, write it.  The children pick a word card from the bucket, “see it”, make the words with the magnetic letters, and then write it in their own handwriting.  I will soon be changing out the handwriting part for letter stamps. 🙂Kristen 🙂

We also learned about Chinese New Year from The Gingerbread Man.

We created lanterns to hang from our ceiling.  We will leave these up until the actual Chinese New Year in 2014. 🙂

St. Nick paid us a visit last week!  We created some shoes and left them in the hallway overnight to see if he would visit us and he did!

The kids were so excited when they got to school after our 2 hour delay! 😉

Kristen 🙂

The next custom/celebration we learned about while chasing the Gingerbread Man was Hanukkah:

Here is the letter and materials we received (a menorah, candles, gelt–gold coins, and dreidels).

The kids LOVED, LOVED, LOVED playing the drediel game!!  We played two afternoons in a row!  We used unifix cubes as playing pieces and then after we were all done, everyone got a chocolate gold coin.

The second place the gingerbread man went was Alaska.  We learned all about the bears that live there and how different life is in that part of the United States.

First though, we had some unfinished business from the day before!  We had to bite into a gingerbread cookie and graph the part we bit first.

Then we learned about Alaska.  We read this book first.

Then we made a list of things we learned about each type of bear. Kristen 🙂

We have been having so much fun chasing the gingerbread man around the world.  First stop, Wisconsin!

This is what we found when we came in from recess:

The Gingerbread Man had taken our box of cookies.  We were going to take one bite out of our cookie and graph the results, but now we couldn’t do that!

The GBM left us cranberries to string for the birds and cranberry juice to taste.

Here they are stringing the cranberries.

And here is our graph.

You can get all the ideas and the paper materials needed to make this happen in your classroom here.

Kristen 🙂

Don’t forget that tomorrow is the beginning of the Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale on Tpt!

I created a new Math Problem Solving Pack for November (better late than never??) and December:

The children count the turkeys or gingerbread man and write a number to show how many.

The children cut out the 5 turkeys at the bottom and glue them in two places to show their understanding of the math sentence at the top of the page.

The children color the squares in a variety of combinations (3-10) to make the total number.  They then write the math sentence on the lines.

Here, the children count the turkeys or gingerbread men and write the number.

This is a simpler version of creating combinations–this time the children do not need to write the math sentence.  I will have my students complete this page before completing the page above.

The children practice writing the numbers from 1-10, 11-20, and 1-20.

The children use the included gingerbread ruler (they cut it off the bottom of the page) and use it to measure the pictures at the top of the page.  The lines are included to show two examples so the children know where to begin measuring.

The children circle the group that has more or less.

Here, the children use words to describe the shapes.

After describing the shapes, these pages help the children to tell how these shapes are alike and different.

You can click on any of the pictures to get your own November/December Problem Solving Pack–it’s on sale Monday and Tuesday only for 28% off!

Kristen 🙂