Take Me Away.....

Oh subtraction, how fun are you? Are you teaching subtraction right now? Are you pulling your hair out yet? I actually love teaching subtraction because it gives way for some really fun hands-on activities. (Who doesn't love bowling??) We do a lot of bowling in my room during subtraction time. In years past I have used 2 liter bottles and a playground ball and bowled whole group style. Last year I discovered a bowling set in our after school storage closet! Anyhoo, if you haven't tried it yet, I encourage you to try teaching bowling with subtraction. It's an amazing way to teach them to take away from a set. I always wait until week 2 after I've taught the concept with taking away just 1. By week 2 they've got it and are ready to begin working on more complex problems. I'm uploading a SUBTRACTION BOWLING FREEBIE to use for your lessons. It's a recording sheet they can use to record their "frames" when they bowl. Column 1 has the bowling pin set to use for marking off. Column 2 has the first frame "10-___=___". Column 3 has a blank sentence to record the new set of pins from the first roll "____-____=____". I thought this was was good to reinforce the idea that we start with a certain amount and then take away from that amount. Anyway, you can grab it for FREE at my TPT store.

SUBTRACTION BOWLING RECORDING SHEET FREEBIE

New Classroom Library

I am so excited. I have a student teacher right now and she is getting ready to begin her full time teaching for 2 weeks (HELLO organization time!!), so I got a jump start on a project today. One of the most pressing issues facing me this year is my classroom library. We have just implemented Fountas and Pinnell and balanced literacy at school this year and will be fully implementing it next year. I'm very excited about it! However, looking at my classroom library, I realized that I had to really step it up and make it a place my students would enjoy using. A colleague of mine recommended the website Steps To Literacy to find book bins. I just ordered the Fun Colors set of 20 for my library. They are GREAT! They are so bright and happy and just make the center look beautiful and inviting! Since my room theme is lime green with white poka dots they are the perfect colors. Plus, I love them so much that I just ordered 3 more sets. Here is a picture of them placed on my shelves. I am in the process of organizing my books today and tomorrow, but I wanted to share a picture because they are so pretty! Once I get the bins labeled and open the center back up I'll post an "after" pic!

Sight Words Flash

I don't know about you, but my kids are having trouble learning some of those tricky "rule breaking" sight words (said, have, they...). We go over and over them but they are still so tricky to get. To try and help them learn them I've created a little thing I call "Sight Words Flash". It's a PowerPoint where the slides flash for 2 seconds at a time. I put it up on my Promethean Board at least once a day and have the students read the words aloud as they flash on the screen. They really like it. I'm hopeful that the repetition of doing it daily will help to reinforce those words. I've created several different versions based on our district words and Fry's sight words lists for kindergarten. You can pick them up at my TPT store! Click on the links below to go tomy TPT store.

Sight Words Flash Fry List 1

 Sight Words Flash- Fry List 2

  Sight Words Flash- Fry List 3

Sight Words Flash- Fry List 4

Common Core Freebie

We are in our second year of math common core here in SC and our first year of ELA common core. It's been a busy year of reinventing the wheel at the perch. We've got a new reading series, new handwriting, a new guided reading program, balanced literacy along with the new standards. Needless to say, it's been hectic, but in a good way for sure. I've been trying to keep up with everything and create new things as we approach new units. I stumbled across an awesome blog called Math Coach's Corner. If you're not following her you need to be. She's an IC in Texas and she knows Common Core to the...well, core! (pardon the pun). Anyhoo, one of the primary focuses of CC now is subitizing, which is being able to look at a number or quantity and instantly know the sets. In kindergarten we're doing this with dots, tens frames, tallies and fingers. I've seen so many worksheets to help students with subitizing and decided to adapt one for myself. I'm posting it here for you. It's called "6 Ways to Make 5" and you can get it free at my TPT store. I had my students use 2 colored bingo dobbers to create their sets of 5 and them write the corresponding number sentence to the side. It really helped my lower group understand the concept of making 5. I hope you enjoy it!

Love Target to the Core (Common Core, that is)

I was at Target this week and made my usual first stop on the dollar aisle. Guess what I found? Work mats for addition and subtraction! Not just any old work mats, but ones that go along with addition and subtraction for CC! Take a look...

This is the front. There are spinners where students can spin and write their own problems. Isn't that great? But wait. Here's the best part...

Not only are the problems vertical AND horizontal, but do you notice the equal signs??? That's right. The sums and differences are on both the right AND the left! How's that for teaching the concept of the equal sign! Goes right along with CCSS for math! I bought  6 of each and plan to use them in math workshops next week for independent work. Now go to Target and get yours before they're all gone!!!

Awesome Addition

It's the third quarter in kindergarten, so you know what that means...yep. It's time to teach addition. We have spent the last 3 weeks teaching the concept in various ways and will be reviewing again next week with lots of common core elements added in. So, I decided to compile many of the workmats, resources and sheets we've been using into one big, all inclusive unit to use. Here it is...Awesome Addition.

This is a ready to go math unit to help teach the concepts of addition with kindergarteners using dominoes, ten frames, playing cards and part/whole mats. This set includes:
*3 Ten frame addition sheets of varying abilities (colored in and blank)
*Domino addition sheet with blank tiles for students to create a model to represent addition
*2 part/whole mats (1 blank and one using a unique yellow+blue=green concept)
*Playing cards addition work mat
*Tens frames (blank and filled in)
*Cards for addition facts up to sums of 10 (can be used as flash cards or game cards)
*Complete set of printable dominoes for all number combinations up to 12
*Simple word problem sheet with space for students to create a model to represent the number sentence

You can grab it at my TPT store here. Awesome Addition For Kindergarten Math Centers.

100th Day Fun

I'm so excited about tomorrow. It's the 100th day of school! It's the day we kindergarten teachers talk about all year long. We are going to do so many fun things. In the morning we're going to do a graphing activity using 100 items. For journals we are going to use the numbers 100 and create a picture and story. Then in the afternoon we will be doing our rotations for our centers. I have so many centers planned and ready to go! I've got a fun behavior system to use tomorrow. Instead of hiding the Hershey kisses around the room, I'm going to let them earn the kisses for positive behaviors. When someone makes good choices they'll come and choose a numbered kiss from the bag and place it on the 100's chart. Once they get it filled in we will celebrate with a special treat! I'm also going to place 10 activities behind random numbers on the 100's chart and have students choose numbers throughout the day. If they choose a number with an activity behind it then we will do it! (10 jumping jacks, 10 push ups, etc...)

This afternoon I made the sign for our door and hung the streamers so the kids will have something fun to walk through when they arrive.

We've also been working on our 100th day hats to wear in our parade tomorrow. We glued 10 strips onto sentence strips and the kids used Bingo dotters to put 10 dots on each strip.

This evening I made shirts for me and my daughter to wear to school tomorrow!

I LOVE the 100th day of school!!