Here's Hoping You Have a Wonderful Valentine's Day!

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February is upon us, and for teachers that means another busy month of learning, and of excited kiddos who are more interested in candy and fun than whatever plans we might have.  Just as we are recovering from the triple hit of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas / Hanukkah, here comes Valentine's Day to throw us off our schedules again.  What is a teacher to do?!

We outsmart them!  When we know our students have a lot to say about something, we harness that energy and turn it into a learning opportunity!  Thinking about candy?  Okay, let's graph that! 

While we're at it, would you rather have Valentine's cookies or candy?  Did you make Valentines Day cards this year? 

Who could resist?!  As we follow up our graphs with questions about how many, how many more/fewer, which is most popular, etc., we're covering lots of math skills just talking about the holiday. 😉

We also read a LOT of books.  Reading together is probably my favorite part of being a teacher!  I love sharing my favorite books, and it's so thrilling when students unlock the magic of reading for themselves!

Working on rhyming?  Read Some Things Go Together by Charlotte Zolotow, and have your students make up their own rhymes of things that go together.

Passionate about pop-up books? I adore Love Bugs by David A. Carter.

Kindergarten - third grade students with a sense of humor?  Sam's Surprise by David Pelham has a sister making chocolate covered icky things for her brother's birthday - and gets kids laughing and intently listening to figure out the rhymes!

Do some of your students struggle with being kind to each other?  Of course they do, it's part of learning and growing.  Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane deGroat might be just the thing to help students make better choices.

Those of you who know me have to be expecting a Pete the Cat book on this list - and sure enough, I enjoy reading Pete the Cat: Valentines Day is Cool with my kiddos!

Another beautiful book that's worth mentioning is The Invisible String.  I found this beautiful story when I was looking to comfort some of my little's who had lost a pet - it's perfect for that, but it's not the focus.  The invisible string is the love that holds us in each other's hearts, even when we're apart.  If that doesn't speak to Valentines Day, what does?! 

My students and I also really love 100 and 120 chart mystery pictures, so of course I made them for Valentines.  They love figuring out what each mystery picture is, and I love that they're engaged, that it's easy to put them down and come back to them later (what classroom doesn't deal with interruptions?!), and that they're ready to print and go.  Win, win, win!  I've had several teachers tell me they use these in the time leading up to class parties, and that it helps keep their students focused.

In the last year or so I've started using a variation on my hundreds charts: 100 POCKET charts.  Oh. My. Goodness!  This is a game changer too!  Now my students can get hands on practice in small groups during math centers - and they WANT to complete the pictures.  This is what these puzzles look like - and if you catch yourself wondering what the picture is going to be, chances are good your students will too!

What are your favorite ways to enjoy Valentines with your students?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!  Thanks for stopping by!

                                                                                                 Paula

Insanely easy math fun that will make your children beg to learn!

 As I walked by the Target Dollar Spot this week, I spotted this little treasure!  200 mini erasers for $3 - and it's packaged in a divided container! 

 

This is a perfect math activity for our little ones to enjoy this spring.  Think of all the math they can learn as they play:  counting, sorting, graphing, patterning, 1-1 correspondence... there are so many possibilities.

I came up with a few more too - how could you use these for a Venn Diagram?  It's easy enough to make your own blank diagram - simply trace around a large bowl twice, overlapping the two circles as you do.  Can your child sort eggs/things with blue/eggs with blue?  How about bunnies/pink things/pink bunnies?

It would be easy to graph these too: have your child take a handful, and sort them.  Then line them up, and compare the rows of erasers.  What are there the most of?  The fewest?  How many more bunnies than carrots?

Have a slightly older child?  Can they add 3 bunnies and 6 eggs?  Two carrots with blue edges, and 4 carrots with yellow edges?  Can they use the erasers to answer a word problem: If I had 7 eggs, but gave 3 away, how many eggs would be left?

If your child has mastered addition and subtraction, try having them work on early multiplication skills by making a grid with the erasers.  How many is 3 rows of 5?  Can they show 12 erasers in rows and columns?  Can they do it another way?

I'm looking forward to sharing my new eraser collection with the kiddos!  How would you use it?!

STEAM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) - measurement and graphing

Welcome to part 3 of my STEAM skills series!  If you haven't already seen them, here are links to part 1 and part 2.  If you've been reading along, you've probably already figured out how much fun I have incorporating STEAM into my teaching!

Today I'm going to focus on measurement and graphing - they're important skills for science, math, and engineering, and they're super easy to add to your day to day classroom life.

There are lots of ways to include measurement, because there are so many things to measure!  It's developmentally appropriate for young children to measure with non-standard units, that is, they don't need to use inches, centimeters, pounds or kilograms.  For young children measurement should involve how many _____ long something is, filling and counting scoops, or how many _____ something weighs.

One of my favorite ways to measure with children is to cook: they can measure and count how many cups or teaspoons of each ingredient, weigh things, and of course, there's the fun of eating the finished product! (Look at the concentration on these little faces, and look how they're also developing hand strength and pouring skills as they make a birthday cake.)

