Category Archives: Math

Math Explorations

At the beginning of each school year, I let my students explore all the manipulatives that we will be using throughout the year.  This helps get their excitement for the manipulatives out of their systems so that when it is time to use them, we can get right to work. 🙂  Here are some pictures of the manipulatives we used along with some of the creative ways my sweet kiddos used them:

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Interactive Number Line

I took a STEM (mostly Math) workshop the first two weeks after school got out this year and after listening to our instructor talk about Number Lines, I decided I wanted to make one that was more interactive than just a line of numbers stuck on my wall.  I wanted my kiddos to be able to use it and grab parts of it if they needed to; so I came up with this number line!

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I’m super excited that my kiddos can un-Velcro any card they might need to help them identify numbers.

Right now, the number line only goes to 10, but I may increase it to 20 if I think my students need it.

I’ve represented each number in a variety of different ways to meet the needs of my different learners:

  • tally marks
  • dice
  • ten frames
  • unifix cubes
  • rekenreks
  • finger counting
  • number word
  • number
  • base ten blocks

The number symbol goes at the top and it permanent. Each of the cards below hangs on a ribbon and is attached with Velcro. {The Velcro is not included}.

Photo directions are included {and so is a diagram!}.  You can get yours from my Teachers Pay Teachers store! 🙂

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Rainbow Pom Pom Toss

I found this game online somewhere and sketched it in my idea book a few months ago.  I finally decided to make it and I’ve tried it out with my kiddos and they LOVE it!

I call it Rainbow Pom Pom Toss (not sure where the toss part comes in because there is no tossing happening in this game! 🙂

All you need are dice and pom-poms. 🙂

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Screen Shot 2013-08-24 at 10.18.30 PMUppercase letters

Its really easy to play too!  The children roll the die that you have programmed with the letters, numbers, or shapes that are on the mat.  They place a coordinating pom-pom on the mat.

Here we are using the 1-6 mat.  You should of heard the squeals of excitement when we played!! I’ve been asked 5 or 6 times today when we can play again! 🙂

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These will be going into my Math and Literacy Work Stations. 🙂  I’ll also be using them in my small groups. IMG_0974 IMG_0975

I put the pom-poms in little buckets that I got in the Target Dollar Spot.  The kiddos kept playing until their table ran out of pom-poms and then they put them all back and played again.

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I told them if they rolled a number and didn’t have anymore pom-poms left in that color to roll again.  I really wanted them keep playing and to learn to share. 🙂

We played with a dot die so that my kiddos had practice matching quantities on the die to the number on the mat.

I’ve also included mats for:

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Lowercase letters a-z

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Numbers 1-20Screen Shot 2013-08-24 at 10.20.11 PM

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ShapesScreen Shot 2013-08-24 at 10.20.31 PM

And a blank sheet for you to write in whatever skills you would like for your kiddos to work on.  I’ll be adding sight words later as well as pictures of two dice (when we start addition).

You can click on any of the product pictures to get your own. 🙂

Kristen 🙂

1-10 Number Books

As I was writing my lesson plans for this week, I saw that I am supposed to do two new things this week.  One is to begin introducing the first 5 Math Work Stations and the second items is to begin teaching the K.CC.3.A standard (writing numbers to 20) (we are just writing to 10 at this point in the year).

I decided to create a set of booklets that would let me accomplish both of these things:

(click the color picture below to get yours). 🙂

Each book contains 6 pages (7 if you count the cover page) and helps your students to represent numbers in a variety of ways (see below).

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These would be great for individual, small, or whole group work.  I think these would be excellent for homework too!  Screen Shot 2013-08-24 at 8.25.06 PM Screen Shot 2013-08-24 at 8.24.42 PMI will say that when I first saved this file, I intended to include the number zero, but after thinking about it, that would be a pretty empty number book!  No way to show zero other than to write the number and write the number word, so I left it out.  If I have requests for it, I could make those two pages just for zero.  I did include zero in my August Problem Solving Pack if you do need a page for zero.

