Ten-Frame FUN

Helllooooo! Yes, I am still alive. Yes, I am BUSY, BUSY, BUSY. But yes, I am still here! I think about this little old blog often but lately it has had to fall to the bottom of my priority list. :( I'm not back to the same capacity as before when I regularly blogged, but I hope to at least have new resources to share and blog posts once or twice a month. :D

Let's talk ten-frames.

Do you know what a ten-frame is? Do you use ten-frames in your classroom? If you teach math in the primary grades, I hope your answer to both questions is YES, of course! :)

Using ten-frames helps students work specifically on subitizing, composing/decomposing numbers, making 10, relationships between numbers, etc. These simple, yet powerful tools can help lay those building blocks of number sense our students need. Below are some resources you can add to your ten-frame ideas bucket:

• You can purchase a set of ten-frame cards OR you can pick up a freebie here. Once you have the cards, you are ready to use them with your kids! Use them as flash cards to build their instant recognition of each number.

• If you are looking for some games to play with your ten-frame cards, I whipped a little math game pack up this week. These games are great for whole group, small group or work station activities! You can check it out by clicking on the picture!

• Also, here are some great online ten-frame games:

 

• Finally, this is a fantastic book with lots of great ideas:

Have a GREAT weekend and see you soon! :)

Duct Tape Number Line

I am linking up to Tara's Monday Made It!

I am a HUGE proponent of using manipulatives and hands-on activities to teach math (and other subjects) in ALL grade levels! Just because students are older does not mean that abstract thinking and understanding is automatic. Sometimes, they just need to put their hands on it in order to fully grasp it.

So today, I made a duct tape number line!

The number line is about 6 feet long. I wanted it big enough for a small group of students to all use at once. During math stations, students will choose the cards out of a baggie one at a time and then place them on a number line. To assist in the ordering process, students have access to base-ten blocks to model the numbers.

Like it? Make your own duct tape number line and use the number cards from this freebie:

Enjoy!!

Another Week Down!

I can't believe another week has passed. This was a fast one, too!

MONDAY

Monday was the kickoff for blends month. We will be focusing on s blends, l blends, and r blends in phonics/spelling for 3 weeks. I actually went ALL out and planned an activity that involved a blender! What better way to introduce your students to blends than to make a smoothie in a blender??!

I bought this teeny tiny blender from Wal-Mart. We put a can of apple juice and half a bag of frozen chopped fruit in it. We talked about the properties of the fruit/juice before blending it and predicted what would happen once we pressed the button. After it was all blended, we discussed how the properties changed (gotta throw in some science!) and how the same ingredients were still there even though you can barely tell what it is made of. THEN, we related it to blends in words and tried our apple strawberry peach banana smoothie! They were THRILLED, to say the least! It was a great way to get us started and to help them remember why a blend is a blend.

Despite the two cups you see with smoothie still in them, the kids LOVED it!

Also on Monday, we finally talked about the math word for those "corners" on shapes. We made shapes on pieces of construction paper and used Do-a-Dots to count the vertices. What you see below is one of the construction paper pages underneath my document camersa, projected onto the Promethean Board. We used index cards and tape to label the shape. 

Then we continued to work in our shape book foldable that you can find here.

TUESDAY

We started patterns in math by using pattern blocks and macaroni to make patterns!

You can pick up this macaroni pattern freebie here!

WEDNESDAY

We FINALLY started Read to Someone after 6 weeks of Read to Self--took us that long to get it down, BUT the important part is that they got it down. They did fantastic with Read to Someone!

On Wednesday nights at church I assist in the gardening hobby bible class for 1-4th grade (I am NO gardener, by the way!!). We planted some seeds last week and, thanks to a bunch of rain last weekend, we were happy to see that they had sprouted!

We did sidewalk chalk after spending time in the garden; one little boy wrote this little reminder for us all. :)

I also shared this #midweekconfession via Instagram.

THURSDAY

Thursday brought additive patterns. Yikes. My class didn't have a clue. At all. Lots of ::face palms:: from yours truly. 

