Multiplication Fact Fluency is ALWAYS something we are practicing in our classroom, even from early on in the school year. I have tried many things over the years, but what I always come back to is that learning multiplication fact fluency must be done THE FUN WAY! We play games, do timed-drills (yes, we still […]
These 5 fun 3D shapes activities for kindergarten are a great way for students to learn about shape attributes while having a blast.
Free printable preschool worksheets pdf for teachers and homeschoolers. Fun preschool worksheets for math, English, fine motor skills, and more!
FREE printable Symmetry drawing activity for preschool and kindergarten kids. A fun art and math activity in one! Kids will complete the symmetrical pictures by drawing the other half.
These 5 fun 3D shapes activities for kindergarten are a great way for students to learn about shape attributes while having a blast.
Integrate math and art with these symmetrical pattern coloring cards. This is a great math art project that kids love doing!
Want a fun way to teach measurement that can be adapted for all students? Let me introduce MEASUREMENT TAG!
Tables of 6, 7, 8 and 9 in Your Hands: At the age of 8 I had to learn the multiplying tables. I've never been good at memorizing lists or tables. It was easy to learn the tables from 1 to 5 but from 6 to 9 it seemed to be way more complicated... A year later I heard this t…
I have been using interactive math notebooks in my classroom for as long as I can remember. Math notebooks are a great place for students to take notes, record definitions and sample problems, and practice new skills. They are perfect to use for direct instruction and guided practice, in small groups or as a whole class.…
5 Activities to Teach Angles
For the most part, reasoning, deducing, inferring, and critical thinking are not skills that come naturally to our students. Rather, they must be nurtured and developed. We want our students to become critical thinkers so they can reason and apply logic to solve novel problems throughout their lives. These skills will set them up to...
Looking for visuals to help your kids make sense of math? Grab this free set of printable math manipulatives for all the hands on resources your kids need.
From making a graph paper "person" to making your own mosaic, here are creative ways to teach area and perimeter activities.
So, yesterday I showed you how I got my angle studies kicked off with my students–how I solidified understanding of “right angle”. We had lots left to accomplish–so I’ll try to share some of the different lessons and activities we did over the next days! Tip 1: If you can get your hands on thin […]
UPDATED 2021- If you have already purchased you may download again for the updates! I created this project as a fun, interactive way for students to practice and review geometry vocabulary and concepts! This is a great project to use at the end of a geometry unit, review for testing, or end of the year activity. Students will use geometric shapes and follow the directions to create a new town. To help differentiate, I created two different sets of instructions, student checklists, and scoring guides. Included with the activity: - 1 direction set for students with a basic understanding of geometry concepts - 1 direction set for students with a deeper level of understanding of geometry concepts - 2 student checklists for students to review their project - 2 itemized scoring guides based on individual directions of the project - 1 scoring guide that assesses the overall project organization, concept knowledge, and work habits Concepts reviewed on basic level directions: Parallel Lines Perpendicular Lines Intersecting lines Triangles Quadrilaterals Pentagons Rhombuses Rectangles Trapezoid Squares Concepts reviewed on the deeper-level directions: Identifying and drawing: Parallel Lines Perpendicular Lines Intersecting lines Lines Circles Triangles- right, isosceles, acute Quadrilaterals – rhombus, rectangles, squares, parallelogram, trapezoid Pentagons Lines of symmetry Draw and measure: Right angles Acute angles Obtuse angles
A place value Cheerio tower? Genius!
