Kindergarten Math Groups Made Easy and a FREE file? You got it! In this blog post, you will read how I organize my math groups, assess, differentiate, and teach students with hands-on math activities that are sure to engage your kindergarten classroom. NOTE: This blog post contains affiliate links but the opinions are my own. Why do we incorporate kindergarten small group math? Why do we incorporate kindergarten ...
Math
Comparing Numbers Throughout the Day
Comparing numbers in whole group math, small group math, math journals, and math stations...feeling overwhelmed? Hopefully, this post will help you see how I fit it all in. You can view a daily schedule HERE. Let's start with the different components. Whole Group Math (SIDENOTE: I have been asked about my spiral binding machine. You can see it HERE (Affiliate link). Whole group math is the time of day ...
Building Math Fluency with Games (Free File)
I love playing games so creating math fluency games was a no-brainer for my classroom. So what is math fluency? I used to think math fluency was memorization. Insert mental image of endless flashcards with drill and kill type activities. Yes, we want students to have fact recall, but it is more than just that. Now I know I want to teach for automaticity. What does that mean? It means I want students ...
Use Wooden Blocks to Teach Number Sense!
Use wooden blocks to build number sense! Looking for a way to incorporate open-ended and fun activities while also building your students' number sense? Solution found! I want to introduce you to SumBlox! I had actually heard about this company about 3+ years ago. A parent had mentioned seeing these at a conference and said how much she loved them. At the time, they were still in ...
Secrets to Instant Planning… Just PRINT and TEACH
Here are a few things we know about teachers. 1. They want the absolute BEST for their students. 2. They want to employ "Best Practices" in their classrooms. 3. They. Are. Overwhelmed! 4. Occasionally, they want to go home before 5 pm after school AND they would like to spend their weekends with their families instead of planning. Does that sound like you? We have heard from teachers all over the world who ...
Starting Kindergarten Math Journals… It’s EASY!!!!
Starting kindergarten math journals can be EASY! Let me give you a peek at to how I introduce math journals to my kindergarteners! Setting up your journals If you are like me, you have a few journals going in your classroom. I usually have 3: Math Journals Poetry Notebooks Thinking (or Learning Journal) I used to be that crazy woman you saw sitting on the floor of WalMart around mid-August. I was desperate to find 3 different sets ...
Hello from a First Grade Classroom!
Last year I was presenting at the New Jersey Kindergarten Association. I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Chappelear at that conference. Tim is a first grade teacher (and he became my tech support for the day he was designated volunteer). I could not have been more thrilled than when I received this hello from first-grade email from him last week. With Tim's permission, I would like to share his words. (I have linked images with ...
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Lesson Plans
I'm BACK with year 4 of my lesson plans! This week it is all about Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! Such a perfect way to start a year! Here it is! The beginning of the year! So exciting... and my class has always loved Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault. Such a fun book to read over and over again... The students quickly learn the pattern and chime in! Video After I have read it a few ...
It’s my Birthday… how about a little FREE file?
It's my birthday so it is time for me to celebrate with you! Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. ~Samuel Ullman Remember how excited you are when you turn 5 years old. You should be 10 times that excited. Happy 50th birthday!-Unknown Well, I am sort of excited about this big day! So I made a little gift from me to ...
Hands On Math! Linky!
I love academic rigor... I really do! So when it comes to math, there is nothing like hands on math learning! The other day I was listening to Adam Pederson's vlog at www.TeachersLearn2.com . I just met Adam for the first time in Chicago this year and I loved how down to earth he is. No showboating... just a teacher who loves teaching!I always enjoy his vlog's but this particular one stood out for me. I loved what he had to ...
My Favorite Things: Math Work Stations with a free file
I am going to share a few of my favorite kindergarten math center ideas. I hope these math work station ideas work for your classroom too! Why do math stations? Math stations or centers are an opportunity for students to practice and apply math skills independently. These are activities we want them to over-learn. This provides an opportunity for the teacher to observe while conducting formative assessments on ...
Valentine’s Day Lesson Plans ~ Peek at my Week
Happy Valentine's Day WEEK! What a great week to focus on LOVE! I think this might be my classroom's favorite poem! Perhaps because it is downright silly! You can find all of my original poems HERE. You can find the recorded music that goes with them HERE. You can read the original blog post about this image and how I use it for early finishers by clicking HERE. These Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw activities are what we typically ...
