Monday Made It: Pointers 2.0

I made some pointers for my classroom back in 2012. And again in 2013. Then the school year ended in 2014. And the school janitors threw ALL of my pointers away. All of them!!! :O

SO I had to make more...

I probably didn't need that many...... ;)

I did make some for a few friends and also some to give away at a workshop I was teaching. That should explain at LEAST half of them. :)

A fun-filled evening with 2 of my awesome teacher friends!

And this is my new favorite pointer, of course. :) :) :)

Some other cuties.

 

The mini pointers came out ADORABLE.

We used washi tape and duct tape to wrap the sticks and then hot glued the wooden pieces to the sticks.

My husband brought home like 40 of these heavy duty cardboard tubes from work--perfect for pointer storage!

We wrapped the tubes in fun duct tape.

My favorite set!

Here's to hoping these pointers survive the school year! ;)

Money, Money, MONEY! Part 2 of 3

I hope you caught part 1 of this money series.

If not, click here to head over and read it!

First, pictured below is the money chart I referred to in the last post. Please do not be distracted by the ugly handwriting. I am not proud of its appearance but the kids appreciate it! We made this after the exploration activity mentioned in the last post:

Another exploration activity we did that the kids ABSOLUTELY loved was this:

I gave them a tray of real coins and some magnifying glasses. During stations, they were allowed to go over and explore the coins on the tray, 3 at a time. I put out several of each type of coin, making sure that it included a variety of styles. They were way impressed to see the new pennies and nickels and were AMAZED that I had an actual half dollar to show! They were also very perplexed by the Sacagawea coin because most had never seen one before.

One final thing to share in this post is an equivalent value activity. I showed the kids 30 cents in pennies and explained that I wanted to put the change in my pocket. However, I didn't want to carry pennies around because they were SO heavy and weighed me down! The students paired up with a cup of coins and an iPod (I have 4 in my classroom and only did this with about 10 students at a time, so 2 groups shared one) and worked on a solution to my problem (something we have been going over in reading!). Since a lot of them had a great background knowledge in counting money, this was a very easy activity for them. (I, of course, still had those few that had no clue what to do.) The students came up with as many solutions as they could think of and took a picture of it. To conclude, we looked at and compared all of the pictures to decide what was the least amount of coins I could carry to still have 30 cents. We actually put the iPods side by side so we could compare the amount of change quickly--that was really neat. Here is the chart we made after we printed the pictures (and yes, I had some excellent helpers assist in writing!):

AND we then had to sing our FAVORITE money song!!:

Don't forget to stop by and pick up a free copy of my money exploration pages!

Stayed tuned for the conclusion of  Money, Money, MONEY!. I will share even more about what we have been doing AND will be launching/giving a few of these away:

Have a terrific Thursday!

Yummy Doubles and Giveaway WINNERS

We have been learning about doubles in math since right before Christmas break. To further explore doubles we did this cute little activity yesterday that came from Bishop's Blackboard. The students turned a healthy snack into math manipulatives, specifically doubles dominoes:

Mrs. Bishop (from Bishop's Blackboard) used graham crackers, frosting, and chocolate chips. I had to use different materials to meet the lame state nutrition guidelines (but it was STILL fun and tasty!). We used graham crackers, cream cheese, and raisins. The cream cheese was fresh out of the fridge so it was slightly stiff and the kids had a little trouble spreading it on the cracker. It was fine though and the activity went well, so no biggie.

We also used a recording sheet for the activity made by Carrie at A First Grade Teacher's Passions and Obsessions.

Click on the above links to access the activity and recording sheet from these ladies' blogs!

In other news------I decided to pick three of you to win my Odd and Even pack giveaway since I took only just a wee bit longer than I said to pick winners! :)

And the winners of the Odd and Even pack are....

Ronnie

vhair61215@gmail.com

Teri

acupcakefortheteacher@gmail.com

Cindy

ccfirstteacher@gmail.com

Congrats and thanks for entering, everyone!! :) Be looking for your Odd and Even Numbers Pack to arrive in your inbox!!

Simple, Fun Counting Activity

Well, I'm kind of back in blog land. I even visited/commented on three blogs today! I'm still super busy with school and still very overwhelmed with everything, BUT it is getting better, day by day. Can't wait for life to slow down just a little bit!!! By the way, I'll have some pictures of my finished classroom for you very soon!! I just l-o-v-e how it came out.

I did want to stop by and share something of worth with you! Here is a math activity that me and my team have planned to do this week with our 1st graders. By the way, 1st grade has been AWESOME so far! I have 21 kids in my class. We just finished week 1 of school and in this week, I have given at least 20 hugs a day (WAY more than the 1-2 per week in 4th grade), talked to lots of parents, have wanted to pull my hair out only once or twice, sang LOTS of songs, read LOTS of books, and have done more phonics than I even have thought about since college. I'm in a good place and I think it will be a GREAT year!! My kids are SO sweet and are totally enamored with how fast I can write and color, and how AWESOME my drawings are (lol). It's the simple things...

The activity I am sharing with you is an adaptation from one of the ones I learned at Math Camp. (Check out my other Math Camp posts here!!) I was able to prepare for this activity and will use it without having to spend any money at all! (Well...any new money. I already had all of the supplies at home.) Here is what you need:

Materials:

• scrapbook paper (or fabric) with many objects in the print
• colored paper plates
• scissors
• unifix cubes

After the activity go over how many objects the students counted and what exactly they counted. Be sure to instruct students to only connect cubes that make sets of ten. When they share results they will tell how many tens and ones they have, and then the total count. Example: "I counted the whole polka dots in the circle. I have 1 ten and 2 ones--12." 

Hope you enjoy and are able to use this activity! I think we will have fun with it--I'll let you know after Wednesday. ;) See you SOON (though not sure how soon...)!