Okay before we start digging into these Get to Know You activities I want to share a little bit of the “why”. When I first started teaching 5th grade math a few years ago I noticed right away that my students were coming to me with some math baggage, if you will. Both good and… Continue reading Getting to Know Your Students as Math Learners
Fine motor activities are the perfect way to engage your students with interactive and educational activities. As a teacher we are always looking for fun and hands on ways to enhance your kindergarten students' fine motor skills and it's a bonus when you can also incorporate math. Spring Fine Motor Activities Pattern Block Mats Spring Pattern Blocks are an excellent tool for developing fine motor skills and teaching math concepts such as shapes, symmetry, and fractions. In this activity, children can use pattern blocks to create pictures and included are different ability levels. Students can build the pictures, identify the shapes and count how many of each shape is used in the picture. A great way to incorporate math and fine motor activities. Also included are small easy to store task cards that work well for morning work or early finishers. And also a design your own version, which can challenge your students and beneficial to your visual spacial leaners. I love these more opened ended tasks which are so great for differentiation. Students are able to come up with so many different ways to make the same picture. Snap Cube Activities Spring Snap Cube Activities are another hands on and engaging resource for teaching math concepts and developing fine motor skills in your classroom. In this activity, children can create different pictures using snap cubes, sort by color and count how many of each color. This does require counting up to 20 and is a great way to reinforce that kindergarten standard. You will also fine simple to build mats that are to scale for students and a great fine motor activity and does not involve counting. As well as small task cards and can really challenge students and are great to help develop visual spacial awareness. These are small and easy to store and a great activity to keep for morning bins or early finishers. Geoboard Activities Spring Geoboards are also a great tool for developing fine motor skills and teaching math concepts such as symmetry, shapes, and patterns. In this activity, children can use geoboards to create different spring shapes like butterflies, flowers, and and birdhouses. As an extension activity, students to practice identifying shapes they may see in a picture and record on the mats. Each picture includes both and simple and more difficult version with 10 different pictures included. The small geoboard task cards are included as a freebie at the end of this blog post. Spring Building Brick Activities Spring Building Bricks are another fun and engaging fine motor activities to use in your classroom. Your students will love using Legos or other building bricks to create spring themed pictures such as rainbows, ladybugs, butterflies and bird houses. Included are 10 different spring themed pictures with both small easy to store task cards as well as large to scale cards where students can simply build on the mat You can all of these activities in Spring Fine Motor Bundle which includes a variety of templates for Snap Cubes, Pattern Blocks, Building Bricks, Geoboard Boards, and Pom Poms at a 40% discount. Each set contains 10 different spring themed picture for your students to create. You can fine the Free Spring Geoboard Task Cards here
Have fun learning to subitize dot patterns to ten with our fast-to-prep, engaging math game. This printable card game is ideal for small group math rotations or center work. Students will play with a partner or small group to match numerals to the dots of their board, aiming for 5 in a row. What is subitizing When students can subitize, they are able to tell the number of objects in a set, instantly - they don't need to count each item. Most commonly, you can teach students to subitize with dots, ten frames and fingers. Subitizing Patterns - Standard and Non-Standard 'Standard' dot patter arrangements are those common patterns you see on dice, dominoes and math equipment. Learning to subitize non-standard arrangements is important too and will require your students being able to visualize the common or standard patterns and manipulating them in their mind. Work with the standard patterns first. Playing board games is often a child's first experience with dot patterns, those on a dice. Play lots of games and specially-made learning games, like this one of ours - 5 in a Row! Extend your learners - conceptual subitizing When your students are confident with the patterns of a particular activity (perceptual subitizing) we encourage you to teach conceptual subitizing. This is where 2 patterns are shown to a student and they can combine them (add them) instantly to know the total. Think of throwing a double 6 in a board game. They would know instantly that this is 12 if they are able to conceptually subitize. To encourage this in 5 in a Row, ask them to flip 2 cards, and find the total before covering the 2 numbers. They may need to count the total the first few times they play, but with repetition they will know the total of 2 cards, instantly. Play it over and over to give them this opportunity to develop. Our game 5 in a Row will help teach subitizing to ten with standard patterns. It is a perfect place to start your learners! Non-standard dot pattern arrangements We've also prepared something extra for you to extend your fastest learners - and it is FREE today! Roll and Cover is so easy to prep (just print the page). It will help teach subitizing of non-standard patterns for 1 to 6. Students roll a standard 6 sided die and place a counter over a matching number (non standard pattern). Playing this will help them bridge the gap between standard and non-standard patterns. Find it here in Google Drive: Roll and Cover Free Game From the Pond
Geometric Art
My students are always using and referring to different math tools during math centers. I created (and am sharing for free) individual math toolboxes.
Too many classroom icebreakers require students to take big social risks with people they barely know. Or they don't really help students get to know each other. Or they are just plain cheesy.
We wrapped up Friendship Week today. We did a lot of discussing what it means to do a friend and what are some fun/safe things you can do with your friend. I created this fun matching game to use in our sensory bin. I dyed some rice for the first time and it turned out perfect! It also reminded me of grass, so I found pictures of kids on the playground. On the cards I wrote words that describe what a good friend does, like share, help, kind, etc. Then, we picked a card, read the word, and discussed the word more. I added these fun "Buddy Builders" from Amazon and they were perfect "friends" for our park. This book is a great way to talk about the nice things our hands can do. Especially, if you have any kiddos who like to use their hands in an unsafe way ;) I also dyed noodles for the first time, too! We used those noodles to make friendship necklaces! We also used a bead kit for friendship bracelets :) Click on image to grab this bead kit! These peanut butter and jelly color matching cards were a huge hit! We played restaurant and worked together to serve the correct colors. I got these from The Homestead Teacher! Grab them HERE! We like to think of words that start with each letter. When we are out, we will see a letter and I always have to think of something that starts with that letter. It totally helps connect learning, so I made these "F is for friends!" page and we decorated the 'f' different supplies. For our play dough invitation, I printed off this cute friendship clip art set from Creative Clips! We put the friends in our play dough and pretended we were playing at the park! The last game we did was this fun math activity! We had to help the boy get to his friends by rolling our dice and counting each circle. It was a great way to practice some counting, number identification, and taking turns! Grab these activities HERE! *NOTE: the play dough friends are not included in this due to terms of use, but they are free for you to download HERE!
