Dusting off the old blog...with FOUR math freebies!!!

Hey Friends!!

Well, we will just pretend that it hasn't been over a year since I've blogged...oops!  :)  Having a kiddo around changes things!  For the better of course!!  I can't believe that kiddo is going to be TWO next month; that just blows my mind.  What a crazy and amazing two years it's been.  There really is no other better thing than to be a mama.  It's the hardest and best thing I've ever done and I know I'm barely getting started!

So this school year, I have a new position.  Still at my same school, with my same principal that I love, but now I am doing Intervention and Instructional Coaching for K-2.  It's really the perfect position for me.  All of my ten years have been in K-2 and I really love the learning that goes on in those years, and understand how vital they are for success later in school.  I pull a small group from Kinder, a small group from First Grade and a small group from Second Grade.  When I am not pulling groups, I am in classrooms working with kids, helping my teachers, leading PLCs, making center games for my teachers, oh and let's not forget about Lunch Duty.  How I love Lunch Duty!  :(  Getting to sit in the quiet teachers lounge during lunch is definitely a nice perk that our teachers get on a daily basis!!

Anyway, I wanted to share a few things I have made for my teachers this year.  I really hope that you are able to use these in your classrooms.  Please leave me a comment if you do!  I'll give you a little blurb about each one and then all you have to do is click the picture to download the freebie!!

First up is a Counting Back freebie for Kindergarten.  My teachers asked for a simple way for their kiddos to practice counting back from 20.

You can have your kiddos cut and paste (number squares are included) or you can laminate the blank pages and have them write in the numbers with a dry erase marker.

Either way is a simple way to practice this important math skill!

I also made the same type of activity for my First Grade teachers, only with higher numbers.  They cut the pages into strips, almost like task cards and put them in a center with dry erase markers.  There are two versions, Counting Back from 100 and Counting Back from 120.  Check them both out by clicking on the pictures below!

My last freebie contains twelve puzzles made from 100 and 120 charts.  My Kindergarten teachers are working on identifying numbers to 100, along with numbers that come before and after.  My First Grade and Second Grade teachers are always looking for math center games that help build number sense!  For this one, you just need to print them on different color card stock, laminate, and cut along the darker black lines.

Again, I really hope these freebies come in handy in your classroom!!  Let me know what other math skills you are working on in the comments.

Also, be sure to check out all of my math games and other resources in my TPT store!

Telling Time!

Hi there friends,

We've been practicing telling time over the past few weeks and I wanted to share some of the things we've been doing!

We've worked hard building the times on our little clocks during small group-

We've enjoyed Annie and Moby's lessons about telling time-

We love Brain Pop Jr. in our classroom!!

We even had fun with these little snowmen-

I really want to share about a fun center game we've been playing!  It's Laura Candler's Monster Math Mix Up and my kiddos love it!  I taught it to one of my small groups on Monday and they had a lot of fun with it.

It's a group game where each kiddo has a monster puzzle to build.  They take turns pulling a clock card and if they can correctly identify the time- they get to spin the spinner!

I really like the fact that she included a spinner because it really kept the game interesting.  It would be too easy if they simply got to put a piece on after identifying each clock.  My kids were really excited to land on the 'Add 2 pieces' section and were quietly hoping (well, not so quietly) that their opponents would land on the 'Remove 1 piece' section!

They did a great job with the game and it was neat to see them really think about each card before saying the time.  According to our TEKS, we're only required to teach hour and half hour, but this group was more than ready for time to the 5 minutes and they rocked it!  I loved seeing them count by fives along the clocks and how excited they got when they got the right answer!  They even asked if they could play it again today, and of course I let them!  There's a answer key included for the clock cards, so I didn't have to facilitate the game at all- they did it all themselves and were totally sad when it was time to clean up!

The game also comes with a set of cards to the minute, if you want to check it out in her store.  I'll be adding the 5 minute version to our math center routine next week- they'll be so excited!

I hope everyone's staying warm out there!  We had our 2nd ice day yesterday and the driving conditions were just awful!  Our district waited fairly late to call the day off and lots of teachers were already on the icy roads to school when they found out.  Luckily, they made it home safely!  How's the weather in your neck of the woods?

Graphs, graphs and more graphs!