We got through it. But it was not easy. :) We will for sure continue to spiral review additive patterns.

Thursday night I almost completed level 79 of Candy Crush--I have been working on it here and there for A MONTH! A MONTH!!!! And I am STILL working on it because 2 moves to get those last two blocks of jelly was just not enough!     :O      >:(       :(

FRIDAY

Skip counting! We started out by reading this book:

This book was a GREAT introduction for skip counting!! GREAT! The animals in the book are competing for title of "King of the Jungle" and must find the fastest way to count to 10. Pick it up on Amazon here. I highly recommend it. 

This activity was the perfect lead-in for some exploration time with skip counting. We actually only had time for just the first page, but this is the investigation page we completed:

Click on the above images or here to download this freebie.

I gave each student a hundreds chart, counters, and the recording sheet (from above) and let them have at it. I loved seeing all of their little brains working. They had some GREAT ideas and thinking. Wonderful insight for me.

Counting by 1s to 48.

Skip counting by 2s to 48:

Check out her towers--she was skip counting by 2s!

On the recording sheet, they were allowed to use it however they chose. Some used it as a work mat while others used it to record the numbers they counted. That also gave me some insight as to what they knew about skip counting.

Phew. It was quite the week. And aren't you proud that I shared more than just math?! We do a billion things each day, but math just makes the most interesting pictures. ;)

What exciting things did you do this week??

Never a Dull Moment.

Who has time to have a dull moment in first grade (or even just a moment)??! Seriously, today was PACKED with activities (like any other day)! I didn't get everything in pictures but I did capture math (imagine that). Check out what we did in math!

First up, we did a little part-part-whole practice by playing my Part-Part-Whole Roll game using animal plates!! You can check it out here!

Then we gathered our shoes for an introductory graphing activity using my DIY graphing mat.

We discussed many ways we could sort our shoes into two groups--tennis shoes and sandals, by height, by color. After listening to many suggestions, we decided to sort shoelaces and no shoelaces! Let the sorting commence:

We discussed our data during and after sorting. We had just finished a unit on comparing numbers up to 30 so they were ready to analyze! After talking in partners and as a whole, we were ready to write comparative sentences about our data. Read what they came up with! (I wrote down exactly what they said.)

After all of the graphing fun, we wrapped up math with a fun and stickery ten-frame activity. The kids were randomly assigned a number from 1-10 and given a ten-frame. They used stickers to make the number in the ten-frame. I then took each child's picture with their ten-frame--I have a few little projects to use the pictures for. I will share more about those later! They did have a blast raiding my sticker collection!

Hope you had a fantastic Friday!! :) Thanks for stopping by!

Part-Part-Whole Chart Action! (and your Sweet & Simple Saturday freebie)

Week 2 is officially over and I am still alive! It has been a fun-packed and BUSY year so far! I ended week 2 with 21 students in my class and they're some pretty sweet kiddos. :)

Yesterday, I introduced the part-part-whole chart to my firsties. They were SO excited to not only get a new chart, but to USE it! (Seriously....they were ecstatic.) They must know its great power. ;)

FIRST, I passed out the chart and we talked about its name and very, very briefly talked about the purpose. We will get more into that later. Then, we rolled a die and put counters in one of the parts. We rolled again and put counters in the other part.

We talked about how many counters were in each part and how we could find out how many counters there were in all. We decided to push the parts together and then count. They discovered that the whole was a great place to put them together and count them up. We did that 2-3 times. Then, I called a student to roll for me and place the counters on my mat under the document camera while the rest of the class did it at the their desk. I called another student for the second roll and placement of counters. We did that FOREVER because they were VERY engaged--they wanted to be picked!! Almost everyone got a turn with that. 

After that, it was time for some independent practice. We played Part-Part-Whole Roll:

They did SUCH a great job. We'll be ready for round 2 of PPW on Monday!!

And here are the possible recording sheets for the game:

Click below to purchase this activity--just a buck!! :)

Need part-part-whole charts for your classroom?? Here is your Sweet & Simple Saturday freebie:

Have a great weekend!!