Kristen 🙂

P.S. I’m going to start working on the October Problem Solving Pack soon–trying to stay ahead! 🙂

Math

Here’s a look at our Math work the first few days of school. 🙂

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We experimented with Unifix Cubes.  🙂IMG_5609

We also played the “xylophone” game.  I “ding” the xylophone and each time I play a note, the kiddos put a tile on their mat.  I made these mats MANY years ago on my computer and just printed them on fun paper.  I think I’m going to print some with Ten Frames soon so the kids can see how different quantities look on a Ten Frame.  I will also put numbers into the Ten Frames on one set. 🙂

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Kristen 🙂

September Problem Solving Pack

I’m trying to stay ahead of the game and I’ve gotten my September Problem Solving Pack done and school starts in two days!!  Happy dance!! I’m ahead of the game in the problem solving pack area until the end of September.

Screen Shot 2013-08-03 at 6.53.26 PMThese are a sample of the pages that are included!  If you have my August Problem Solving Pack, this pack builds on that one.  You can click on the picture above to get your September Problem Solving Pack. 🙂

Screen Shot 2013-08-03 at 6.15.12 PMThe numbers 11-20 are included. 🙂

Screen Shot 2013-08-03 at 6.15.26 PMThere are 3 pages similar to this to get students ready for addition.

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This page helps students sort different sized/oriented shapes into two groups.

You can also get my August Problem Solving Pack if you don’t have it by clicking on the picture below. 🙂

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Kristen 🙂

August Problem Solving Pack

I’ve finally finished my August Problem Solving Pack!  It’s all ready to go in my Tpt store and it helps your K students to count, learn to write numbers, and recognize quantities of numbers.

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You can click the picture above to go there and get yours! 🙂

Kristen 🙂

New Center Activities

I went into school to work today (we are on Spring Break) and to check on the tadpoles.  While I was there I copied A LOT of new pages we will be using to write, glue, and illustrate!  I also laminated more than the law allows and brought it all home to cut out. 🙂  Here are some of the new things we will (and have been) using in our Math and Literacy Work Stations.  I’m putting the link to where I got them (if there is one) underneath the picture.

 

Literacy Activities

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We practiced subtraction last week using this song/poem and the kids loved it so much that they asked me to write it down and put it in Pocket Chart Work Station so they could “play” with it more.

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Our chicken eggs arrive next week and I always like to add Humpty Dumpty to the egg mix when we learn about them.  This rhyme will go in our Pocket Chart Station as well.

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We used 5 Green and Speckled Frogs two weeks ago to introduce subtraction.  The kids loved it…so it’s going into Pocket Chart Station as well…along with these guys:

photoThe kids can retell the poem while acting it out.  I’m going to add some velcro to the back of the frogs and the top of the log when I get them back to school. You can get the poem and the frogs in my Ponds and Plants pack. 🙂photo

This activity is also from my Ponds and Plants pack.  This activity can be used in two ways.  You can either show the children the words and have them practice reading them, or you can have the children sort them by middle vowel sound, put them under the correct letter, and then write the words on the included recording sheet.

Math Activities

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I just made this this week and you can get them here. The children match up the sum with the math sentence and then write their work on the included recording sheet (it’s at school. 🙂  ).

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How many more to get to 10?  This activity helps children learn to see quantities quickly on a ten frame and to visually help see how many more they need to get to ten.  After adding the green flowers, children record their work on the recording sheet.  The recording sheet asks the child to record both the ten frame work and the math sentence that shows their work (ex: 3+7=10).

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These awesome cards are part of a pack I purchased from my blogging friend Kathleen Pedersen from Growing Kinders! You MUST own this pack!  In addition to these “I have, Who has” teen number cards, Kathleen has booklets for all the teen numbers (11-20) designed to help your kiddos master them!  I printed off the entire pack and copied most of the activities…I’ll share those when they are in use. 🙂

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Next up are these awesome cards by another blogging friend Greg from Kindergarten Smorgasboard! These are from Greg’s Snapping Numbers, Composing and Decomposing Numbers.  These cards represent just two of the activities in this huge pack!  I’ll be hitting up my favorite LEGO store later this weekend to score some of these bricks off the pick-a-brick wall (I love that wall!)

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I’m a LEGO nerd at heart and it helps my obsession that my 8 year old is too! 🙂

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This is one of our new Promethean Board activities for Math.  It includes both addition and subtraction activities and the kids love them!  I got this at Lakeshore down the street from my school, but I can’t remember right now what the name is…

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Found it!  It’s called Beginning Operations.  Here is a shot from Lakeshore’s website.

