Brought to you by the letter M and Monsters!

Letter M can be a lot of fun when you mix it up with MONSTERS!

Here is a quick peak at what we did for math work stations with the letter M and monsters:

Rolling the big dice and recording the number on the ten frame

Rolling the dot dice and matching the dots to a number inside the monster!  They love rolling the dice in the containers!

Writing the number that matches the ten frame on the monster

Write the room for math!

Halloween Fun

We had a great time last Monday celebrating Halloween.  This year I decided to try something a little bit different.   I did not have a designated party time.  Instead we played fun educational games all day long!  Here is just a quick look at what we did!

We did  a fun CVC activity with pumpkins.  We pulled small plastic pumpkins out of two bags (one for the consonants and one for the vowels) We put the pumpkins together to create a CVC word and then recorded them on our sheet. We had fun blending the sounds together to create a word.  Some real and some where make-believe!  Great practice for Dibels!

We played pumpkin bingo (of course - what is a celebration in the classroom without bingo!!)

We played this fun build a pumpkin game with pattern blocks that came from Mathwire

We played this fun candy corn game.  I found this on a blog -   We used two dice with dots and practiced counting up all of the dots and then eating that piece of candy corn that was on that number.  Was great at first, but a few got tired of eating the very very sweet candy corn.  I think I will used M&M's next year - easier on the tummy!

We had an amazing feast.  Each student brought in one piece of fruit of their choice to contribute to our "Frightenly Fun Friendship Fruit Salad"  and we had amazing pumpkin muffins and apple juice!

After our feast of yummy food we had our annual Halloween Parade around the school.  This is always a big hit.  The fire department always comes with thier fire truck (they are basically across from the school) and our high school, that is right next to us, has a few of their band members come out and lead the parade with music, but sadly they could not make it this year :(   And all of the neighborhood folks come out to wave at us.  We ended the day with a great Halloween movie!

A Little Of This and A Little Of That

Hard to believe that the first nine weeks of school is already completed and I have hardly posted at all (I seem to always forget my camera)!  Here is just a few snippets of what we have  been doing.

Here is our apple tree graph.  I got this idea from Mrs. Jump's class (thanks!!)

 

This was our pumpkin glyph - turned out really cute!

Here is our data that we collected from our glyph

Just a few pictures of some of our stations that we have been doing:

Sorting "A" and "M" pictures

Roll count and color pumpkins 

I have several of these "roll count and color" activities that I use for a math tub.  Just about every theme you can think of and I would love to have these for a freebie for all of you. but every time I load them into my google docs they come out distorted - the squares don't show up and the pictures are not there either and the font that I use changes to another font.  Any ideas on how to fix that so that I can post all of my roll count and colors for all of you???

This was my small group math activity a few weeks ago.  I would show the group a number card and they were to "show" that number on their ten frame.  They would then check their neighbor to make sure that they had the correct amount of counters shown.  Then they were to write the number in the box and color that many counters in their ten frame on the paper.  This went really well!

This was an activity that I saw on someones blog ( I am so sorry I do not remember where I got it form, if it is yours send me a note and I will give you credit!!)  I changed it a little.  I added two more legs and then changed the numbers to be 2 thru 9.  They were to pull a number tile out of a bag.  Say the name of the number.  Find it on the spider's leg and cover it with a counter and then write it on the recording sheet.  When all the legs were covered we cleared the board and started over.  This was great practice for number identification and practicing writing the numbers.

Here is another roll count and color - this time it is SPIDERS!!!

I love to do pattern block pictures every week.  If I can't find one to match my theme then I create one.  I also have my students complete a graph with these pattern block pictures.  I will take a picture of it soon and post it!

Oh never mind!!!  Here it is - I have it printed on the back side of the pattern block picture.

This is a game that I  believe came from Shari Sloane's website.  I love this game and I am in the process of making one just like it for "one less"  I will take pictures of that and post it as soon as I get it done.

What an Amazing First Month of School!

I have neglected my simple little blog for way too long.  It has been a very busy and crazy first month of school.  I have a few pictures to post to show you what we have been doing.  

We had so much fun making shapes in shaving cream.  The room smelled so clean!!!!!!

 

A few pictures of our work stations:

Rolling playdough snakes to make color words and letters.

 Sorting letters by straight, curves and both, and also by capitals and lowercase - this is an activity from Lakeshore

These wonderful stuffed letters were my amazing find at a garage sale this summer.  I got the whole set for a few dollars.  I ran colored pictures on card stock, laminated and voila an instant workstation that my kiddos have been loving!

Rainbow writing.  This has also been a well-loved work station.  They love to use the markers!  I need to find a different way to bind the books together next year though!  The books are too thick to stay together with the staples.  I either need to bind with combs, which I don't want to do, or find longer staples!!

Of course the ever popular listening center with a response to literature sheet to go along with the story.  This is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

My poetry notebook workstation.  This workstation is one that I am very proud of.  Each student has a poetry notebook three-ringed binder.  Every Monday we introduce 2, or if I am ambitious 3,  new poems.  Then when it is there turn to go to the station they listen to me reading the poems in order that they are in their notebook.  When the tape is over they do the directions that are at the bottom of the poem such as circling the capital and lower case letters and they of course illustrate the poems.  Keeps my kiddos engaged for the duration of workstation time! Yeah!

Stamping names in playdough..  I have the letter stampers from Lakeshore - they are well worth the cost!

At the pocket chart workstation students were sorting letters into capitals and lowercase.  After they sorted they had a response sheet that went along with the center.  They were writing the letters that they sorted!

Computers - who doesn't love the computer workstation!  It was so amazing to show my kinders how to use the Starfall website on my amazing new document camera.  Let me tell you I am loving that little device!

This was the activity that my students did with my assistant in a small group.  They chose a card from the stack, identified the letter, found it on their sheet and colored the apple.  I honestly can not remember where I got this apple sheet, but I do know that it was from one of you wonderful bloggers.  If it is yours please let me know and I will give you credit and link it to your blog!!!!!