The Primary Years: math

Quick Thanksgiving Themed Activities For First Graders

November 13, 2017

We had a couple of random times today for some short Thanksgiving themed activities.

The first graders practiced their fine motor skills by cutting out these words & gluing them in a ABC order. Then they drew illustrations that matched the words.

Then, I needed some math/Thanksgiving activities and these ones I found were perfectly thematic, quick, & super easy to prep!!

I didn't have the students roll the dice though or use the bingo dots. They just came up with an addition fact that equals 10 & then colored in one of the numbers in the 10 frame & used the cut outs for the other number.

The Importance Of Design Thinking

November 05, 2017

Ever since I started teaching, I have wanted to add some type of “Maker Space” into my classroom. This year, I finally figured out a way to make it happen! I thought it would be helpful to share what I have learned from incorporating this type of area into my classroom and lessons.

1. Organization and easy access are key. First, I put my "Maker Space" in a cabinet. It was too hard for my students to get to the materials and for me to keep up organizing them, etc. Having "user friendly" organization also allows your students to take ownership of the entire space.

2. There are certain simple skills that are helpful to teach to young students (in addition to the exploration time that they have with the materials).

3. Design thinking lessons are vital to adding purpose to lessons that incorporate a "Maker Space."

4. These types of designing lessons can be incorporated with any subject area!

Below are some examples of lessons my students have done.

Reading: My students read "The Most Magnificent Thing" and then had to come up with a problem in their life to solve, just like the main character did. Then they designed something to solve the problem.
Math: When learning about Even & Odd, my students designed and create their own "Even Monster" and "Odd Monster" using items and technology available to them.
Science & Social Studies: When learning about Properties of Solids & Fire Safety, my students thought about the properties of different solids and used those properties to make the tallest ladder they could.

You can also find some other makerspace activities we love to do here.

Hopefully this helps you in your journey to incorporate new and exciting ways to add purpose to what your students are learning!

Oh, and if you try out a new makerspace activity in your classroom, I recommend taking this course so that you can earn Professional Development credit for trying out the lesson!

Happy Teaching!

On the 4th day of First Grade...

August 28, 2017

one of my sweet firsties called out "does anyone know how to help me get syrup from breakfast out of my hair?" #bless

Also today, we explored math pattern blocks and practiced our counting my completing these adorable math pattern block pictures.

Other pictures students made were: emojis, sailboats, flowers, spaceships, houses.

Then we continued our ABC order phonics unit by learning how to put words into ABC order. We started by simply putting the ABCs in ABC order. Then we learned how to sort words into ABC order by sorting some class words.

THEN we practiced sorting words on our own and the rest of the week the students were able to complete this type of work independently. YAY for independence!!

Creative Choice

May 01, 2017

Wow - long time no write, huh?

Where has all the time gone?? As I put up our balloons for our ABC Countdown last week it didn't really even feel like the "end" yet. But either way, it is here.

I wanted to quickly highlight one of my favorite routines/activities I have set up in my classroom. Usually, I set this up around October but this year it took me a little longer. Once I finally got to doing it my thought was "Why did I put this off?? Now everything is easier, better for the students - it's just the best!!"

Here's to hoping I remember how wonderful this set up is at the beginning of next year!! ;)

Having plenty of purposeful activities for the students to do is so important in the classroom - they learn, they stay engaged, it's just great! Here is what I have set up for my students who finish their work quickly.

Each of the sticks (in the blue cup) have a student's name written on them (I took this before school started so I hadn't written names yet). When a students finishes his/her work, they can be creative and choose an activity to do: their anything & everything journal, a math tub activity, computer work, a word work activity, ipad work, or work on writing.

When they pick an activity, they can put their name stick in the pocket that corresponds with the activity. There is one rule though: there can only be 4 people at a choice.

The activities on this board are ones that are differentiated & that the students also do during other times of the day. For example: work on writing also happens during literacy stations. This is great because the students can work at their own level & they don't need any instruction because they already know about them.

Typically, I wait until the 4th week or so of school to introduce Creative Choice. Before then, I have the fast finishers work in their anything & everything journals - they can do anything (school appropriate) in these journals: write a story or poem, practice their handwriting, create math problems & solve them.

Calendars

December 21, 2016

Every year we make calendars to help bring in the New Year. Depending on the year and things going on, I sometimes have my students make these calendars the week before Winter Break, sometimes the week after we've come back.

As a class, we fill out the dates and holidays for each month. We do 2-3 months each day. After we fill out each month, the students spend about 5-10 minutes getting started illustrating something that happens during that month.

Then at the end of the week, I give the students some time to add details and complete the illustrations for each month.

The students LOVE these and always talk about them hanging up in their homes.

If you want a copy, feel free to get it here.

Wrapping It All Up

December 17, 2016

Some fun Winter themed activities that we've been doing...

After learning all about snowflakes in science, we made these snowflakes that the students could hang at their home - on their tree, wall decor, whatever works for them!

In math, we learned about how wrapping paper is made up of patterns. We then made wrapping paper that they could take home to wrap their gifts in.

Before Winter Break, I give the students these gifts of crayons and an activity book filled with things that can help keep them busy over the break (and to help prevent any Winter slide).

Rocktober & More

October 29, 2016

Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up? I adore him!

We spent the month of October learning all about rocks!

We spent the last few days of our unit exploring all about caves - from how caves form to the parts of a cave to cave formations to animals that live in caves. We then wrapped up our rocktober fun by taking a field trip to the Inner Space Caverns. If there is a cavern near you - I would definitely suggest taking a trip there. The students LOVED it! And totally connected it with their learning - a few things I heard during the field trip...

"Are we in the twilight zone?"