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This pond roll and cover sheet has funny story behind it.  I set out to make something that resembled a lily pad and got that finished.  Because I was so tired, I started adding cattails and grass around the edges to finish up my pond.  Then I colored it green…still thinking that it was a lily pad, but also thinking it was a pond.  So now it’s either a really big lily pad, or a pond pad, a mix of a pond and a lily pad! 🙂  The children roll the two dice and cover the sum with a cube. 🙂

photoThis activity is also from Lakeshore (if anyone from Lakeshore is reading this, I LOVE your store and would LOVE to be a spokesperson for you or guinea pig some of your new products! 🙂  )

The children use two different colors of linking cubes (included) and then write all those combinations down on the opposite side of the card.

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Here is our Frog Dice Toss activity.  The children roll the two pocket dice and then write the two numbers down along with the sum.

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This is Subtraction Bowling…the latest craze to hit our Kindergarten classroom!!  The children set up the 10 pins and then roll the sphere at them.  They count the number of pins (cups) that fall down and record that on their recording sheet.  I found this activity through a pin on Pinterest, from a site called What the Teacher Wants.  Click the words above to go there. 🙂photo

I thought they would throw the sphere everywhere, but with lots of careful modeling, they did an awesome job! 🙂  They were so engaged too! 🙂

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These are our Domino Mats I got in my Math Swap last summer.  I pinned the idea on Pinterest from Kindergarten, Kindergarten. photo

We’ve been using the mats for about a month now, to get us warmed up to the idea of addition with the amounts on the dominoes.  I decided to step it up a level by asking the kiddos to record their work on this recording sheet.  It’s not available yet, but I’m working (slowly) on a pack of domino ideas and this will be in it> 🙂

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This is Dunk it Dominoes again.  I’ve shown it before in this post, but I wanted to show you that I also added the same recording sheet here in this station as well.  The kids were getting done earlier than everyone else and they were truly trying to dunk the dominoes from far away, so I added this sheet. 🙂  They can now slow down, take their time, and show me they are working on mastering their addition facts. 🙂

This was a long post! 😉  If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me! 🙂

What are your favorite Literacy and Math Activities you can’t live without right now?

Kristen 🙂

Spring Problem Solving Pack

I finally got the new problem solving pack done!  It snowed here last night, into today, 9 inches! So much for the first day of my Spring Break!  It is supposed to be in the 50’s by Saturday though…still…it’s Spring!! 🙂

This pack is designed to cover April and May.  It’s got 45 activities in it…and assuming you’re in school every weekday from April 1st to the end of May, you will have one for each of the 42 days that are included in that time. 🙂

Here are some pictures of the new pack.  If you click on any of them, it will take you to my Tpt site where you can purchase it for your own.  It is a little more expensive than my other packs, but it contains 2 months worth of activities, so I priced it accordingly. 🙂  It covers a wide range of Common Core Standard skills and I made each activity last at least a week, so you can really practice each skill with your students. 🙂

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Let me know what you think!

Kristen 🙂

March Problem Solving Pack

Back by very popular demand!!  I’ve had probably 100 e-mails and messages asking when and if I’ll be creating a March Problem Solving pack….so here you go!  And it’s done before March!  That’s because today we had a snow day, well and ice day really, but we got the day off due to the freezing rain and sleet that fell over night last night and made the roads horrible today.

I had some time to finish up this pack and get it posted.

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It covers 9 different standards and focuses on some common core standards we are working on this quarter.  I had a couple of requests for 2D and 3D shapes and some ten frame/base ten block work, so those are included as well.  I also included an optional Math Journal cover, so that if you wanted to, you could print all the sheets out (there are 25 sheets) and use them individually with your students.  I use some of these sheets on my Promethean Board and then print out some for my students to work on individually.  They would also be great in a Math Work Station or Center!

You can click on the picture above to find out more and download a sample of some of the sheets that are in this pack. 🙂

I’ll be working on April’s pack soon–any requests for that?  We will be working on addition and subtraction, composing/decomposing numbers, and some 3D shapes. 🙂  Let me know what else you’d like! 🙂

Kristen 🙂

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