Category Archives: Target Dollar Spot
Math Tubs
You may remember that I showed these awesome tubs I found in the Target Dollar Spot this summer:
We have been using them each day to help us represent numbers in different ways.
First, we use each of the materials (unifix cubes, homemade Rekenrek’s, two-sided counters, dice, pattern blocks, and 1 inch tiles) to show the number we are learning about. On this day, we were representing the number 5 in different ways. I do not show them how to represent the numbers, I just tell them to use a manipulative to show me the number and this is what they came up with. 🙂
I put the tubs on the floor between groups of 4 children and they use the materials that are in their tub. We store these on the floor under our Promethean Board.
Target Dollar Spot Finds
After seeing so many fabulous things other teachers were finding in the Target Dollar Spot, I decided to head there and check it out…here’s what I ended up with:
I got these great turquoise tubs that I used to make my math tubs out of (see yesterday’s post). They were $3 each. The cups I found in the summer/picnic section and they were $0.79 each. I got 7 tubs and 14 cups.
I also found lots of stickers, pointers, pencils, and Dr. Seuss stuff. I bought enough of the paper Dr. Seuss hats to last me the next couple of years. I picked up this turquoise bulletin board/chalkboard too for $3. I had a dry erase board on my door and it got knocked off. This one fit my room colors (black and turquoise), so I decided to use it instead of a dry erase board. I think I bought out all the stickers they had! These are great for our 100’s day sticker books, so I picked up LOTS. We usually switch rooms on 100’s day, so I end up seeing 125 Kindergarten students and each one wants to make a sticker book = LOTS of stickers needed!
Not from the Dollar Spot, but just as exciting, I picked up a Leap Reader pen on CLEARANCE!! I also got two more books to add to our collection of Leap Reader books. I was able to enter a contest earlier in the summer and already had 3 of these books and I used a gift card to purchase another Leap Reader pen. So we now have 2 Leap Reader pens and 5 books to help us start the year off. I plan on using these in one of my Literacy Work Stations.
Math Tubs
After taking a STEM workshop offered by my district this summer, I decided to tackle a project I’d had floating in my head for awhile–math buckets.
I wanted to have buckets set up where I could grab them and use them right away during math lessons, so I came up with these:
Included in each tub are unifix cubes (stacks of 10), 2 sided counters, foam dice, 1 inch tiles, 4 homemade Rekenreks, and Pattern Blocks.
Fun Fall Freebie!
I’ve been so busy lately, but I found some table scatter recently in the Target Dollar Spot and created some pattern cards to go along with them. In Indiana, as part of our new Indiana College and Career Readiness Standards, patterns were reintroduced into the Kindergarten math curriculum! So, we are gearing up to work on patterns for the next couple of weeks and these will go right into one of my Math Work Stations. You can grab a set here or by clicking on the picture below. Please don’t forget to leave feedback (or let me know if there are other patterns you would like to see included).
Gingerbread Man Map and Dollar Spot finds
Here is the map that I use to help my kids track the GBM’s travels around the world.
I got this map at Kohl’s last year and its made by Discovery Kids. They are around $20 or so. They come with these awesome velcro labels that you can use to label the continents, oceans, countries, and even states/cities. There are also animals included so you can show your students what animals live where. 
Here are some of the velcro labels. I sorted the places out from the animals to make it a little quicker to find what I need. 
When I was looking through the Dollar Spot at Target this past weekend, I found these 10 packs of foam gingerbread man and instantly thought of a math activity we could do with them to get them all decorated up. (I’ll share my idea later). I picked up 4 packs of the GBM and 4 packs of the Pom-poms to decorate them with (along with some other goodies I already have).
Today is your last chance to shop the Tpt Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale! Don’t forget to use the code “CYBER” to get the discount!
Kristen 🙂
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. 🙂
Uppercase 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! 🙂
These will be going into my Math and Literacy Work Stations. 🙂 I’ll also be using them in my small groups. 
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.
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:
Lowercase letters a-z
Numbers 1-20
Dice 1-6
Shapes
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 🙂
Stamp an Uppercase letter
By popular demand, I’ve finished creating a Stamp an Uppercase letter activity to go along with my lowercase/numbers pack.
There is a version for readers where the color words are written in all black, encouraging them to use their reading skills to figure out what color they need.
There is also a non-reader version. This version has the color words written in color so non-readers can focus on identifying letters and stamping them rather than reading the color words. 🙂 This version would be great for ELL/lower students! 🙂
Click on either of the pictures to get your “Stamp an Uppercase letter” activity from my Tpt store. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Math Work Stations (Quarter 2)
Here is a look at some of our newer Math Work Stations:
Here is our giant Al the Alligator. You can see that he’s chomping the greater number. After the kids pick two number cards, they record which number is greater and which is less than on their recording sheet. Click here to get the recording sheet.
This is from my Halloween Eraser Math pack. The children choose a card, make that number on the ten frame with the erasers, and then record the number they created on the recording sheet included in the pack.
Kristen 🙂
More Target Dollar Spot Fun
Hi All!
I created a pack to help with the composition and decomposition of numbers to 20. This pack also uses the small Halloween/Fall themed erasers found in the Target Dollar Spot. To play, you will need to purchase one bag each of the cats, ghosts, and pumpkin erasers (they come in bags of 60). I’m going to be using this activity in my new Math Work Stations for this 9 weeks. Head on over to my Teacher’s Pay Teachers store to purchase it:
(click on the picture below to go there)
I’ll be back soon with some more freebies that I’ve created today for my Math Work Stations.
Kristen's Kindergarten 