Happy Monday! Was it another Manic Monday in your classroom today? After today I have 6 more Mondays! Not that I’m counting!
Last week my friend Faith from Kindergarten Faith did a guest post for me where she shared an amazing and fun and engaging and glittery fabulous idea for subtraction. I was so excited that I made sure to include this activity in my plans. We did this amazing activity today and it was a HUGE hit! Like Faith says, there is great power when we connect the common core standards to real life things our students can relate to!
What was this great activity? Well I call it French Fry Take Away! Here’s what we did (again a HUGE thank you to Faith!)
Each monster got a red square/rectangle and wrote an M on the paper. Then they glued three sides to the paper (leaving the top open and free!). I then gave them 10 “french fries” were just yellow pieces of paper. As soon as they saw the yellow strips they yelled “MCDONALDS!”
To do the subtraction part of the activity, I would tell them a story (yes, so we could work on story problems!!! Common Core…we got this!) using their names and french fries. For example: “Mr. Greg had 10 french fries. He was so hungry he ate 5 french fries. How many did he have left?” We would write the number sentence on the board and use our french fries to solve the problem.
Everyone was engaged and even the monsters who have struggled with this concept had an aha moment! There is power in french fries!
And yes, I did have one monster ask “Can we eat our fries now?” Honey, if you wanna eat paper go right ahead! HMMMM I wonder if McDonald’s would give us real fries to eat now that we’ve advertised with them?!
Join Our Newsletter
Subscribe to get our latest content by email.
10 comments
Super cute. My first year of teaching..I spent the summer making those little McD's boxes out of cardstock…and cutting fries out of yellow sponges…Exhausting..but the kids loved it. Thanks for the freebie!
Vera
The Tutu Teacher
Oh my word! I love this idea. I'm wondering if McDonald's would be generous and donate some fry containers for this activity. That would really make this activity concrete. Love those erasers and freebie! Thanks for sharing.
Erin
It's “OWL” Good in Kindergarten
I feel like I have been having to incorporate food to keep my kids engaged at this point ha. This would be perfect! We ate thunder cake today 🙂
Number story is on the agenda tomorrow, and weather this week! LOVE your posts Mr. Greg!!! Thanks for sharing!!!!
Kelly
You're So Sharp!
I love this! If these fries were real it would only be a lesson on how to get zero as the difference…because I, along with my little friends, would just EAT them! I will be checking out Target very soon hoping for those little fries! Thank you!
Christy
Crayons and Whimsy
We'll be hitting on subtraction later this year and I'll definitely be borrowing this idea – how clever!
And, love the vowel hat!
Stef
Miss Galvin Learns
Thanks for the Shout Out Greg!!! I hope there are lots of kiddos out that will get to have fun with this idea too! 🙂
Faith
Kindergarten Faith
So I was just at Target today and they had the CUTEST french fry containers in the dollar spot. GET THERE NOW :)!
What a great way for the kiddos to practice subtraction! I used the McDonald's french fry idea for a different math activity in my Kindergarten class, but I really like the idea of using it to practice subtraction. I was using for just number practice before and I had went to a McDonald's and asked if they would be willing to donate some of their small fry containers, which they gladly did – I explained to them the purpose, and did buy something off the $1 menu so I didn't feel so guilty asking for freebies. They let me take as many as needed, and I ended up getting about 50 or so. Then I used yellow foam and cut them into fries to put into the containers. So just an idea if you wanted to get a more official McDonald's container, but creating your own is good too!
Also, thank you for the freebie!! I will be heading to Target soon to see if I can find those cute french fry erasers! 🙂
Great post.. very attractive and filled with ideas.. for a Kid of Preschool in Pune