Pizza, Pizza!

Child-led schooling is very easy when you only have one child to worry about! :) As a parent, I can start the inquiry and learning, but then I really enjoy letting Alex help decide where it will lead! I also love having the flexibility to do that in Kindergarten. I feel like my job this year is really to foster a love of learning. 

A couple of other moms and I have decided to have an inquiry/unit day each month where we get together and do some fun learning activities. While at home, we carry out the unit in a variety of ways. So we celebrated the end of August with a pizza party! This unit really leant itself well to a math focus, so in my process of planning I created a math pack with lots of fun and engaging math activities that we can continue to use throughout the year. I tried to make it really versatile, but even in the process of using it, Alex and I have come up with some new ideas for the games included!

Alex wasn't really interested in drawing the card and counting pizza toppings, so we added in a die and the first person to get ten toppings won. We also used the 2 sets of toppings to figure out the different ways to make 5. We also used these to help us answer some of the story problem cards! 

We first used this set of counting cards to count the number of toppings. We were ordering them from least to greatest and then Alex thought it would be fun to play memory with them...

So that's just what we did! 

We played with some sequencing cards too. It was interesting to listen to Alex's thought process on the order he chose. It's a good reminder, that instead of just saying something is wrong, to have kids explain their thinking. His thought process was a little bit different then mine, but it still made sense!

Here are some great book choices to add. Lots of fun books that are engaging and so funny!Dig In, Secret Pizza Party, Pete's a Pizza, Pizza at Sally's, Grandpa and Me, The Pizza That We Made, and Pizza Counting (affiliate links) are all great!

It was very fun to gather together with our friends to have a pizza themed day! We read books, played chefs (the packet comes complete with menus, order forms and receipts), made some bar graphs, and ate lots of yummy pizza!

Have a pizza party day! Your kids will thank you! Just don't forget to have dessert pizzas too! ;)

If you want to check out some of the math activities we have been doing click on the picture!

And now I am starting to put some books around the house for our new unit. Can you guess what it might be? Stay tuned!

Preschool: Number Fun!

This summer I made some schedule cards to give us a sense of routine at home. Over the next couple months I will highlight some of the activities we do when Alex decides to put up that card! ;)

We will start with Numbers because that seems to be Alex's favorite and I enjoy it too!

I had lots of number sense activities that I had bought/created throughout my years teaching and so I was able to bring them home and I put them in a big tub. Whenever Alex chooses numbers we pull out the tub and go from there! 

Here are some fun things to add to your number tub!

Foam Numbers

Foam numbers are great for building numbers! We use them for lots of different things. Here he would roll dice, count the amount, and then build the number! 

Unifix or Connecting Cubes

We also spread the numbers out like a number line and Alex builds the number on top! Connecting cubes are also fun to build with! :) Eventually I do want to get some base ten blocks, but for now these are great!

Counters and Dice

These are two tools we can't live without! Alex loves to play dice games where all we do is roll, count, and collect. I got a fun tub of dice from Target that included all sorts of numbers, colors, and letter dice. Its fun to combine different dice together. Here he would roll a number dice and a color dice and then count out that many of the color. 

We also like to takes turns rolling a die and see who can get to 20 bears the fastest. 

With dice and counters the possibilities are endless!

Pentaminos/Attribute Blocks/Tangrams

These were all fabulous yard sale finds! Building spacial thinking is so important, not to mention the problem solving skills that kids develop when they learn to try again to figure out how all the pieces fit! We do a lot of these together and I am glad he enjoys it because I love this sort of thing! :)

We talk a lot about shapes when he pulls certain ones out to start building the pictures!

Check online for pictures and shapes cards to laminate and cut out! I found a bunch of freebies that I used at school before I found this set!

Ten Frame Mats

I love ten frames! I think it helps train kids to keep their work organized in a fun and easy way. There are lots of great ten frame activities out there. Alex is already getting the visual of "how many more" to a five or ten and its easy to count the empty squares!

Calendar

This was born more out of necessity because Alex was constantly asking "How many more days until..." Now he looks at the calendar and can tell that its too more days until Saturday, etc! He loves to add the new date each day, tell me the date, and ask what day of the week it is. He has occasionally come up to me and told me it was a "new day" because of something fun he is anticipating, so of course we have those conversations about how putting up a new date doesn't mean its a new day!! Target occasionally has the little pocket charts, and I had picked up a couple before, and they are perfect for the calendar!

