Today shall be deemed “Tantruming Tootsies” because my feet are killing me today. I dunno why, but I foresee a long soak in the tub tonight! Maybe it was all that playing on our new Promethean board…
(Graphics: Glitter Meets Glue, The Hartmann Sparkle, KG Fonts, The Price Of Teaching)
We have been hitting addition and subtraction HARD. We’re really working to solidify those skills before the end of the year. This week we have focused on addition. I always try to make learning fun and engaging (SHOCKER, I know!) And since it’s Easter time…I thought why not use plastic eggs. I know…this isn’t a genius move. But hey, it’s fun, right?!
So what gets kids to work harder than food!? It works for adults and kids…admit it! Here’s what I did: I put 2 colors of jelly beans in the eggs in different combinations to 10. The ‘staches grabbed an egg, opened it and sorted the jelly beans by color.
Next, they colored their jelly beans on the paper to match their real jelly beans and they wrote the equation and added! BAM! Common core…rigor…and FUN!
Well, plastic eggs just don’t cut it around these parts. We need to jazz it up a bit. So I saw teacher friends positing these carrots all over Instagram and Facebook. Well you know I’m not one to be left out…so I bought some carrots. Then I got scared and had a mini panic attack that I wouldn’t have enough…so I bought more. And then I did what any rational teacher would do…bought more. AND THEN I was at Wal-Mart and saw more carrots and BUNNIES. Break out the MasterCard because I bought more. So I had all of these eggs and carrots filling up the world headquarters and had to put them to use. So we did this today!
Here’s what I did…I put two dice in the carrots and bunnies. TIP: add some of the Easter basket grass to soften the noise! Luckily I have rubber dice so they were quiet…but I’m just thinking ahead…
They grabbed an egg…shook it and opened it. They wrote the equation on their carrot and added. BAM! Another engaging, rigorous addition lesson!
But for reals…I still have TONS of these things floating around….I have a super cute sight word idea up my sleeve…so just wait!
And the best part…we now have two new math tub activities!!!
If you ‘d like the recording sheets, they are available on my Schedulin Sunday post…you can click here to go to that post!