Hill/Box Cluster: February 2012

I am a ~~bit~~ no I'm very behind on my blogging so even though I just posted what we did in January this post is about what we have been doing in February.

ice cream blends

One new "shelf work" activity we have is called "I Scream for Ice Cream". This template can be found here. If you have never been to the Teachers Pay Teachers website I recommend you giving it a try. In addition to activities/games/printables that you can purchase there are also TONS of freebies! For "I Scream for Ice Cream" the student matches the different ice creams (which have words on them) with the ice cream cones that have different letter blends on them (sh, th, ch, wh). This activity also has a sheet of paper where the students can practice writing the words.

Race to 50

This February math game is called "Race to 50". The students have some sort of token (we used candy heart erasers). Each student starts on 1 and rolls a dice. The students moves the number of spaces on the dice. This helps the students learn addition of higher numbers by saying the addition problem out loud. For example if a student was on the number 35 and then rolled a 6....they would say "35 plus 6 is 41".....then the student would move their token to 41 and then pass the dice to the next player.

This is another math activity that our wonderful intern created for our students. This math game is called "Bang" and the students love it! Bang can be played with two or more players. One great thing about this game is that it is simple to make and can be adapted for many different abilities. On large craft sticks write some sort of math equation on the majority of them (we used addition) and then write the word "bang" on a few craft sticks. The first player draws a stick and answers the math problem. If they get it correct then they get to keep the stick. If the students gets a "bang" then they have to put all of their sticks back into the container. The first player to reach 5 sticks wins!

Another "shelf work" activity we have out for February is making patterns with hearts. I also found this at TPT. I printed out this template onto cardstock, colored it and then laminated it. Pattens are found throughout math and it is so beneficial for our students to be able to recognize them.

The following pictures are of some other activities we are doing in our room....enjoy!

arranging flowers

heart shape cookie cutters & play dough

pink & red jewels to help with math

heart punches

During the month of January in the Hill/Box cluster we have been busy with activities centering around snow & snowmen. There are TONS of activities/games about snow/snowmen that you can create spanning all across the curriculum. Since we live in Alabama the odds of our students getting to play in snow deep enough to build an actual snowman are pretty slim.......so using our creative side and the help of Pinterest we were able to make do!

One of our students gluing his snowflakes onto his paper

One of our winter activities involved the children using snowflake punches. You can purchase these punches at most craft stores. Click here to find them at Hobby Lobby online. Most of these punches range from $5-$10 depending on brand & size. We had a large punch and a small punch. The two punches each had a different snowflake on it and the kids loved doing this activity. We placed the stamps, strips of blue/white/silver/green paper, glue and a black piece of paper on the "work trays". If the student wanted to pick this activity they would pick up the tray and bring it to his/her seat. After punching several different snowflakes the student could glue them to the paper.

Final Product

Here is what the final product looked like! I thought these turned out to be beautiful! We also used these to do a math activity. I hate I don't have pictures of this, but for some reason my phone didn't send them to my email like I thought and I had already deleted them off my phone before I realized it! Oh well I will do my best to explain them to you. The students used their snowflake punches to help us skip count. Many of our students already know how to skip count (5, 10, 15, 20 etc.) so we are transitioning into multiplication. For example if a student needed to work on their 5s we would have them create as many groups of 5 as they could on their paper. Then we would have them skip count (5, 10, 15, 20) and then teach them that 5 X 1 = 5, 5 X 2 = 10. Maybe next year I'll be able to get some pictures....the pictures do a much better job of explaining things than I do! After the students finished we put the finished products on one of our bulletin boards. The students LOVE displaying their hard work and I love seeing them be proud of what they have accomplished! Here is a picture of what the bulletin board looked like when it was finished!

bulletin board of snowflake punches

glowing snowmen

All of our beautiful snowmen!

Another favorite activity this January were the glowing snowmen the students made. Margaret found this idea on pinterest and you can visit the link here. This snowman was made using one of those POM bottles...those can be kind of expensive, but we had students bring in all sorts of bottles and they all turned out to be precious. Due to there being 2 teachers in our class the majority of the day we were able to do this activity with only one or two students working with a teacher at a time. If you had to do this activity whole group I would recommend doing this for kids a little older than ours (5-7). If you are interested in making these you can refer back to the previous link and it gives you step by step instructions on how to make them.

addition snowflakes

This semester we are thrilled to have an intern from the University of Alabama working with us. This is one of the activities she did with our students. The students would take 3 longs strips of paper and glue them together making a snowflake. Then each student would be given a number to write on the center of their snowflake. Finally the students would have to write an addition problem on the branches of the snowflake that equaled the number in the center of the snowflake. This is a great way to teach part-part whole (which is a huge concept in Singapore math)! This activity could also be used with older students changing it to multiplication/division etc.

Some other activities we did included; stamping snowflake patterns, tracing snowmen, making snowflakes out of q-tips and much much more!