Pictures from YOU!
It has been fun to view the pictures from you this week! I started the week in Seattle! I was able to spend two whole days with teachers who were passionate about children! Perfect! Then I flew to San Diego to spend a few days with my besties from high school. There were five of us who moved through high school together. Where one went, the other 4 would follow. Sadly, one of the our crew had passed away and we gathered ...
Games for Kindergarten
Games for kindergarten! As you know, I love to include games in my daily instruction and share my downloadable kindergarten learning games. Math and Literacy Games for Kindergarten A while back I created resources to go with the Differentiated Instruction Cubes and my class pretty much flipped over them. In this activity, the students roll both dice and create an equation! Then they solve it! Someone asked me if I would go ...
Math Tool Kits (FREE download)
Are you looking for ways to organize your math resources? Have you tried Math Tool Kits? Why math tool kits? One question that came up was how I organized my math units. So I am bringing back an old post to share the Math Tool Kits that I use in my math workshop. I have said this before... I am NOT organized by nature. I am a stacker and shuffler. I make stacks starting in August and I shuffle them until May... ...
What Worked Last Year? Save My Ink
Sometimes... you JUST need easy...kindergarten no prep worksheets! There! I said it! I love the little tan girl next to the crab...ha! Each month contains literacy and math activities. I am not a huge fan of using worksheets in my classroom as these tend to be the lowest level learning, but sometimes I do use them. Periodically I use them as morning work or a quick formative assessment. ...
What Worked Last Year? Just Roll With it (FREE FILE Included)
Last year I sort of fell in love with these kindergarten differentiation cube activities (and my class did too!). We started the year off slowly. Simply roll and trace. Because I made these files editable, I could select any 6 letters I wanted the students to focus on and print them on the response page. We also had numeracy activities as well! Let us not forget sight words! I loved being able to look at my data ...
What Worked Last Year? Part 2 GAMES!
Games can put the brain in a positive state, lessen stress, and memory for content is increased. Check out these printable kindergarten educational games! ABC, CVC, and sight words too! Research and Games! Marcia Tate states in her book, Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites the following when it comes to games: They put the brain in a positive state. When students are engrossed in game playing, the stress is lessened and memory for ...
What worked last year? Part 1: Math Journals
My students loved their journals last year AND we had a few! Using different colored duct tape help my students quickly find the journal they needed. Math journals literally took just minutes each day. You can find this visual classroom timer HERE. This is how journaling time goes in my room: I say, "Friends, take out your math journals." I had a piece of duct tape (green) along the spine of their math journals, so they could ...
Building Skills: Our Calendar Time
I have been asked how we do our calendar and what skills we cover. It is a VERY quick part of our day. I decided to video tape today's session... It takes a total of 5-6 minutes each morning. It did not occur to me to tape it until we had already started, so you missed about the first minute of the lesson(sorry, in my next life I will be better.) Here is how it works. My "Leader of the Day" leads the class with the ...
Peek at my Week-Oviparous Animals-FREE download RD
I love, love teaching about oviparous and viviparous animals. Eggs are coming to our building this week... exciting times! At the end of the week, my sweeties feel so smart (and they learned TONS along the way). We will be doing our Oviparous Poem this week (no picture...fail), but you can find it in my March Poetry Unit. I have completely updated this unit. If you have previously purchased it, you can get ...
This week in math…
These last few weeks we have been counting! I mean a LOT of counting! In kindergarten, we need time to get that cardinality down. We need a lot of practice! We start with a discussion on counting strategies. I model these strategies while my students look on. I invite students to practice some of these strategies. Some of my students are ready to recognize that if they have a ten frame filled out, they don't need to count each item. ...
Math Journals in MINUTES… Yes, you can!
Can you do math journals in MINUTES? Yes! You can! I am often asked, "How do you have time for math journals?" Or "How much time to do take to do math journals?" My answer is always, "About 10 minutes." But on one particular day, I wanted to see how long it really took, so I set my timer for 8 ...
Daily Spiral Review
Yesterday I was preparing our "calendar" work packets that we call "Building Skills." There are 5 different types of papers we will use for the months of November, December, and January. These are what each page looks like. Here is how it looked in my classroom today. My students gather around the carpet while I display the image on the whiteboard (my iPad was being a wee bit crabby, so it was ...