New Math Station Items

We adopted EnVision math as our new math series for K-2 this year. We had originally been using Saxon Math but it didn't seem to help prepare our kiddos for Harcourt math in 3rd grade. We are hoping to adopt the series for K-5 but we are waiting for all the common core to be aligned in the textbooks before we make the final decision.

Anyway, next week we will begin our next topic which is Understanding Subtraction. EnVision comes with its own centers but when I use math stations everyday, it is easier to have a lot of activities that practice the same type of concept but in different ways. So, I created two new games today.

The first game is "Talking Turkey Subtraction". This works the same way the lessons are introduced with missing parts of a whole. It gives the student the whole number and the part they know and asks them to figure out what is missing. So, my activity does the same. They will use a ten-frame and two-color counters to solve the problem with a partner and then record their answer on a worksheet.
You can check it out by clicking below. :)

Talking Turkey Subtraction

As we progress through the topic it introduces simple subtraction sentences. So, "Apple of My Eye" Subtraction is designed to practice this concept. The students can still use a ten-frame and counters if needed to find which apple matches the problem.

Apple of My Eye Subtraction

 Hope this helps some of you!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Pumpkin Week!

I am so mad at myself right now! We had an awesome pumpkin week and I didn't take one picture! I will take a few on Monday of our craft and pumpkins but it would have been so much better with the kiddos! Well, live and learn...note to self....dont.forget.camera!

We read fiction and non-fiction pumpkin stories and we wrote about the life of a pumpkin about how pumpkins grow for our writing this week. For our nonfiction story we read From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer.

I'm sure there are tons of great non-fiction books for pumpkins but this was the one I had handy from my classroom library and it worked fine. :)

One of the stories we read was a favorite fiction story of mine...The Runaway Pumpkin by Kevin Lewis.

I brought in some different sizes and shapes of pumpkins and my mom even brought in a white one. :)  On Thursday, we did some estimating with my big pumpkin. We estimated how fat we thought it was by cutting how much string they thought they would need to fit around it and also estimating how many seeds they thought were inside it. Of course, I then scooped out the seeds and guts for the kids to see and feel.

Today we compared the kiddos estimates to the actual number of seeds taken from the pumpkin. We also voted on what type of face to carve into our pumpkin. They chose scary...big surprise! Lol. While I was carving the pumpkin they were working on their pumpkin crafts. Nothing too exciting...small paper plate colored orange, green or brown stem glued to the top, and 5 pumpkin seeds from our pumpkin glued to the middle.

We then lit our jack o'lanterns and read my all time favorite story....Pssst! It's Me the Bogeyman! If you haven't read this story you must go out and get it! It is just the right amount of scary mixed with funny and it is awesome!

We always have our PBIS monthly celebration on the last Friday of the month and with Halloween falling on Monday we had our parties today also. So, my partner and I came up with "Spooky Spots" for our kiddos. Between the two of us we have 40 kids so we split them into 4 groups of 10 kids and had 4 stations or spooky spots for them to visit. One was face painting where they could get a pumpkin or ghost on their face. We also had a coloring station with Halloween pages. We also made spider treats using a Ritz cracker, spray cheese, pretzel sticks for legs and 2 raisins for eyes.  And finally, we had a spooky story spot with two fun Halloween stories.

      





                    

We finished the day with our Halloween treats....cupcakes, rice krispie treats and of course too much candy to go home with them! I don't why some parents forget to send all the supplies on the school supply list, but they send enough Halloween candy to feed the whole school! Well, anyway it was a fun week! Now, if I can just survive the actual holiday and the day after! Lol.

Have an awesome weekend!

Contraction Wizards--FREEBIE!!

This week in Saxon Phonics we are learning about contractions. I wanted something I could put out in Word Work stations for the kiddos to practice this skill on their own. I came up with my Contraction Wizards activity. Click on the link below if you want to download your FREEBIE! :)

Download Here

More Math games and new TPT store!

Hi everyone! Hope you have had a great weekend! We just finished up Parent/Teacher Conferences on Thursday and Friday and although it was awesome to meet with all the parents, I am glad to be done with all the preparations for the conferences. I have been working on a few new items for math tubs and also for sight word practice. I decided that it was time to get my TPT store up and running. So, please stop by and see my items that I have added. Most of the items listed so far are free and the 1 that costs is VERY reasonable for the amount of time I put into making it. :)  Still trying to figure it all out so any tips or hints would be welcome! Here is a link to the freebie item I added today...

Greater Than, Less Than with Mr. Alligator

 

I also would love to know how everyone puts a thumbnail of the actual document on their blog page, so if anyone can help with that please let me know! Hope everyone has a fabulous week!  We are doing a pumpkin unit this coming week so I will be excited to share what happens and pictures next weekend! :)

Fall Freebies!

I have been wanting to make some new games for my math tubs for my little cuties to use during math stations. We went over our AIMSweb data last week and found out that they are a little weak in knowing missing numbers up to 20 when they are in random order. So, I made the Scarecrow Missing Number matching game. They will have to match the right crow to the scarecrow that has that missing number. You can get your copy below the scarecrow. :)

Scarecrow Missing Numbers

We also worked on turn-around math problems with EnVision last week. This was easy for some of my kiddos, but I had a few who were confused. So, I made my Spooky Turn-arounds for them to use during math stations to practice. They will have to match the halloween characters to find the turn-around problems. You can get yours below the Halloween pals below. :)

Spooky Turn-Around Math

If you decide to download a copy of either of my games just please leave me a comment! :)

Apple Fun!!

Fall is here and we have started learning about Autumn, Apples, and next week we will talk about Corn.  There are so many fun things to learn about in this season and the kiddos are so excited about it!

We traced our hands on our favorite "leaf" color and made this wreath to hang on our door.

All this week we had fun with apples! We started the week with the story about the Little Red House with No Windows, No Doors, and a Star Inside. We cut apples in half to see the stars the kids loved it! For the month of September, our entire school was focusing on 2 comprehension strategies for reading. They were Visualize and Make Connections. We decided to use this story for a visualizing lesson. I read the story and half way through we stopped and visualized what the little house looked like in the pictures in our minds. Then we read the rest of the story and we made a picture of what the house really looked like. Here is a couple of examples. :)

It was great that the kids hadn't heard this story before so they thought it was awesome to find out there was a star inside the apple!

We read stories about apples all week and this was also our writing focus. We use Michael Heggerty writing for our school. So, on Tuesday they always help me come up with the sentences while I model writing them. I told them I wanted them to tell me what they had learned so far about an apple from its start to finish. I was very impressed with what they came up with so I hung it in the hallway.



I bought the cutest apple glyph/poems from First Grade Blue Skies TPT store. We made both the apple poems and the glyphs. I forgot to take pictures of the glyphs after we hung them up so I will add that next week. But the poems turned out absolutely adorable and the kids had a lot of fun making them!

My principal LOVED them and said they really brightened up the hallway! :) We finished off the week with an apple tasting to decide if we like red, yellow, or green the best. We then made the glyphs and created an apple tree graph to see which was the most favorite and which was the least favorite. I will add those pics next week when I go back to school.

Overall, it was a great learning adventure! We will talk about corn and harvesting next week. If anyone has any great ideas to share for this topic, please let me know! :) Have a great weekend!!