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We’ve been in school for 9 weeks.  Hence the week long fall break I am enjoying right now!  Yeah…a week off!  Our district has 4 9 week sessions and we use pacing guides to tell us what to teach each nine weeks. They tell us what to teach during those 9 weeks but we are free to teach those skills however we like.  The pacing guides are set up so that there is a lot of spiral review and most skills are addressed each 9 weeks.  When these pacing guides came out a couple of years ago, Mr. Greg’s head nearly exploded when I saw addition in the first 9 weeks.  ADDITION?????  That early on???  I was so against it…but I did it.  And to my surprise it actually went well.  We keep it fairly simple at the beginning.  We focus on the idea that addition means put together!  We do a lot of simple activities where we take objects and literally put them together!  Since we do addition each 9 weeks, this is a great introduction!

Today I want to share some of the addition activities we did the past two weeks to introduce addition!  These are great for introducing addition and for practicing adding all year long!  I was impressed with my ‘staches and how well we caught on to adding!  In fact, 11/12 of the ‘staches scored 95% or higher on our addition assessment!  GO STACHES!

We started off the week meeting our friend Adding Adam!  Adding Adam reminds us that adding means put together.  Over the 2 weeks we worked on addition we added to the anchor chart.  And yes, Adam is glittery because he’s in our class and we love all things glitter!
We also used Harry Kindergarten’s Add With A Pirate Song on YouTube!  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS SONG!  It really gave us a great start with adding!   And it taught us what a SUM was!
Our first addition activity was adding dice.  Each ‘stache rolled the dice.  I wrote the number and drew the dots on our chart.  They counted ALL the dots as we talked about putting together.  Then we wrote the answer!

Then we worked with our friends to add dots!  We used bingo dabbers to solve equations.  Each ‘stache had a different color dobber and each time the green went first.  We made the number of dots and then counted and wrote the answer!

We also practiced reading and solving addition equations.  We learned to draw circles to help us add.  We copied equations from our Promothean board and then drew pictures to solve the equation!
And then, it was time for some PUNKIN CHUNKIN!  True story.  This idea came from my TBFF (she’s brilliant!)  I made a number line with pumpkins numbered 1-10.  Each stache had a whiteboard and dry erase marker.  I wrote an equation on my board and they copied it.  The Punkin Chunker had to find the pumpkin that matched the first number in the equation and then they had to CHUNK their their punkin the same amount as the second number.  In the picture below, they would start on 2 and chunk (jump) 3 pumpkins.  The answer is 5!  
We had a BLAST!  I plan to use this game a lot this year when working with adding!  

And in small groups, we worked on part-part whole and putting together and counting to find the answer to addition problems!  I found these princess plates (and ninja turtles for the boys) so we used those in small groups to help us practice adding!

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