Math Stations

I've found that when I do math in the afternoons,  I love having a variety of activities laid out for students to pick from.  We will start with a whole class mini lesson for about 15 minutes, then do a quick whole class activity that covers what we talked about.  After the kids finish their whole class activity, they are able to choose from about 6 stations that I've laid out around the room.  The reason why this works so good for my class, is that my early finishers are never bored.  Once they finish their work, they can go straight to more activities (which are differentiated to ability levels).  It also gives me more time to work with students who need a little extra attention to grasp understanding of the concept.  Here are a few stations I laid out the other day! I've been reading the book Math Work Stations: Independent Learning You Can Count On, K-2 to get more ideas for math stations that students are able to do on their own, are fun, and help further their learning.

These are called Hot Dots! Students answer the problem, press their answer with the pen and it lets them know if its correct. 

We use these bead counters with lots of addition activities, including addition Hot Dots.  Students move the correct number of beads according to the problem and then count what's in the middle to find the answer.  For example with 2 + 3 they would move 2 orange and 3 white to the middle and count them all. 

For this stations, I set out a few different manipulatives.  For this day, we were working on adding and subtracting fluently to 6.  They show a problem that equals six with manipulatives, then write their problem on the chart with the corresponding markers.  I love this because if adding or subtracting two numbers is too easy, then can move onto 3 numbers or larger numbers.   

The most important part of math stations, according to Debbie Diller is math talk.  You can include math talk cards for students to use during stations.  Here is an example of station directions and math talk prompting!

Marshmallow Shapes

We have been learning about shapes, so I thought it would be fun to create shapes out of toothpicks and marshmallows for a final activity.  Each student chose a square, triangle, hexagon, or pentagon. After they filled out the worksheet, they were able to play around and build their own 3D creations.

Eric Carle: A House for a Hermit Crab

     We are currently working on an ocean unit in our classroom, so I thought a project based on the book, A House for a Hermit Crab by Eric Carle would be perfect.  I found the cutest idea from this blog and I took the idea and ran with it.

      First, we read the book and acted out motions for each animal that the hermit crab attached to its shell.  Then we reviewed all the animals at the end and talked about being a good friend.  Our next step was to make red hand prints for the hermit's body and watercolor paper plates for the shells.  To make all the different animals, I set up 7 stations around room so the kids could visit each one as they got finished.  Most of the creature pieces are clip art outlines that they kids either painted, colored with marker, or added glitter to.

    Once the whole class has their pieces made, I'm going to have them line them up in what they think the order of the animals being added to the shell was.  Then we will read the story and readjust our orders. I'm also really excited to act this out in a reader's theater with my class. This not only helps us talk about science but we are working on our reading skills by sequencing the events.

Donut Factory

Today, we took a mini field trip and walked to a donut shop down the street.  The 6th graders who helped us with our money counting skills came with us.  It was really fun and I loved having the kids apply their math skills to a real world situation. They had a coin purse that they filled with coins brought from home and they each paid individually for their own donuts!

Money Counting with Middle School

A group of 6th graders came down from their math class to help us practice our money counting and identifying skills.  Tomorrow, they are going to come with us to the donut shop to buy donuts with our money! It's so fun to have the older kids come work with us, it's such a great interaction because the 6th graders really take charge and do a great job with the little guys.  It also a great chance for them to get to know other kids around the school. You can visit my friend Mrs. B's blog who teaches the 6th grade class at http://www.peaceloveandmiddleschool.org

Shape Creatures

I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it would be a great way for us to review sides and verticies in math. The kids had so much fun making this project and there was some great fun dialogue going on as the kids played with their shape creatures.  I heard awesome things like:

 "I am a circle, I'm soooooo sad that I have no verticies and no sides..." 

"I am a six sided hexagon. Chomp, chomp, chomp." 

These are the most authentic ways to get concepts to stick, I love it! 

When learning is fun, nothing is better :)

Aquarium Field Trip

We visited the aquarium yesterday and had so much fun!!

Mac Mini

This little tool doesn't look very exciting, but I'm so excited about the possibilities it's bringing to our classroom.  It has really stepped up our technology game! :)

The thing I'm most excited about is the ability to project WIRELESSLY! This will pair really well with a whiteboard app that I have. It means that I can walk around the classroom with my iPad as I draw out story problems in math or sight words in reading.  We also have the ability to project up to 4 screens at once.   This means I can have each student on an iPad and project four of their iPads all at once as they show their work in math.  This could also lead to some fun race type games.

Here's an example of something I might show for 4 + 3= 7.

After showing this, I might choose 4 students to project and have draw me a picture to solve another addition problem. 

Cowboy Boots

We have our kindergarten play this week, which is called Way Out West.  We made decorations for the side of our stage and made these cowboy boots based off the pin found here.

Here is our interpretation!

We used bubble wrap to paint the backgrounds.  We layered green, brown, and gold paint onto green paper using bubble wrap.  Then the kids drew a sun, cloud, and cactus and cut it out for the background.  The boots were decorated with metallic paints and we tried to make them both symmetrical.  They turned out really cute!