Teaching Two » ideas

Minute Math – Everyday for June

Anne — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:07:40 +0000

Teaching my kids is something I try to do everyday even if they aren’t aware they are learning. I like to make math something they learn to use in everyday situations.

Here is a calendar of ideas to do with your kids each day during the month of June. They only take a few minutes and will help keep math fun. Enjoy!

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Scrabble Addition

Anne — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:26:31 +0000

Ashlyn liked her making word activity so much that I thought I would give her another one only add a little math into the mix. This is what you need:

Scrabble tiles
a list of words
calculator (optional)
pencil and paper

I gave her a list of 5 words. We spent the day at the beach yesterday so I used beach themed words. You can also use spelling words, sight words, seasonal words, etc. Then I gave her a bucket of the Scrabble tiles.

She had to spell the first word from the list and next to it make a number sentence from the point values on each tile. She had to add the sentence up and total it. I let her use a calculator because I hardly ever do and she loves hers.

Once all the words were made and added up, she had to tell me which word was worth the most. She loved it!

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Making Words

Anne — Sat, 29 May 2010 18:09:37 +0000

Ashlyn really enjoyed this activity. I put some of our Bananagram letters into a bowl.

She had to close her eyes and choose any 6 she wanted. Once she had her 6 letters, she had to see if she could make any words from them. I had her write them down on her white board.

Since this was the first time doing this activity I didn’t want to give her too many directions. Next time I have her do it, I think I will create a worksheet to go along with it. That way I can be more specific in what I want her to look for. Something like this:

1. Make 3 four letter words ____________, ________________, ________________.

2. Make two words that end with a silent e ___________________, _______________.

3. Make two words that rhyme with each other __________________, _____________.

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Yummy Patterning!

Anne — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:55:50 +0000

Monday was a wet, rainy day. I had planned on taking the girls to the zoo’s splash pad but instead we hung out at home and played together. I decided to do a patterning activity with M&M’s. What kid doesn’t love any math activity where eating chocolate is involved.

I gave them each a bowl full of M&M’s and a paper that had eggs on it. I was using it the following week in my class for my dinosaur theme. They had to place the M&M’s on the eggs to create a pattern. Once they created their pattern they had to color the eggs to match their pattern. Here is what they came up with.

Here is Ashlyn’s AAB pattern.

Emily working on her ABBCD pattern.

Their favorite part was of course eating the M&M’s at the end.

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More Pond Activities

Anne — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:49:02 +0000

We finally finished up our habitat books at school on Thursday. Now I just have to put them all together. The kids worked so hard on them and they look great. Our last habitat we talked about was ponds. Here is a page from our book.

The kids painted a small cupcake liner green for the turtles shell. Then they glued it to the cut out turtle pattern.
They ripped green paper to look like cattails and added a small brown pom pom.

We read the book IN the Small, Small Pond and then sang the song 5 Green and Speckled frogs and I borrowed this great prop from my friend. Thanks Riane! The kids loved it and played with it throughout the day.

I found this great Frog grid game and the kids asked to play it over and over again. I printed off two copies and had small frog counters. Each student took turns rolling the die and adding that many frogs to their lily pads. The first one to fill up their board won.

Check out more StArt projects here.

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Pajama Day at School!

Anne — Fri, 07 May 2010 02:36:44 +0000

Today was pajama day in our class. The kids loved coming to school in their favorite pj’s. I think I actually enjoyed it more than they did. Nothing like telling a pregnant women she can wear pj’s all day at work. I set up sleeping bags and stuffed animals in the reading center. They looked so cozy reading in their pj’s.

We also read The Napping House. I love this book because of the vocabulary as well as the sequencing in it. My kids loved it too. Once we finished it, we created our own class size napping house. We made a house and then I gave each student a character from the story. We looked back through the story and the kids had to retell me the story and the order. Then they got to put the characters on our napping house.

We also sang the song There Were 10 in The Bed. If you don’t know it each time you sing it one person rolls out of bed and then you start over again with “there were 9 in the bed…”It’s great for counting backwards and introducing the concept of subtraction. I made ten little kids on Popsicle sticks and put it in the reading center for them to play with. I heard them singing it all day!

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Beginning Math Skills

Anne — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:33:30 +0000

Today while Emily and I were playing memory (Hello Kitty Flip ‘n’ Match), I noticed that the board it came with would be perfect for some beginning math skills. I went and got some marbles and a die to roll. I had her roll the dice and then add that many marbles. We took turns rolling the die and adding more until the board was filled up. The whole time I threw in some math terms and asked her questions.

How many do we have altogether?
What do you have to roll to fill up the row?
How many more do you need to fill the board up?
You rolled a 5 first and now a 3. What is 5 plus 3 more?

These kinds of questions are ones that kids encounter in word problems. When I taught first grade many kids had a hard time figuring out how to answer those problems. So whenever I can I ask my girls so they will understand what they mean as they get older.

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One Stop Shopping

Anne — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:46:42 +0000

The other day I was working on the computer, Emily was asleep, and Ashlyn was creating. I would hear her every now and then but she asked me not to come out in the family room. She was working on a surprise. She does these “surprises” all the time. About 30 minutes later she came in, gave me a card that said Welcome to my Store, a huge shopping box, and a credit card.

She had transformed the family room into a store complete with a shoe, clothes, food, toy, and craft department. I got to go around and shop while she waited patiently at her register. At the end of my visit, I even got a free cookie like at Publix. I love when she decides to entertain herself while being so creative.

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Interactive Journaling

Anne — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:35:13 +0000

Every morning I used to write a morning message to my girls. They loved this but now I am trying something a little different. I gave Ashlyn a journal and wrote her a short letter, just a few sentences. I left it on her desk in her room and when she woke up she read it and instantly wrote me back. It has been great for communicating with her what we are doing that day, how special she is, and how much I love her. I wanted it to be more personal between the two of us. Every time she reads a letter I can see her eyes light up with pride.

It is also great for sneaking in writing skills such as proper letter writing, punctuation, and writing complete sentences. I don’t correct her spelling because I want her to feel free about what she will write. Let me know if you try it with your kids.

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Cross on a Hill

Anne — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:03:31 +0000

We did a cute project today in class that my kids enjoyed. Sorry I don’t have pictures but we were too busy making them. I cut styrofoam balls in half and had the kids paint them green. Then I gave them each two popsicle sticks, one regular sized one and one small one. They colored both sides of each one with brown markers. We hot glued those together and them stuck them into the top of the styrofoam “hills”. The last step was optional. They could add some flower stickers around the bottom of the hill if they wanted.

We talked about why a cross was important for Easter and how it could remind us of how much God loves us.

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