You can measure with real objects - like pumpkin candies, paper clips, or toy blocks, or you can use a measurement tool with pictures of objects.

Measurement can also be a matter of comparing: longer or shorter, heavier or lighter.  We wondered which of our vegetables was heavier than a glue bottle - and then checked to find out.

Children like to measure themselves too of course, so we laid on the floor, cut ribbon to the length of each child, and then made a cute display to show our heights.

 There are so many ways to measure - but what about graphing?  Isn't that more challenging?  I don't find it to be!  If you have a full day school program, you likely already graph daily to see who brought lunch, and who needs a cafeteria meal - our cafeteria needed that information each morning to help them prep, so the children moved their name to the correct side of the lunch count graph each morning.  There's so many more things you can graph though!

How about which day each child brought something to school?

You'll notice the children's names are on this one with sticky notes - so I can use this graph time and again.  Children can graph with math manipulatives...

 ...or by stamping or coloring a space on a paper...

 or in a pocket chart!

If you need help coming up with graphing activities, check out these resources in my TeachersPayTeachers store - including 3 FREE resources!  Some of the other photos included in this blog are of resources I've created, you can also click on those to see more.

I hope you've found some new ideas in this blog post, and that you'll come back next week to continue this STEAM skill series!  Happy Teaching!
                                                                                                                           Paula

Are Sharks Scary or Cool? Download this free graph!

 

It's shark week - does that excite you, or freak you out a little?  Maybe some of both?  I was thinking about how our students might feel about sharks this week, so I put together a graph to find out.  (Click on the picture for my first freebie, then read on for another!) It's pretty simple, something you could use quickly at the beginning of a shark or ocean unit.  Of course, you could follow up by teaching your students about them, and then revisit the graph.  How many students do you suppose might feel differently after learning about sharks?

Sharks really are scary - to me at least.  They're also incredibly cool and amazing - okay, I guess I have to repeat, to me at least.

Perhaps that's why I've been busy learning about sharks, and making fun resources to use when learning about them.  One of the things that stuck with me is the variety of sizes sharks can be, from dwarf lantern sharks that only grow to 9" long (not scary!) up to whale sharks at 45' long (also not scary, they eat plankton).  Of course, the great white, with all it's teeth, and growing to over 20' long is somewhat more intimidating! Sequencing them by size really gives a whole new understanding of shark sizes.

Of course, we need to practice actually measuring things ourselves (not real sharks, thank you!).  This activity uses fish lengths as a non-standard unit of measure.

For slightly older students, I wrote a non-fiction reproducible reader about sharks.  To make differentiating easy, there are two versions of the text.

For my younger kiddos, I made this patterning center.  I clipped the pattern strips onto ribbon, and the kiddos clip on additional pictures to either match...

...or extend the patterns.

We follow up with cut and paste versions.

Finally, I want to share another freebie with you!  This is a very simple reading center, which I like to put in a pocket chart or on a table.  I hope you'll download it, and I'd so appreciate you leaving feedback after you do!

 I hope you have an exciting - but not too exciting - shark week!

Penguin Fun

 Do your students love penguins?  Winter is a great time to learn about penguins - and other polar animals!  Last week I shared some ideas for learning about polar bears, so this week I thought I'd blog about penguins.

A couple of years ago we were lucky enough to have a penguin exhibit at our local museum (Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.)  Most of the exhibition was photographs, but there was also a docent with this beautiful taxidermied penguin, so we were able to get up close and check it out.  It amazed us all to see how tiny its feathers were!

After walking through the photo exhibition and seeing pictures of penguins doing all the things penguins do, we noticed a lovely, long bench.  The children decided to practice tobboganing, which is just sliding on our bellies.  This is one of the ways penguins move across the ice!

Back at home we tried holding "eggs" on our feet, just like daddy penguins do all winter. We were inspired by the book Without You, by Sarah Weeks, pictured here along with some other fun penguin books:

Standing still was pretty easy, but when we tried to waddle with our "eggs" on our feet, they went rolling.  We decided we would not make good penguin daddies, that's a hard job!

We had fun making our own penguin rookery, complete with chicks sitting snug on the father penguins' feet.  I displayed them on a large sheet of polystyrene foam, and the mottled white background looked icy.  (I've recently updated this activity and added a non-fiction book, and made it available here.)

We also watched some awesome youtube.com videos about penguins.  These links will take you to some of our favorites!
Jack Hartman, penguin dance
Happy Feet brain break
The Learning Station, Penguin Song

We learned about the letter P the same week we learned about penguins, so we made some pink or purple lower case letters, and added some penguins to it.  The children got to choose how many little penguins they made for their letter, so we added a little math by making a graph about how many penguins we used.  Super simple, and totally relevant to the children - oh yeah, and it was a good reason to practice writing their names!

