Free Thanksgiving Math Center: TURKEY RACES!

Ahhh.. the holidays are coming... 

The air is crisp, the leaves here in Massachusetts are all shades of orange, yellow, and red and most of them have made their way to the ground already!

With all the excitement, I know my first graders always needed high engagement. Anything that could keep my students learning and on-track was a win during these holiday months.

I'm not sure about your class, but my room always loved a good, competitive partner game. I thought I would share a free little math center that you could just print and use in your room:

TURKEY RACES!

This Thanksgiving math center is a fun, addition partner game!

Students will pair up and grab one board, one ten-frame tracker, & one turkey spinner.

Student A will spin the spinner and track that number on their tens-frame sheet. Student B will do the same. Every time a student fills a 10 frame, they may color in one block on their tower on the game board. 

The first student to reach 100 (the top of their tower) wins!

There are colored boards that can be laminated and re-used with a dry erase marker as well as black and white boards that can just be printed and used with crayons or pencils!

There are also 4 different spinners, so students can play many times with different numbers!

As students progress you can also take away the 10-frame trackers and have students add on scrap paper or in their heads!

If you think your students could use this, please click the image below and grab a copy!

Also, if you are looking for some great community building ideas for Thanksgiving, check out my {last post} about Stone Soup!

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Addition in First Grade!

I love teaching addition in the younger grades. After we have built a strong number sense, we start with simple addition using manipulatives. We use buttons, cubes, gameboard pieces, etc. Basically anything we can get our hands on. Developmentally, I believe this is exactly what my first graders need to learn addition. 

They need to see it. 

Feel it. 

Understand it.

I want all those things before we practice quick math facts and math strategies. Once they can show me an addition sentence and find the sum, we move onto different addition strategies. Last year, I  created a subtraction unit that we used and loved [see post here] Naturally, I wanted to make a similar addition one. The same set-up, but with addition facts (up to 20) and addition strategies.

Take a look below to see some of the activities that are included:

Add it up! This hands-on activity is where we start. We use different colored cubes or game pieces to build and add and find the sum. Most of the cards only use two colors (2 addends), but I made some with 3 to get us familiar with adding three numbers together at the same time.

Add and Color! This was one my students FAVORITE games in the subtraction unit, so it was an easy choice to make the same game, but for addition.

Some fun anchor charts:

and much more!

Click the image below to check out What's the Sum? in my store and see if it works for you an your students.

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More Math Stations and an Addition Freebie!

I have been on a math kick lately. I think it is because my kids are strugglingggg with basic math concepts lately and it's killin' me! We have been learning addition strategies and practicing addition within 20 for two weeks now and my class has just started to pick up their momentum.

They are drawing, using cubes, using counters, their fingers, ANYTHING to show me how they got their answers and we are still working on their explanations. We are all about "proving it" in my classroom. My students know they can't just spit out an answer - they have to prove it and defend it.

During math work stations on Friday, I had most of my students practice adding 2 numbers together using cubes. They did this with a little freebie I created, called "Build it!"

 

I had saved the cards for "Build it!" and I thought I would offer them as a freebie! Click on the image below to download.

I simply printed them, laminated them and put them in a bucket with 30 connecting cubes (15 of one color, 15 of the other). It will stay in our math centers for the next few weeks.
 

My low group is still working on identifying and representing numbers within 20, so they practiced pulling a number and covering that many pumpkins on a little pumpkin sheet I made.

My higher group started an independent work station and completed a few pages of their "My Little Book of Story Problems." I was so impressed with their work!

 

 

Proud teacher :)

For more fun, hands-on math, check out my year-long centers below:

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday!

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Pumpkin Math!

We have been having a pumpkin-filled week!

After a relaxing, longggg weekend we came back to school Tuesday and went on our first field trip to the farm!

Beautiful

We picked pumpkins, fed animals, ate pumpkin spice donuts, and went on a tractor ride. The kids loved every second of it.

I thought I would keep the pumpkin theme going and practice some math skills at the same time! I put together some math games and activities to help my students review and reinforce the skills we have been learning since the beginning of the year.

Here are a couple of the games in action:

 Pumpkin Pickin' Students practiced making 10 with this game. My kids would pick a number from the pumpkin basket (thank you, $1 spot at Target) and place that many counters on the pumpkin. They would then have to solve how many more they would need to make 10 and record.

Recording sheet.

We recently learned how to use a number line as a strategy to solve addition and subtraction problems, so I thought I would make my kids their own pumpkin number line! They used it to complete this Math hunt activity. I don't know about you, but I always turn my "hunts" or "read-the-rooms" into a silent race. I also made 26 problems for this hunt, so it bought me a good 20-30 minutes of silent math time.... tehehehehe.....guilty........

 

While it was wonderful quiet time for me, it was a great way for me to see who could accurately use their number line and solve these addition and subtraction problems within 20.

 

I created 4 more activities that we will be completing throughout the next few weeks in school!

 

I put them altogether in this little math pack, Pumpkin Math!

 There are 6 different math activities included in this pack. Click the picture above to download the preview and see more :)

This pack is on sale through Friday the 18th

Happy hump day!

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that!

Happy Sunday folks!

My life has been crazy-busy lately! Parker and I put our first offer in on a house here in Vegas - EEEK! Wish us luck! We have heard that you are likely to put in about 10 offers before you finally get a house here, but our fingers are crossed nonetheless!