This post will mostly be made up of pictures, but I just wanted to showcase all of the graphs we have been creating this week!  We started off by practicing with tally marks and tally charts, and then transitioned into bar graphs, bar-type graphs and picture graphs!

Our new math curriculum has a section for Common Misconceptions and even I learned something!!

"Some students may think that a bar-type graph is the same as a bar graph.  Bar-type graphs have bars divided into individual cells to demonstrate one-to-one correspondence for each piece of data, whereas bar graphs have solid bars to demonstrate the total quantity for that category."

It all makes sense of course, but I've just never seen it written out an explained into such detail!  Duh!  We did our best to cover both bar graphs and bar-type graphs!  :)

We used this freebie from Susan Pickens to review tally marks and create a bar-type graph.  It worked perfectly!

We also created a new class graph or chart each day and discussed what we noticed on each graph. 

The TEKS for this say-

(8)  Data analysis. The student applies mathematical process standards to organize data to make it useful for interpreting information and solving problems. The student is expected to:

(A)  collect, sort, and organize data in up to three categories using models/representations such as tally marks or T-charts;

(B)  use data to create picture and bar-type graphs; and

(C)  draw conclusions and generate and answer questions using information from picture and bar-type graphs.

I was extremely proud of my class and the observations they were making!  At first, they noticed which part was greater, which got the least votes, if any sections were equal and other things like that.  Then they started comparing the sections and saying things like "If elephants had 1 more, it would be equal to the frogs." "We need one more M&M to be the same as vanilla."  It was awesome!!

Oh, and I let them name all of the graphs and they were cracking me up!!  I would take suggestions from the class and then we'd vote between two of them.  We quite a range of basic titles like "The Pet Graph" on a graph of unique animals we'd choose to have as a pet and then some funny ones like "The Stuff That People Like" on a graph of our favorite school subjects.  Haha!

"The Pet Graph"

"Our Boys and Girls Counting Graph"

"The Ice Cream Graph"

"The Stuff That People Like"

We Love Cakes!

"Cookie War"

"The Shirt Color Graph"

A little girl in my class wanted to name every graph "We Love ____" and suggested it every time!  "We Love Cakes!"   "We Love Pets!"   "We Love Shirts!"  :)   After "Cookie War" won for the name of our tally chart, a little boy suggested a similar title for the rest of the week- "Pet War"  "Cake War"  "Ice Cream War"...he really wanted it to win every time!

It was a fun week!

Comparing Numbers- real life applications! (plus a freebie!)

One of our recent math concepts has been comparing numbers.  We've done a variety of activities to cover these standards-

TEKS 1.1A Number, operation, and quantitative reasoning.  The student uses whole numbers to describe and compare quantities.
The student is expected to compare and order whole numbers up to 99 (less than, greater than, or equal to) using sets of concrete objects and pictorial models.

TEKS 1.1B Number, operation, and quantitative reasoning.  The student uses whole numbers to describe and compare quantities.
The student is expected to create sets of tens and ones using concrete objects to describe, compare, and order whole numbers.

TEKS 1.1D Number, operation, and quantitative reasoning.The student uses whole numbers to describe and compare quantities.
The student is expected to read and write numbers to 99 to describe sets of concrete objects.

As we wrap up our first unit on numeration, one of the things I wanted to cover was some real life applications of number comparisons.  I dug through the newspaper and found some articles and ads to show my kiddos.

 We did a Think, Pair, Share about why we might need to know how to compare numbers and had a great discussion about it!  They shared that they would need to know how much something costs to see if they need more or less money to buy it, they would need to be able to compare their age to their sister's age and we used some of the examples from the newspaper, too!  They all decided that the bigger TV was better, so we definitely needed to know how to compare the inches on the TV!  We talked about the sports scores and prices at the grocery store as well.

My husband went to Kansas State and I went to Texas, so you know he loved seeing that score!

We tied it all in with our Weather unit and created a class book for comparing temperatures!

Thermometer image from the amazing 3am Teacher!!  Check 'em out here!

I gave each set of partners a weather map from the back of the newspaper and to make it easier on myself (with 28 kiddos!), I circled the two cities I wanted them to compare.  They worked together to fill in their page for the class book.

 They glued their weather maps on the back of their book page and I can't wait to show them the completed book tomorrow!  It'll be a big hit in our classroom library!

If you are interested in using the 2 book pages, you can download them for free right here!

Hope you are having a great week!