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