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!!

Dry Erase Circles

Since there has been so much interest in the dry erase circles on my tables, I thought I'd post a couple of pics of my kids  using them. Today the students were working on domino addition for morning work and were writing the number sentences that go with the dominoes on their circles. Here are a few pics! You can get a good idea of how worn they've gotten with daily use this year. I think they are still looking pretty good! PS- how do you like the smiley faces?? Cute, huh!

Domino Addition Flipchart Freebie

So this week my kindies are learning to write number sentences using dominoes. To teach this as a while group lesson before they venture out on their own, I made a flipchart for practice. It's really cute and the kids had a good time. Students will pull a domino from the bag and write the number sentence that goes with it. They will deposit their domino in the Domino Dump when finished. I showed them that they can use multiple strategies to solve the problem: counting the dots, putting the larger number in their head and counting up, or drawing a picture. Anyhoo, it's here if you'd like to use it. Enjoy! (Created with ActiveInspire software for Promethean Board) I'm also adding it to my TPT store for you!

Domino Addition Flipchart Freebie

Blog Giveaway

I got an e-mail from Fashion Craze Learning Days' blog about a great giveaway. She has partnered with several other bloggers and they are giving away a ton of freebies in the raffle! Here is the link to her great blog!

Valentines Day Giveaway

100th Day of School

Can you believe it? It's almost the 100th day of school! So hard to believe. We're gearing up here at the Perch to celebrate next Friday. (don't you love it when special events land on Friday?) So, in celebration of the greatest day in Kindergarten, I'm posting a FREEBIE! It's a set of signs to use for your 100th day rotations. It has 14 slides (13 activities and 1 blank). You can download it for FREE at my TPT store by clicking HERE. The frame was a freebie from The 3AM Teacher's store on TPT.

I found the activity ideas in so many different places that it would be hard to list them all, and some were just photos uploaded with no link, but I'll list the ones I can! Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy them! Happy 100th Day, y'all!




I found this idea on Ms. Steck's Kindergarten Kollections.

This idea came from Mrs. Williamson's Kinders over at Welcome to Room 36.

These ideas were from Mrs. Unger over at Teaching Blog Addict

Most of the others had no link or were just general ideas that we all had. Anyway, enjoy and feel free to share with your colleagues! Happy 100 Days!!!