The day we made our offer, we stopped and got some smoothies to help us make our decision ;) 

You can't beat some fruit smoothies on a gorgeous day!

Inside the walls of 41B, we have been busy, busy, busy! I have some major thanks to give to a lot of my blogging pals for helping me through this crazy week. Here are some quick pics:

Gladys from Teaching in High Heels helped us out with her St. Patrick's Day O' Fun! pack. I put her non-fiction, St. Patty's Day book up on the smart board and we read it together. Well, the kids actually felt like they were watching a movie, so I played it up and read the book over the microphone. I then picked a few readers to read each page over the microphone, too! After the book, we recorded some facts we learned!

 

My fabulous friend, Kelley, has a super fun and easy project for the kids to practice their story elements. We read Fin M'Coul and then recorded the characters, setting, problem, and solution on the Story Element Shamrocks!

 In math, my kids are working on double-digit addition and subtraction.

 Here are a few of my kiddos playing a subtraction BUMP! game with multiples of 10. This game is in my Spring Math Games pack.

Last, but not least, my pal, Katie, has a ton of fun games in her Sporty Kids Common Core Math Games pack and my own sporty kids have just been LOVING Tennis Top-it!

This next week is Nevada Reading Week, so I will have loads of fun pictures to share! I don't know about you, but I am hoping this week flies by! 5 more days until I am lying by our pool reading home design magazines! That is how I plan to spend my Spring Break ;)

PS - We should find out by Tuesday if we get the house!

Have a great week!

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What We've Been Up To (in photos)

Is it just me or was this the longest.week.ever?!

It is 8pm and I have pizza in my hand, my jammies on, and the first 3 seasons of Friends in the DVD player ready to keep me occupied for the weekend!

That being said, I will not be "talking" a lot in this post. Here are just a few things we did this week:

 We started addition with 3 addends this week and my kiddos were rockstars! They used their addend mats to practice showing and solving addition story problems. These mats and loads of other activities and games can be found in my {Addition with 3 Addends packet}.

 My *power-hour* group is beginning their long vowels with bossy e and we played this fun read the room game! It is a fabulous freebie I found from Mrs. Pollard over at Tales of a Teacherista! The students make their own little bossy e wand and walk around the room adding the e and recording the new word. They were loving it!

 Oh ya... and it was Halloween this week! My kids were wild n' crazy all day Wednesday but I kept them pretty busy. This is a game my ah-mazing teacher-friend, Michelle, showed me last year. Essentially the students put 10 Q-Tips on the skeleton and take turns removing 1 or 2 of them at a time. The goal of this strategy game is to NOT be the last person to remove a "bone." Once the students catch on, they love this game and giggle all darn day!

There are loads of other pictures of Halloween and our field trip we took Monday, but my kiddos smiling faces are plastered all over them and I don't feel like covering them all up with goofy circles, so you'll just have to trust me... we had a BALL!

Now, this teacher is exhausted!

I will see you in a couple days with a few treats I have for ya :)

NightyNight.

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Addition with 3 Addends

I love math games. Did you already know that?!?

I really do. In my classroom, I teach a concept whole group, send my little ones off to play a game to practice that concept, students independently try via pencil and paper (or more likely mini-whiteboard and marker), then bring them back for review.

Rinse, dry, repeat.

Yah, this isn't new, I know.

What IS new, are the games and assessments I made for addition with 3 addends!

Last year when we adopted the CCSS, I had nooooothing for addition with 3 addends. Nothing. So I ended up making a few games, practice pages, and assessments. Well, I was looking it over this weekend and it needed a revamp - big time.

My little packet went from 17 pages to 44. From 2 activities to 7, and from 1 assessment to 3 with 5 practice pages!

Here are some highlights:

games, games, games = practice, practice, practice

A great mix of reading and math:

Students make CVC words, then add the letters together to get the sum. I made task cards to guide students at first, then they can just make their own words.

Assessments:

Story problems, missing addend problems, and basic addition with 3 addends.

I made 3 different ones for you to use throughout your unit.

If you'd like to see more you can visit my [my TPT store] or click the first image above and read the description/download the preview.

The weekend is almost near! Yahoo!

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Art & Academic Night & A Math FREEBIE!

Our Art & Academic Night was last Thursday night and we had so much fun!

Here's a little peak into our night:

A few months ago I found these adorable little owls on pinterest and since our school mascot is the owl I couldn't resist doing them with my students!! It is funny to see each of their personalities in this lil craftivity.

We displayed our poetry books on our desk (from Natalie Kay's poetry pack here) and our non-fiction books we created (from my All About Book templates). 

On our board I kept our poe-tree anchor chart which I stole(borrowed?) from Cara Carroll and my inspector fix-it who helps us with all sorts of grammatical errors! 

There is also our pasta butterfly life cycles I posted about here.

I meant to take a lot more pictures but I was running all over the place like a crazy person before the parents came... whoops!

Last week we also worked on this Balancing Equations freebie I made.

After our testing (why did I notice this AFTER and not before?!?!) I realized my students had a very difficult time solving equations like this:

4 + 7 = 5 + ____

So I pulled out the balances and some cubes and we practiced, practiced, practiced, until their light bulbs turned on! [*We used this term all year & the students loved helping their classmates turn their light bulbs on... it is kinda adorable!]

 Click on any of the worksheet examples below to download my freebie!

Now I must go eat breakfast and lay by the pool for the rest of this lazy day :)

Have a great SHORT week!

Susan

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