Math Centers

Hey friends,

Things are getting pretty hectic around here so our blog has been suffering and we apologize...once again. Cindy and I are both on the PTA board at our school and the fundraising season has begun. I just finished taking Santa pictures and next is our Holiday game of chance (raffle) and then the chocolate sale is after that. There is SOOOOO much going on but we are trying to be more consistent bloggers.

I just wanted to share some of the math centers we are doing in our classrooms in the next few weeks. Since we are dual language teachers we teach math in English, so all the centers will be centers that could be used in either a dual language classroom or a regular program classroom. All of our students work with a partner and they are paired up according to language needs during math. We almost always pair a limited English speaker with someone that is English dominant.

In this center students put the cards in order from 1-10 and add the corresponding number of items on top. This center is super easy to make. I usually just buy notepads and add the numbers and laminate. One of my co-workers made the stockings for me.  Thank you Ms. Cuevas!

We are also working on making groups. For this center you need a 10 frame, dice and some counters. Have the students roll 1 die and place that many cookies (counters) on the cookie sheet (10 frame). Then roll the die again and place a different kind of cookie on the cookie sheet. How many cookies all together? 

For this center select a number you would like the kiddos to work on and place that number of counters in a bowl or container with a lid. Students will shake the container count how many red counters and how many yellow counters and draw it. The second center is from Deanna Jump's Gingerbread Math and Literacy centers unit. My students select a number problem card, build it with cookie counters and find the sum card.

Cindy made this holiday BINGO game a couple of years ago and our kids still enjoy playing it. All of the kids feel successful with this game because they are simply reading the number card and matching it on their game board. We use pompoms for counters.

We have a few patterning activities also. The first one is from our Jumping Gingy unit on TPT and the other is from my teacher idol Deanna Jump's gingerbread unit (the link is above).

We also have a Roll a Snowman (it should be a Gingerbread man but I took the wrong picture) and a roll and graph game.

This game is called the Green Bean Game. We painted 10 lima beans green on one side and put them in a small container. The students shake the container and count only the "green beans" and trace it on the recording sheet. Whichever number reaches the top first is the winner.

Since my students are Spanish dominant they really struggle with positional words in English so we keep a few positional word activities just as a review. 

 I will post more about our new Gingerbread man unit on TPT.  Go check it out! It's pretty awesome :-)

Happy Teaching!

Sandra

Gobble 'Til You Wobble

Hi everyone!  I know this may be late, but we ran into some time constraints when making our Thanksgiving Unit for Teacher's Pay Teachers.  It's called "Gobble 'Til You Wobble," Sandra came up with the name, I thought it was really cute.  Go check it out, if you don't use it this year you can keep it and use it next year.  Here is a copy of a turkey hand print poem that has been around for years.  We translated it and added it to our unit in both languages, just click on the link for a free copy.  I usually add a picture of each student and glue it by their name.

Turkey Hand Print Poem in English and Spanish

 

I also just wanted to post a picture of a couple of Thanksgiving charts that I made for the morning message.  I had a sub on Friday and she did a very good job on my Thanksgiving KWL chart.  The other one is a thinking map, they tend to get a little boring so I decided to make a Turkey out of my circle map.  Check them out!

   

Hope you still have time to use some of these ideas.  Don't forget about our "Gobble 'Til You Wobble" unit on TPT!  We hope you enjoy your break and have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

-<3 Cindy

Election Day!

Hello everyone!  Election day at our school was really exciting and a lot of fun.  To kick it off we made a KWL chart to see what they knew about election day.  Most of the kids didn't really know much about it, but after a really good book, we think they got the basics down.  It's in the shape of an eagle just to make it more interesting, sorry if he's just a tad bit on the "thick" side.

We had a waiver day on Monday so the students came back to school on Tuesday.  Elections were held at our school which really added to the excitement for them.  Sandra found some really cute election day Pinterest ideas, We love Pinterest!  The first one is this really cute voter registration card.

Some of the signatures were hilarious.  They were walking around acting very grown up and official when they finished and definately ready for Election Day!  These are the two books we focused on and where we got our candidates.

   

On election day, I googled CNN and showed them pictures of people waiting in long lines to vote.  We also peeked through the gym doors so that they could see what a real election precinct looked like.  Finally the candidates, Duck and Teacher, were presented to them.

I had my students make two lines with their voter registration cards in hand and wait their turn to cast their vote.  Other teachers had them go a few at a time throughout the day.  They had two pictures on the ballot and they circled their choice. 

