Word Wall

Here is a sample of one of my word walls . There always seems to be a plethera of "goodies" that teachers try and get rid of every year. In our school they just put it on the tables in the staff lounge with a sign that says, "Free to a good home". Well this was one of those goodies. Laminated race cars. I cleaned them off and added my own words and put them next to sentence strips (another goodie) and voile!

I SPY Jars.....

Can't wait to try this and see how my kiddos like them. I am even thinking about putting small colored cubes in with numbers on them. Then on the sheet of things they need to find in them are the equations that they need to match.

Wanted to share a great idea from Mary!

 Just a quick thank you for a wonderfully easy and fun idea from "Guided Math: A teachers Guide to Guided Math" blog. Her link is provided on the sidebar of this blog. Go and enjoy! Thanks Mary.

A Geometry Scavenger Hunt

The other day I told my third graders they were about to go on a scavenger hunt.  Immediately I had gasps of excitement, even before they knew what they going to do.  I broke up my third graders into groups of three, I only had 6 third graders that day. I gave each group 8 minutes each. One group out in the hall at a time. I gave them a timer that was set and told them they had to be back when the timer goes off. 

I then gave the group my camera.  I told them they have 8 minutes to find things in the building that show parallel lines, intersecting lines and right angles. Their job was to take a picture of as many examples as they could find.  The kids took their job very seriously, writing down on notebook paper exactly what they had to find and off the first group went.

I was very excited to see what they would come back with and couldn't help but to sneak a peak at what the first group had found before the next group set off.

I have to say it was a very successful, fun activity.  The kids loved it, I loved seeing the building from their perspective.  I put the pictures up on the Smartboard and had each group present what they had found.   My next step is to print off the pictures and create a collage to display out in the hall.  I thought I would share with you some of my favorite pictures they had taken.

Enjoy!

A great Pinterest idea that was found....

I actually found this on another blog and they found this idea on Pinterest. When you click on the picture it just took you to another pinterest window, so like the blogger said to whoever's idea this is, "Thank you!"



Cube Toss - These two trays are ice-cube trays from the Dollar Spot at Target.  Write two digit numbers on labels and put them on each ice cube hole.  Kids toss two cubes, one into each tray.  They add the two numbers together on a recording sheet or whiteboard.

I think to modify this to fit for all age levels I am going to have my older kiddos (6-8) use it the same way but for the green numbers they will be positive and the pink will be negatives to practice integer addition and subtraction. Could also use it with double digit multiplication. I think that there would be a lot of uses for this one game even just using the same recording sheet.