Doing the Monster Math!

Is "The Monster Mash" playing in your head right now?  It's been in mine all day.  Just gotta also say, I love this little guy!  He cracks me up....makes me think of Mike Wazowski from Monsters, Inc.  He's from KPM Doodles.

Today we had a Parent Activity Event the last 45 minutes of the day today.  Our focus was math and we were asked to come up with activities to show parents what we are currently working on.  Since we've covered numbers to 10 and my kiddos are still have a tough time with it, I came up with these two activites:

Build a Skeleton game (number identification):
I used a clipart picture from a old Mailbox magazine and cut it apart, then made a mat for the pieces to go on.  Students roll the dice, find
the matching skeleton piece and build their skeleton.  To keep it interesting, I added a roll again (smiley) and lose a turn (frowny).






Ghost Roll and Cover (counting, 1-1 correspondence):
I just used clipart and placed 25 circles on it.  I gave each student a baggie of mini marshmallows.  They rolled the dice and placed the correct number of marshmallows on their ghost.  To make the game last, I only used one and two on the dice and included a smiley face (add one and roll again) and a frowny face
(clear off your board).  When the board was completely covered, they would either play again (time allowing) or eat their marshmallows. 

Guess what Ive been up to?

Yep...that's The Sisters!  Two glorious days digging into Daily 5 and CAFE...in Chicago.  Mini vaca for me along with a lot of learning.  Being a K teacher, I have a lot of questions about how to manage and truly implement not such much Daily 5 but CAFE.  My head is spinning!

Not only did I learned a lot, but got a lot too.  Here's the Daily 5 "happies"

And the CAFE goodies!

 The gang with Gail and Joan

 And I leave you with some fall sights from the Windy City :-)

Millennium Park

View from the 96th Floor of the John Hancock Building.  My darling friend had to take this one for me....I HATE heights!

I know we did a book study this summer on D5, but I'd love to hear back from you all on how you do CAFE in K.  I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. 

Let's Make 5!

Here are some pictures to explain the freebie in my previous post! 

Here's the board and the recording spot.

 Here's one of my darlings "making 5". 

October Math Stations..with FREEBIES!

My friends, I am so sorry!  This year is kicking my behiney and I have been beyond a bad blogger.  I have a great group (albeit almost double what I had last year!), but our schedule is nuts and I am barely keeping my head above water.  I read this article the other day on the exhaustion of the American teacher and I completely identified.  Is anyone else feeling this way? 

We are just now starting Math Work Stations.  Until we can get our non-negotiables (what we are REQUIRED to do every day) down pat and our rhythms better established, we are only doing them on Fridays.  I have 5 activities that I double up and put into 10 tubs.  Yesterday was our first day and the students did great with 2 rotations of 8 minutes each.  Here is what we have this month.

A freebie from my bloggy friend Kaci at Mrs. Hoffer's Spot. 

Monster Roll and Cover.  An early favorite! 

Playdough number formation practice

Spin a Shape

Race to Trace from Shari Sloane

For each activity, I left a link so you can grab them for yourselves!  Just click each picture! 

Here's another freebie for my blogger friends.  It's an activity that I change monthly with my calendar to work on CCSS K.OA.5...add and subtract fluently to 5.  I have a 5 frame on my calendar.  Students pull 5 "coins" from a bucket and sort by the picture then write a number sentence.  Right now we are using bats and pumpkins and the sentence reads " ___ and ___ is 5."  Next month is will be a scarecrow with 5 crows and they will roll a handmade die to find out how many to take away and record.   It really seemed to help last year.  Sorry I don't have a picture but click here to get it for yourself. 

Currently...in October