Here's another fun penguin activity that ties back into penguins sliding on the ice.  Freeze a tray of water a couple of days ahead of time (you want it frozen completely solid).  Sit a toy penguin on it, and see if it starts sliding.  If you have it laid flat, the penguin won't move unless you scoot it along.  Then slowly raise one end - I used stacks of dice - until your penguin goes sliding on the ice.  Experiment with the ramp you've created - what else slides?  How high do you need to prop the end?

You probably already know I love to use hand print art with the children each week too, so one of our choices was a hand print penguin - with a textured "snowy" background.  I mixed approximately half shaving cream and half white paint, and let the children finger paint that onto their paper (fun!), then we made the penguin separately, and glued it on once the background was dry.  The shaving cream/paint dried with texture and a lovely silky feel to it.  If you haven't tried this yet, you'll be amazed by the results!

For even more penguin ideas, check out this post and this post here on my blog.  If you're looking for resources you can download and print to help you teach your children about penguins, you can see what I've created here.

What are your favorite penguin activities?  I'd love to know!

Teaching Math on a Budget

 Okay, right off the bat, I know we're pretty much all on a budget - who isn't?!  If you are teaching young children, chances are good that you supply a lot of the materials you use in your classroom, and it can really add up!  Today I thought I'd share a few ideas that I've used to make my own teaching resources for little or no money!

Large graphs for children to work on:

Materials required: a large piece of cardboard, approximately the size of poster board, a yard stick and a marker.  (You absolutely could buy poster board, or if you shop at a warehouse store, try asking if you can have some of the huge pieces of cardboard they use on pallets of cereal to separate the layers.)
Time to make it: 10 minutes tops
What to do: I measured and marked 1.5" intervals along each edge of the cardboard, then used the yardstick to draw lines between the marks.  I wrote numbers on one axis, and ta-da! One large graph.

Venn Diagrams:

 Materials required: a large piece of cardboard, a large bowl or plate to trace around and a marker.
Time to make it: less than 5 minutes
What to do: Turn your bowl or plate face down, off center on your cardboard.  Trace the rim with the marker.  Move the plate over to the other side of your cardboard, leaving a large area of overlap from the first circle.  Trace it again.

Sorting trays:

Materials required: a divided tray, I got this one from a dollar store.  I've also used trays from fruit/vegetable/cookie platters, and those are free - you just have to remember to either save them yourself, or to ask your families to donate them if they use them.
What to do: nothing more!
Prep time: This depends on how long you browse at the dollar store!  ;-)

What about manipulatives: the small parts the children are working with.  We all know that those plastic dinosaurs and bugs aren't cheap. What can you do?

Save those lids, corks, bread ties, etc.  I keep a container in a cupboard in my kitchen, and every time there's a bread tie or a cork, I toss it directly in there.  Lids from food containers I put in the cutlery holder of my dishwasher first, and save them when they're clean.  You may also find some awesome lids in the bathroom or laundry room, just save them instead of tossing them out.

 Look in your junk drawer.  Okay, maybe you're perfect, and you don't have a junk drawer, but I'm guessing that somewhere in your home there's a catch-all spot full of amazing little things.  Parts to that one toy your kids had a few years ago, party favors they never even played with, assorted blocks, plastic bits and bobs, rings, craft supplies, tokens from that game place you never go to anymore...  Just be sure to consider the children who will be using these manipulatives, do you need to think about possible choking hazards?  Sharp edges?  Be selective about what will work for your students.

 You may also have (or know someone who has) a tin of buttons, or beads, or maybe an avid crafter with a lot of left over odds and ends.  Maybe there's a box in the garage with odd nuts and bolts, or old keys, or... go look!  Once you start thinking about and noticing things that are often considered throw aways, you'll find resources all over the place!

So how can you store all this stuff?  Plastic storage containers can be quite expensive, especially if you have a whole bunch of these collections going on!  Check your pantry and your recycling bin!  This is the container I keep in my kitchen to store those lids and corks - it originally had cashews in it, but when the food was eaten, the container got a new life, storing manipulatives.  Many foods come in resealable and reusable containers, everything from lunch meats to rice, fresh salad greens to soup.  If there's something in a useful container that your family uses regularly, you can save them and even end up with a matching set!

 Still not sure you can find a nice variety of things for your kiddos to sort?  Go outside!  Here are some leaves that are in my yard right now.  I see different colors, sizes and shapes.  How else are they the same?  How else are they different?

 Okay, so maybe you don't have time to go outside and collect leaves and things for your children to use.  Not to worry, put the kids to work!  Here I've used a strawberry punnet as a collecting box for acorns.  You can see we found some in different sizes, shapes and colors.  There are acorns with holes, broken ones, whole acorns, acorns with and without caps, some that are still connected to each other, and some that aren't... there are so many ways we could sort, graph or put these on a Venn Diagram!

I hope you can use some of these ideas in your classroom!  If you have another tip for teaching math on a budget, I'd love to hear it!