Pumpkin Roll and Trace

So I love Fall...and thought I'd create a simple Fall math center. I don't know about your kiddos, but my kiddos still need TONS of practice with number formation and number identification. At this point, our math tubs have included six-sided dice, but I thought the students would get a kick out of using the dice with numbers up to 20. Here's a Pumpkin Roll and Trace activity with numbers 1-20. We're taking Sydney and Landon to get pumpkins tomorrow so pumpkins have been on my mind! Enjoy your Sunday...it's supposed to be beautiful here!

What's for Dinner?

Well it's raining here and my cuties are napping...so I decided I'd plan dinner for tonight. I had my husband pick up a loaf of french bread at the store for garlic bread, but I think we're going to have french bread pizza instead. Yum! I found an easy-peasy recipe at Kraft Foods so I think we'll give it a try. In keeping with a pizza theme today, I created a pizza graphing activity! Print and laminate the pizza and the pizza toppings. Then, give each student a bag with a pizza and an assortment of pizza toppings. Students will build the pizza that comes in their bag and then complete the graph. I also added a quick extension activity for students to complete that focuses on concepts of most, least, and tally marks. I thought this pizza graph would be an excellent activity to go with some great books such as:

Enjoy and happy graphing!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Ahhh the signs of my favorite season are here...mums, cooler weather, and football! I love Fall! In celebration of this wonderful season, here is a Fall leaf pattern page to use with your students! It's a simple practive activity for AB, ABB, AAB, and ABC patterns! It'd also make a quick assessment to see what your kiddos know about patterns! Enjoy!

*Here's what I did yesterday for Labor Day...we took our daugther to a baseball game! She had a blast and so did we. Our little guy enjoyed some one-on-one with Grandma...we missed having him with us, but it was nice for his older sister to get some special attention from Mommy and Daddy.

Happy Tuesday!

Fun with Food Freebies!

Good afternoon! I must admit that blogging is a nice release for me. *Insert my frustration with potty training.* So...it's nap time (for both kiddos) and I'm de-stressing! Okay so this post is all about math. I LOVE math! Perhaps it's because my dad and my older sister are math teachers...but nevertheless, I have always enjoyed finding unique ways to teach math to my students. As we all know, food is so easy to engage students and teach them important math concepts. One of my favorite food items to use is marshmallows! Have you all seen the seasonal marshmallows that come out in stores around Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day? Last spring, they even made marshmallows based on the Pixar movie Cars! I know graphing is one of the easiest things to do with marshmallows, but my class also does a lot of nonstandard measurement with marshmallows too. I've created several graphs to go along with these seasonal marshmallows, but the only one I have on my home computer is for the Gingerbread Marshmallows that came out around Christmas time last year. Using these yummy gingerbread men, I have students measure different objects around the room. For later in the year, I add 3 questions where students can measure an object of their choice. I provide boxes for students to write the word or draw the picture (whichever they are capable of doing) of the object they are measuring. Then, they measure the object, count the number of marshmallows they used and write the number in the blank. Voila! Fish and chips! Click here for the gingerbread measurement sheet.

The second math activity I'm going to share today has to do with the concept of chance. In Kindergarten, we only touch the surface of this concept by discussing the terms "more likely" and "less likely." Skittles are a super fun (and yummy) way to talk about these ideas. This activity was done at the very end of the year and would also be more than suitable for a 1st grade classroom. Click here for a chance activity using Skittles!

I've got some other math and food activities that I'll share once I'm back at school and in front of my computer. In the meantime, check out Mrs. Gagne's Kindergarten website for some great teacher resources (FREE!). Click on Printables for some great ideas! I've used several of her activities in my classroom...like the funny bones graph. FUN! You can order the candy pieces at Oriental Trading...fyi. :) Enjoy the day off tomorrow!