Teaching Two » math

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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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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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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Find the Number- part 2

Anne — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:23:12 +0000

I played this game with Ashlyn all the time when she was younger and today Emily wanted to play it. I told her that I would only pick numbers on the first two rows (1 – 20). I would tell her a number and she had to find it on the board and place an M&M on it. She loved it, especially when I told her she could eat them.

Ashlyn wanted to play it today also but I needed to modify it for her level. So, I would tell her a number and she had to place an M&M on it. Then I would ask her to find the number that was 10 more than that number or ten less than it. At first she would count ten more or less. After a few times, she remembered that I taught her that all she had to do was move it down or up one row. Using a hundreds board is so good for understanding number sense as well as patterning.

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What’s In My Stocking?

Anne — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:15:01 +0000

Here’s a fun game that Emily did in her class so I thought Ashlyn might enjoy it too. I got a stocking and filled it with some of the objects it had on the graph (which can easily be made). She decided she wanted to close her eyes and pull one thing out at a time. Then she filled it in on her graph. It was pretty easy for her but she had fun doing it. When she finished I asked her all kinds of questions like; How many dolls and bears were there? How many more blocks were there than candy canes?

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Sorting Shells

Anne — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 01:02:17 +0000

My mom took Ashlyn shopping this past Saturday to get some new school clothes. Apparently she told my mom that I didn’t buy her any new clothes this year and that Emily had tons of clothes because she got all of Ashlyn’s old clothes. Anyway, I had some Mommy Emily time most of the afternoon. Of course we played Little People (I don’t think a day goes by without playing this) watched Dora, and then played with the shells I got at a garage sale. I love when I find a great math manipulative for dirt cheap! I had her sort them however she wanted. I loved the categories she came up with; spiky ones, unicorn ones, eyeball looking ones, ones with a hole in them, and flat ones. We talked about which group had the most and least and which ones she liked the best. I used a plastic platter that a friend of mine got at Publix and was about to throw away. It’s perfect for sorting!!

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Hundreds Board

Anne — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:53:45 +0000

I know this isn’t really a craft but I thought I would share anyway! We haven’t had time to do any crafts this week. Ashlyn has had so much fun with the puzzles I’ve been making for her out of food boxes that I decided to try it with something else. I printed out a hundreds board from here and cut it into different pieces. I glued some down on a piece of construction paper and then had her glue the rest down. She asked if I would print out another one and cut more of it up to make it harder next time. I love when my kid is asking me to challenge her!

Check out more craft ideas here.

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Recycled Cereal Box Puzzles

Anne — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:49:36 +0000

There are so many things you can use an old cereal box for but I thought of a new use the other day. I cut the front of an old Froot Loops box up and made it into a puzzle. The girls loved it. Now we have a crackers puzzle too…the possibilities are endless. They are sturdy and easily stored in a ziplock bag. Yay for recycling!

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