I also sneak in a lot of number talk through the games we play, but I will save that for another post! :) What are some of your favorite numbers activities to do with kids?

New Freebie for Valentine's Day!

Thankfully we have a short week coming up! The kids have a half day on Thursday and no school Friday or Monday. I am looking forward to the break too! 

I was at Target today getting some stuff for Valentine's day and decided to pick up a couple bags of candy for some graphing activities. I got some tiny bags of candy hearts and m&ms. I know the kids are going to be a little excited about the short week and Valentine's Day so I am going to be a step ahead of them! ;) Doing anything with candy makes learning much more interesting! 

If you haven't already liked my facebook page head there now and grab my graphing freebie!

I have a couple graphing activities for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day!

I will be adding more throughout the year, so be sure to like my page to know where there will be updates! :)

Hope you have a wonderful Valentine's week!

Number Bonds and Fact Families FREEBIE!!

We were talking about how we needed to practice fact families so I decided to make little activity to help my kids practice fact families using a number bond. 

We use number bonds a lot and I hope this will help them keep making the connection between addition, subtraction, and how they can see it all on the number bond!

I included 12 number bonds that are complete and 12 that have a missing part for varying levels of difficultly. Plus one blank page so you can make your own number bonds if you want to go above 20!

You can put a page in a sheet protector and have the kids use dry erase markers or there is a recording sheet that allows them to record 3 number bond and fact families!

Head over to my facebook page to grab this FREEBIE and like my page while you are at it! ;)
Click on the picture to grab it!

Enjoy! Hope it helps ease your way back to school!

Dice Game Freebie!

You know you are a teacher when you play Bunco...

and think about how it would make a fun game for your first graders! :) 

A game night with the ladies at my church last night had me make this little freebie last night! 

Not exactly Bunco... but something to help them keep practicing those addition facts!

The kids can stick their target number in the stars and they want to roll the two dice and write down the equations that make that number. 

All the other equations get put in the not equal side, so it helps them learn the equal/not equal vocabulary too! 

I stuck the paper in a handy sheet protector so we can reuse it over and over in a center, 

but if we play it whole group I will probably print each child a copy to use as a formative assessment!

I one time got some dice at the dollar tree that had the numbers 7-12 on them, so I might pull those out when I want the kids to practice making 10s! And because it has the number printed on it, they can practice counting on by using one numbered dice and one dice with the 1-6 dots too!

Head over to my TPT store to grab a copy!

Math strategy bags!

This AMAZING idea came together thanks to some wonderful teachers I worked with last year. 

We used them a little bit last year, but I pulled them out the first week of school this year 

and I am SO excited to use them!

Buy the Slider bags so that you can tape a number line to the top of your bag!

you can download the number line freebie here.

Right now the kids only have a couple of items in their bag, but once we learn more strategies we will keep adding to the bag! I keep everything in my bag though... so here is a peek at that.

First Up...

Number Bond Cards

Use them with counters, number cards...

I laminated them so that we can write on them too!

Number Bracelets

I love these things! We made them last year, and then this year added the numbers. 

They have been great to help look for embedded numbers. The kids had no trouble making these last year and it was great counting practice! I have one for the numbers 6-10.

I can't wait for the kids to start using these... 

Counting On Cups! 

Whoever came up with this was so smart! 

If you are doing 6+3 then the kids can get their six cup and use their pom poms to count up 3 more!

Got to love Ten Frames! We use the counters for so many other things too!

Number cards with five groups on the back.

Once we work more on fluency, then we will add in the fact family flash cards. 

I got them at math-aid.com but copied them smaller so it wouldn't use so much paper. I like how these have the same shape as a number bond so the kids can keep seeing the connection.

We cut these out last year. I meant to send them home with the kids but forgot, 

but that is okay because now we have them for this year!

I can't wait to utilize these this year! I love that there are so many different hands-on tools to help the kids understand the different topics. And when the kids are involved in putting them together, it really is not too difficult at all!

Anything else we should add?