Blog Archives
Learning to Write Numbers
In Kindergarten, it’s important to have students practice writing and recognizing numbers as soon as you can. There are so many other things that students will need to do in the first few weeks of school that involve reading, writing, and recognizing numbers! With a few simple activities, your students (and mine) will be writing and recognizing numbers in no time!
I’m a big fan of anything that creates a tactile learning experience for my students because its another way to cement the learning in their brain. In an age where so many things are learned through digital media, it is sometimes nice to just have your fingers interact with another surface. 🙂
I’ve got three super easy activities that your students can use to help them read, write, and recognize numbers. You can start with the numbers 0-10 and add in 11-20 as you find your students mastering the first group of numbers.
My students LOVE using each of these activities and its already given me great insight into who knows which numbers. I sit with my students as they use these materials and am quickly able to find out which numbers they know and which ones they are still working on (check off those number id standards!).
You can read more here and get everything you’ll need to get these easy, fun, and tactile number making experiences going in your classroom!
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.
Kristen's Kindergarten 