After a very close race these were the results.  I used stars to make a graph and Sandra had each student write their name in.  Teacher was the winner in my classroom and Duck won in Sandra's.  I told her it was because my kids love me more, lol.

 

The day after election day the students came to school very excited to let me know who won the real election.  There were some really interesting conversations going on that morning.  I was excited to see how much they picked up and how interested they were, one of those moments that makes me love my job. <3  I showed them a section of President Obama's  speech after he won.  We discussed what makes a great president.  For our writing activity, I had the prompt that said, "If I were president..." and Sandra asked them, "How would you be if you were president...".  Some how I managed to delete the picture of mine and I'll have to add it when I get back to school, but here is Sandra's, an awesome activity found on Pinterest.

We had a great time with our election day activities now, time for Thanksgiving! 

<3 Cindy

Go Away Big Green Monster

Hey Friends - this is going to be a really quick post about activities we do with the book Go Away Big Green Monster. Also, I think I figured out how to add a downloadable document to our blog and wanted to practice :-).

After reading the book and discussing the adjectives Ed Emberly uses to describe his monster we use sticky notes to label the monster. Then we make a brace map to label the parts of the monster. Note: all of the activities below are in Spanish because we teach in a dual language classroom and teach literacy in Spanish.

Next I have the students create a monster of their own and then they make a brace map to label the parts of their monster. I think the monsters came out awesome!! And they did a great job with the brace map. It drives me nuts that the pictures upload in all directions though. I really need to figure out why it does this:-(.

Finally my kiddos make a book of their monster and have to use 2 adjectives to complete the sentence.

In case you can't read in Spanish the book is called My Monster.

Click here to download the book in Spanish

 The next 2 pages say My monster has a round and blue head.

My monster has round and yellow eyes. 

All the rest of the pages of the book label the parts of their monster (nose, ears, mouth, hair etc...).

The last page says Go away monster! and they draw a self portrait.

I have been trying to add a download link to the Monster book, but I haven't been able to get it to work. If you have a blog and can help please leave a comment below. 

Thanks - Sandra

Story Book Parade

Hey friends - I know it's been a few weeks since we have posted anything and we promise to do better. Thanks Martha for calling us out on our blogging - or lack of blogging lol!

We had a FABULOUS storybook parade this year!  All of the teachers did an awesome job with the costumes. At our school each class selects a book and then the teacher and the parent volunteers make ALL of the costumes for their class. I wish I could post all of the great costumes the kiddos were wearing but unfortunately I cannot :-(. I will post pictures of the teachers and a few pics of kids wearing masks so that you can't see their faces. Above is a picture of Cindy as Jo-Jo the jellybean maker.  Her students were bags of jellybeans.

This is Ms. Aguayo as Cruella Deville and her class were the dalmations.

Ms. Barajas was the octopus from Rainbow Fish

Ms. Salinas and her class were Pete The Cat

Ms. Guzman's class did Ten Apples Up On Top. This was my favorite!!

Ms. Perez was a box of crayons and her kids were the crayons.

My class was Skippy Jon Jones

Doesn't everyone look awesome? There were so many more great costumes like The Magic School Bus, David Goes To School, Where is Spot, Stellaluna, The Grouchy Ladybug, The Cat and the Hat and Brown Bear.

Hope everyone had a safe and fun HALLOWEEN!!

Sandra :-)

Bats in classroom!

Last week was a very short week for me, and it wasn't because I wanted it to be.  I was so sick!  No matter what I just couldn't beat it, which shortened my bat week by a lot, I missed a waiver day and the day after that!  Still, had to get what I could in because bats are so interesting and fun.  We focus our unit around the book Stellaluna which in case you don't know, is a story in which a little bat and three little birds discover that they are very alike and at the same time very different.  Our reading lesson focused on comparing and contrasting, our science lesson focused on birds, and read many bat non-fiction books as well.  This is an awesome chart that we found online, I don't remember what site but I'll ask Sandra, hopefully she can refresh my memory.  It's a Stellaluna Venn Diagram, comparing bats and birds.

 

Another really cute activity we do is a TLC cute paper bat information book.  We make this book at the end of the unit.  Each student has to give you something different that they learned about bats.  We always like to post these outside of the classroom.  The students and parents really get a kick out of these awesome little bats. After we finish displaying them we make a bat information book and let the students take turns taking it home to read it with thier family.  

 



 





 Sandra has some more bat activities she's going to share with you too.  So excited to feel better and start our pumpkin unit!

 

-Cindy :)