The Primary Years: place value

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.

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.