5 Little Muffins and teaching coins and values.

Rhymes and finger plays are great ways to introduce and reinforce content topics.  I found the following rhyme and finger play very useful for teaching subtraction and money.

So, There were 5 little muffins on the bakery shop, (Hold up 5 fingers)
You know, the kind with the honey and the nuts on the top. (Pretend to sprinkle honey and nuts on top of a muffin)
Along came (name a child) with a (name a coin), (Point to child)
And bought 1 muffin and ran away. (Hold up 1 finger and pretend to run away)

Final verse after all 5 muffins have been purchased the last line is.
What!? No muffins today!
Oh well, I guess I'll have a doughnut.

I created this visual manipulative game, a book and a rhyme card.
I used a metal muffin tin (test it first as not all muffin tins are magnetic).
I created muffins using foam sheets, permanent marker, hot glue and round magnets.
I created magnetic coins by hot gluing plastic coins to magnets.  I made 5 pennies, 5 nickels, 5 dimes and 5 quarters.  I introduce 1 coin at a time and as we recite the poem the child named trades a coin for a muffin.
After each verse count the coins and their values.

SUPERKIDS Class books

If you use the SUPERKIDS reading program here are some class book ideas for each of the characters.

Up, up and away! Theme to start the year.

When I need to feel inspired for the new year I like to find a theme to focus my creativity.  This year I decided to use hot air balloon.  I had so much fun with the colorful balloons. I labeled each balloon with the student's name, using permanent marker.   I had each student color a coffee filter with washable marker.  Then I sprayed them with water to disperse the colors.  Those became the hot air balloons.  The baskets are cardboard squares also labeled with student's names.  When the students arrive at school they have fun finding their name and balloon and then those of their friends.

Counting by 5's

" Make a straight line over, then a strait line down, then a nice big curve half way around!  It's a real cool  number, come on let's try, sing along with me and COUNT BY 5'S! "  So goes the count by 5's song on Jack Hartman's Math All Around Me CD.  To enhance this song, and make the numbers more meaningful I made count by 5's gloves.

I acquired 5 sets of orange rubber gloves and 5 sets of blue rubber gloves.  I wrote the numbers needed to count by 5's in a pattern on each pair.  For example, 5 and 10 are on a set of blue gloves, 15 and 20 on orange and so on.  I did this so that if I had a small class, each student could have a pair of gloves but the numbers would still be in order.
To use the gloves, we stand in a circle and I pass out the gloves in order.  Some students get 1 glove, some get a pair, depending on class size.  As we sing the song, the student displays the number we are counting.  (I stand behind the correct number the first few times until the kids get used to holding up their number.)  I point out that each glove has 5 fingers, so we are counting 100 fingers by 5's.  A whole lot faster than counting 100 fingers by 1's!
Later on I will let the students use the gloves independently to put in order and count by 5's.
This also makes a great small group math game or center.

April the Snowman

April 15, 2013

I am a big fan of thematic units and come April, I want to delve into spring and all the learning opportunities therein, but this year the weather is not cooperating!  My students had 1 day of recess with no snow pants, boots, hats or mittens, just regular shoes and jackets.  They were free, racing around the playground with glee!  We spend the learning day talking about the change in season, writing about the weather changes and signs of spring, reading about spring weather and doing spring related math activities.  The next day, snow!  One of my students came to school and exclaimed "Teacher!  Winter came back!"  What is a teacher to do?  Roll with it, modify and keep on teaching!  We are still keeping a tally chart of how many robins we see.  We used the snow to make clouds for our science experiment on rain.  (See science activities)  We connected with the weather by writing about what we like to do when the weather is rainy or snowy and read about characters in similar situations.  I did my best to stay optimistic and promise that spring will eventually get here.  After our 2nd snowstorm of the week another dear little learner said to me "Isn't it a pretty day!?  I'm a snow bunny, I love the snow!"
Well, this is a spring for all the snow bunnies out there.  Hang in there, the flowers are coming!

Boo Bowling

Draw a simple face on a piece of paper, attach to any type of stand alone container and you have a set of pins!

Halloween and our study of 3 dimensional shapes happen at the same time.  Here is  a fun, hands on Halloween and shape game.  Create a set of ghost pins by drawing a simple face on a white piece of paper and taping it to cylindrical shaped containers.  I used oatmeal containers and 1 coffee can.  Make 10 ghosts.

Use any ball or sphere to knock the pins down.

You can also create a graph of how many cylinders each student knocked down to teach graph interpretation and probability.

If you want to be extra thematic the students can wear a cone or pyramid shaped witch's hat or birthday hat and/or try using a cube or rectangular prism (made from appropriately sized and shaped boxes, such as a cereal box or  tissue container) to knock the cylinders down.  You can also graph which shape was used to knock the cylinders down and determine which shape is best at rolling.

Happy Bowling!

If you have feelings and you know it...

Dr. Jean does her own version of the song "If Your Happy and You Know It".

During a recent unit about feelings we did that song and I modified it a bit to include more feelings.  You don't need Dr. Jean's versions if you know the tune of "If Your Happy and You Know It."

Here are the modified verses:

If your scared and you know it hug yourself.

If your proud and you know it kiss your brain.

If your silly and you know it wiggle all over.

If your excited and you know it shout "Hooray!"

If you have feeling and you know it do them all.

We also have a song for the feeling angry to the same tune.

If your angry and you know it count to 10.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10! (repeat)

If your angry and you know it,  

It's okay, you can control it!

If your angry and you know it count to 10.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10!

Additional verses:

If your angry and you know it, walk away. (pantomime walking away)

If your angry and you know it take a break.  (rest head on hands)

Enjoy your feelings!