Teaching area is engaging and authentic with this hands-on applied math activity! Students arrange furniture to find the area and perimeter of their house.
Figuring out the first art project of the year with my kids is always a daunting task for me. This is why I was so excited when I found this pin of suncatchers on Pinterest (links back to the blog Make, Do, Play). I really wanted to do something that my students would have fun with and could easily be started late if new students joined my class throughout the week (I see mine for an entire week.. then rotate to the next class). My students absolutely LOVE origami and even though I'm not particularly skilled at it, the folds in this project were very simple.. so it was a easy choice! I started this project by reviewing both linear and radial symmetry with my students. We talked about the difference between the two.. then sorted a number of images based on their type of symmetry. Once I was sure my students had it down, I moved on to demonstrating two folds that they could use for the project. I folded two different examples on my document camera, while my 5th graders followed along on scrap paper. After showing them the two folds, they decided which one of the two radial suncatcher designs they wanted to create... then picked out their colors. I originally intended for this to be a color wheel lesson.. but you need to have 8 different colored papers for these designs and not 6 like a standard color wheel has. So instead they had free reign on their color choices (either way they were getting some color mixing lesson). **The paper we used was a semi-transparent colored origami paper . It think these really turned out beautifully and they were very simple to make! On Friday I hung them up in the cafeteria windows.. they look stunning in the morning light! :)
One of my favorite things I do at the end of the year is the Favorite Number Project. This is such a great and easy project for students to do to show what they’ve learned all year long. This project can easily be changed for younger or older grades too. So much fun! Here is ... Read more
We are on our 4th week of measurement in my class! PTL the rulers are put away this week because we've moved onto learning about area! After 3
Print these free symmetry worksheets and activity pages to use with your students. Learn about the line of symmetry with these fun pattern challenge worksheets. Students must use logic, reasoning, and spatial skills to draw the reflected pattern across the line of symmetry.
Let's get to know our math students as mathematicians and ditch the beginning of the year assessments! Start building relationships and your math classroom community right away with this get to know you activity! This math autobiography allows your students to tell their math story: their math experiences, identity, feelings, and more. *Before you keep reading please note that this is the first resource of many to address math identity and building a math classroom community, so if this resource looks awesome to you, check out my growing bundle and see what's coming! Here's what is included in this resource! >My Math Autobiography Printable Booklet >My Math Autobiography Digital Slides: Google Slides link included in resource >Mathematician Snapshot Sheets: record big takeaways and things you learn about your students for quick reference and to help you identify trends to address >Teacher Notes: teacher notes are included to help you make the most of this resource, but as always please reach out if you have any questions! SEE PREVIEW FOR MORE DETAILS! Please reach out to me if you have any issues downloading or printing, or any questions AT ALL! I'm more than happy to help! Thanks for your support! If you use this resource and share on instagram make sure to tag me @thehappylittleclassroom, I'd love to see! Check out my blog for more helpful tips! Happy Teaching!
Help kindergarteners compare length & use appropriate vocabulary with this FREE "Shorter and Longer" activity. Great hands on practice for comparing length.
These Hands on Math Activities are perfect for preschool children. Math learning can be fun and these preschool activities prove that! These Hands on Math Activities for preschoolers are a great way to combine fine motor skills and learning. Hands on Math Activities for Kindergarten are the best for learning in a fun way.
Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP) offers a free full math curriculum for preschoolers up to 9th grade. MEP’s math curriculum is rather hands on, having children count real beads, for ex…
Dale Chihuly is one of my favorite glass artist. You see his work a lot here in the Northwest. He even had a piece on the Frasier TV show. But not all of us can do blown glass. I really like wh…
Can I just say I have one of the most creative colleagues ever!! You guys remember Jayme right? She made the cute farm games at the begi...
Inside you'll find an easy step-by-step how to draw a Minecraft Self Portrait & Minecraft Coloring Page. Stop by and grab yours for free.
These math puzzle worksheets make it easy to help your students build critical thinking and problem-solving skills while having fun!
