Counting Bears Graphing

The school year is coming to the end and I love no prep activities.  The following activities is one of those.

I grab a handful of my counting bears and create a cupful for each student.  They then sort them and graph based upon color.

There is a color graph if you can print in color or laminate them for a center or there is a black and white copy where students can color the bears the correct color by reading the color words and then graph.   It's a great end of year activity.

Check it out here at my TPT Store.

Book Review

One of my goals my first year of teaching Kindergarten was to enhance my math curriculum.  One way I found to do that was by doing read alouds to start some of my lessons.  It's a great way to combine math and reading and my kids always love it. 
   Today we read Leaping Lizards from the Math Start 1 series by Stuart Murphy.

 We have been practicing skip counting and this book counts by 5's and 10's to 50's.  We counted by 5's by giving high 5's, we have done funny voices as we count by 10's and today we counted lizards by 5's and 10's as we read this book.

If you haven't checked out the Math Start series check it out.  My library has many from the series or you can find it here on Amazon.

Greater than/Less than Game

In Kindergarten, making learning into a game always helps keep little 5 year olds engaged and they don't often realize that they are practicing the skills you are learning.  This week we've been comparing numbers.  We've compared objects and numbers.

I then found this free and simple dice comparison game on TPT.

I also created a simple game with some paper bags that I had an abundance of and playing cards because for some reason we had 7 decks at home plus the 2 decks at home which was perfect for partnering the students up.  I removed all the kings, queens and jacks and split up the kids into groups of 2.  The game was simple.  Whoever had the bigger number would place their card in the bag that said greater and whoever had the smaller number would place it in the bag that said less.  If the cards were the same number they would put it in the bag labeled equal.  The best part is there is no winner.  No tears.  No one gets upset.  To them its just fun and they get to practice comparing numbers.

The game is also differentiated because the kids can read the numbers or they can count the objects on the card if they can't read the number.

You can also use uno cards or dominos if you don't have playing cards.  You can even put this in your math center rotation.  So many options and the prep is minimal!

Number Boot Camp

We are currently reviewing ours numbers 1-10.

Yesterday we reviewed the number 2.  I start off by reading the Number Tales book from scholastic. They are a cute fun little story but the best part is the last page where they have to find two of each item.  It's a great chance for the kids to interact with the book.

I then talk about the number 2 and create a anchor chart that hangs up in the front of the room.

Then finally we practice writing the number of the day.  I get my worksheets from starfall.com from the teacher part of the site.  The best part is you can customize the sheet.  You can put a dice, tally marks or ten frame to show the number at the top.  You can even pick what pictures you want for the middle boxes.  (I really love this site, see my previous post.)

An old familiar website becomes a new favorite

Back when I started teaching 12 years ago I found out about this website Starfall.   If you haven't discovered this website yet you need to head there now.  There are so many great treasures on it.  A decade ago I used it as a computer center.  They have activities for the alphabet, for beginning readers, for word families and so much more.  Seriously it's great.

But I have rediscovered a second great aspect of Starfall.  There is a teacher side with pre made and customizable worksheets that even align with Common Core.  At the very top of the page there is a Starfall Teacher-Parent Center button.  Click on it and you'll have to answer a math question to get to the teacher section of the site.  (It's an easy math question.)  Then scroll down to you see the Supplemental Resource section.

 Once there you will find worksheets you can create for ELA, math, ABC review and some that are pre-made and ready for download.

For ELA they have editable alphabet, blending and high frequency worksheets.

For math they have Counting, Measuring, and addition and subtraction worksheets

They also have picture cards.

So seriously go check it out.  I love it!

Easter Freebie

So I'm giving away a freebie in my TPT store. This Easter Egg Find and Graph comes in color or blackline and is a great activity for practicing making a bar graph.

New Math Centers

So one of the struggles I have as a first year kindergarten teacher is finding materials.  My big struggle is in math.  I wish I had math stations for my kids to rotate through so that I could work in small groups with my kids but that is just not a reality this year.  Instead I have fast finisher activities for my kids that quickly get concepts to do so that I can work with my kiddos who need a little more attention.  However, the plan is that next year I'll have enough centers that I can do small group math instruction.

So over winter break I came up with 12 winter center activities and I am pretty excited about them.

You can find them here at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store.

Winter Math Centers

I'm so excited to get back to my classroom, print and laminate them and get my kids using them.  Now to come up with spring ones. 💭

Math: Bar Graphing

So my math curriculum this year is pretty weak and I find that I need to supplement a lot.  Isn't that the worst, though I am always thankful when it is a weak math curriculum as I find that the easiest to supplement.  Anyways a couple of weeks ago the lesson was to make a giant bar graph with the kids on the number of pockets they had and then to ask questions about the bar graph.  To which I felt the prep took more time than the actually lesson.  So I set out to find more activities for my kids to do and I could find many so I decided to make my own.

This simple activity requires this worksheet, dice, and crayons for each child.

This worksheet and a longer description can be found by clicking the link below.

Roll and Record

Here are some pictures of my kids playing the game.

After playing it my kids got the concept pretty quick after modeling it for them.  The only problem I found was the 2 of my kids completed the worksheet upside.

I also found this free pirate graphing activity from the Kindergarten Smorgasboard.  It takes a little more prep but my kids are obsessed with pirates so it was worth the extra effort so some fun graphing practice.

Mr. Greg's Pirate Graphing