"Oh, look! We are entering the mouth of the cave!"

"I hope we see some bats!"

"Oh cool! A stalagmite, a stalagmite, a column!"

It was so fun to see their learning being connected to a real life experience!!

We did some fun cave activities (which of course I did not take pictures of...whomp, whomp...)

Here a some fun bat/cave activities we did

Top left: Text to Self Connection. We read a bat book and on the back of that craftivity we included our text to self connection written response.

Top right: We began our unit on addition by creating a visual, a math sentence, and a word sentence to show the addition that was happening.

Bottom left: After learning all about bats, we wrote about what it would be like if we were a bat. Then we drew 3 pictures of different things that we wrote about.

Bottom right: BME activity after reading Stellaluna.

We then spent the remaining few days of October learning about the history of Halloween, themes of Halloweens - including pumpkins, and completing some "spooky" Halloween projects!

You can get this spider here.

A Week In Review

October 07, 2016

This week...

Our craftivity came from here.

Our phonics practice came from here.

We finished up setting and learned about characters this week.

A lot of our comparing numbers activities came from this packet.

Even Gleeven and Odd Blodd

October 02, 2016

It's October Y'all! Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up? I adore him!

Last week in math we began learning about Even and Odd numbers. It was a very busy week though so we did not quite get to everything and will be finishing up this week - which is perfect because it is October and I love making our "Even Gleevens and Odd Blodds!"

In prepping for the rest of our Even & Odd unit, I thought I would share what we did last year since we are doing some of those activities again.

Back when we first learned about digits, we did learn about which were even and odd. First I had my first graders find a partner and then I told them I had different food items. If the items were even and they could share them fairly then they could eat them. This brought a great concrete idea to the concept of even & odd.

Now onto learning about how to know if a number more than 10 is even or odd.

First we played a game called prove it. The students created a game board and then passed their board to a partner and had to prove whether the numbers on the board were even or odd.

Then I let the cats out of the bag, gave each student a cat, and we sorted them between even and odd.

Once everyone finished, we all came to the carpet to look at the patterns we saw in the sorts. We made the conclusion that you have to look at the ones place to tell if a number is even or odd.

I save this next activity for October because I love the craftivity that goes with it!

After reading the story, we made an "Even Gleeven and Odd Blodd." Monsters that either like everything about and around them to be even or odd.

Another activity was this this quick sunflower cut & sort activity. Then I had students play an even & odd game.

Our check point for this week was this quick little sheet of paper.

Applicious Place Value

September 23, 2016

Whew, what a busy week! I cannot believe that we have already been in school for about 4 weeks - the school year has just been flying by.

This week we began learning all about place value. We talked about the different ways to make the same number - expanded notation, base 10 blocks, writing the number, tally marks, tens and ones, etc. To end the week, my first graders did this fun apple based activity - no matter what way you cut it, it is still an apple and no matter what way you write a certain number, it is still the same amount!

My first graders really enjoyed this activity, it allowed for differentiation because the students were able to pick their own number, and they enjoyed the challenge of putting the apple back together after they cut it into 5 pieces.

Falling in Love With Place Value

September 21, 2016

Finally - I have been itching to put some fall decor into our classroom but have contained myself until this week.

Place value is so challenging so we dive into learning about place value very slowly.

We started the week by learning about representing numbers with 10s and 1s. The big goal is things are grouped by 10s or 1s.

I wanted to make some fall decor and these scarecrows were PERFECT!

on the back...

You can get this freebie here.

#allthehearteyes

Hey, Can I have your digits?

September 16, 2016

This week, we've been learning all about digits.

We started by learning about digits vs numbers. We filled out a venn diagram and connected this to how letters form words & some letters are words (a, I) - digits are numbers too!

We then spent each day working on forming two of the digits correctly. We really worked on starting from the TOP and not making backwards digits.

We did a couple of quick practice sheets to practice recognizing digits and different digit numbers (2 digit, 3 digit, etc).

In the end, we each got to pick a digit and added our personal touch to help us remember the digits.

Click on any of the above pictures to get the craftivities and printables!

Sorting It All Out

September 10, 2016

Finally!

Do you ever feel like there is that one topic that you just can't seem to figure out?? How can I make this topic really fun (but not have to spend hours prepping?!) Now, don't get me wrong I often spend hours planning and prepping but for some reason whenever it came to teaching about sorting and organizing I had the hardest time getting excited about my lessons...until now!!!

I think I have finally "Sorted It All Out!!" and boy, could I not be more excited to finally have landed on this lesson!

Here are some of the sorting and organizing activities we did this week...

Guess My Sort: I started out by randomly choosing a couple of students to come up in the front of the classroom. Then I told the class: I chose these students to come up here because I sorted them by something that they all have in similarity. When a person sorts things, that means they group items together after finding something that all of the items have in common. Then the students guessed how I sorted this group of students (the color of their shirt). Then I did the same thing with another group (by type - all girls). Finally, a third group (all similar height - this was the hardest one!)

Students found so many sorts which was great because I said "yes! You are right that is a sort, but that is not what my brain was thinking when I sorted them), and finally I told the students to make a shape, any shape with their hands, and then I brought the kids up based on that (shape).

Lucky Charms: Each child got a scoop of lucky charms and was told them to sort them. Then we discussed the sorts we found. Then they had to sort them a 2nd way. Again, we shared. This was absolutely a class favorite (and a favorite for me since it required very little prep!!)!!

One other thing I loved about this activity was that it allowed us to talk about what we can learn from our sorts. For example: we discovered that there is more cereal than marshmallows and why that may be significant information to know.

3 Little Firefighters: While they ate their Lucky Charms, we read this sorting story and talked about the sorts/created an anchor chart while reading.