Money Using Rubber Stamps

So, it's only been about 6 years since I made a blog entry, and I'm now teaching third grade, and not PreK. I'm not sure why I decided to post today, but here I am. Maybe I'll get better about making posts, and maybe I won't. Only time will tell. Haha! 

Today in summer school we were working with money, and I pulled out my coin rubber stamps. You would have thought we told them they had won the lottery! It was a super easy activity to do. I found a digital grocery flier online and modified the prices a bit. They picked four items, cut them out, glued them on the left side of the mat, and then used the stamps to show the amount of money for the item (today they just drew rectangles for the whole dollar amounts). This would be easy to do for making change, too. If I had remembered to grab a sales flier or two from the grocery store, it would have been a lot easier. SOOOOO if you teach math, or want an activity to do with your kids this summer, this is super easy to do AND easy to differentiate! You don't even need the recording mat, just give them blank paper and let them have a go!

I definitely need to buy a couple more sets of coin stamps from Amazon to use in math stations next year, though! One set did not quite cut it. I'd also like to add some tail ones 

Here are the links if you are interested in getting them on Amazon (I do not receive anything if you do order them, I'm just sharing for your convenience. It benefits me in no way.)

Rubber Stamps: Coins (Heads)

Rubber Stamps: Coins (Tails)

Reindeer Food

One of the things we did this week was make reindeer food.  This is so simply.  They just mixed oats and glitter in a bag and added a label.  We were able to incorporate math skills by having students measure their ingredients out.  For the label, I just searched for "Reindeer Food" on TeachersPayTeachers and found several options.

 

 

 

 

Gingerbread Man Hunt

Throughout the season we did tons of gingerbread activities.  Today we made a gingerbread cookie and of course when we went to get him out of the oven he had run away!  After a chase around the building (he left us lots of great clues), we found him back in our classroom!  What a tasty snack!  He was so easy to make.  We purchased the Betty Crocker gingerbread mix, a Wilton pan from Amazon, and we were on our way!  Cooking in the classroom is a great way to incorporate math skills, not to mention cooking is a life skill our little friends will need as they get older!

 

Discussing how to read a recipe (ingredients and step by step directions)

 

(mixing the batter up)

 

(I forgot to take a picture of him before we cut him all up!  We did lots of little squares because we shared with our fifth grade reading buddies who were coming up to listen to us read after snack!)

 

 

 

 

Gingerbread Activities

During the month of December we did lots of gingerbread activities.  We started the theme off by reading different versions of gingerbread books.  We read:

 

Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires

The Gingerbread Loose in the School by Laura Murray

Gingerbread Mouse by Katy Bratun

Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup

Keep Running Gingerbread Man by Steve Smallman

 

Each day we read a different version of the book. Then we summarized it. Every day after we read our new book and summarized it, we reviewed the summaries of the previous books. After we had read all the books each student came up to me (privately as to not change any student's mind!) and told me their vote. Then we met as a group and each student came up and put their gingerbread girl/boy (graphics by Krista Wallden of Creative Clips) over their favorite version. There was lots and lots of cheering as the books battled for first place! As we put them on we counted how many were in each column, compared more and less, introduced the word "tie", talked about how many more this one had than that one, etc. The graph is drawn on a Dollar Tree tablecloth.

 

 

One of the other gingerbread activities we did was to decorate our loft as a gingerbread house.  This is one of the first pictures, but we added "icing" to the window and lots and lots of other decorations, too.  I didn't get a picture of the final product!  (silly me!)

 

 

We finished up our Gingerbread theme with a Gingerbread Man Hunt!

Counting with Apples

During our apple theme this week I made this lame extremely simple activity for my kiddos.   I have learned that simple is just as effective as something that's extremely time-consuming to make.  I made a page that had three trees on each page, with different numbers on them (1-12).  With my PreK kids, I just used pages (1-3) and (4-6).  They rolled the die (you can see it in my aide's hand above the arrow) and then they used tweezers to put that number of pompoms (apples) on the correct tree.  This utilized many skills.  First, could they identify the number on the die?  Second, could they find the tree with that number on it?  Third, could they place the correct number of pompoms on the tree?  Not to mention the fine motor skills they were developing with the tweezers.  So simple, yet so effective!

 

 

 

 

I just slid this in a dry erase pocket/sleeve and off they went.  I was a little nervous about not laminating it, but I wanted to see how it worked and it was great!

 

So just because I love you all so very much....here's a little something from me to you!  Click HERE to get this little lovely for free!

 

Number Sequence Puzzles

I've seen a ton of number sequence puzzles lately, but they all seemed to count from 1 to 10.  I wanted to be able to differentiate, so I decided to make my own puzzles! I made my puzzles so youngsters can practice counting by 1's, 2's, 5's, and even 10's.  I had so much fun with this, I plan on making a lot more of these in my future (and perhaps even some alphabet ones, too!)!!  Keep reading to see some of the puzzles I made and to grab the freebie!!

I'm excited about my Cool Cat set!  I'll be doing a lot with Pete the Cat the first week of school, so these will be perfect!  If you want to check out my Cool Cat set, click here.

 

 I also love seasons, so of course I had to make a set of puzzles that included the four seasons.  How cute is that worm?!  If you want to check out my seasons set, click here.

 

 And finally, perhaps a trip to grandmother's house through the woods? Click here and you'll be brought over to TeachersPayTeachers and can download it for free.

 

Happy sequencing!

Counting Fun with Spinners

As I'm waiting for everything to arrive in my classroom, I've been spending a lot of time on my computer.  Here's my latest project.  Be sure you don't miss the freebie below!!

This activity provides practice counting up to 5, 10, or 20.  Each background has three different pages. The first page has a spinner with the numbers 1-5 and one ten frame. The second page has a spinner with the numbers 1-10 and one ten frame. The third page has a spinner with ten numbers from 1-20 and two ten frames. 

 

 Here are just a few of the other ones I made.

 

And of course, what type of blogger would I be if I didn't have a freebie for you??  This one was inspired by the mini erasers many of my teacher friends have found at Target over the last week or so.  I'm a really jealous happy that so many of them have found these cute erasers, that I made this little caterpillar set for them.  Click here and you'll be brought over to TeachersPayTeachers and can download it for free.

 

 

And if you'd like to check out my other sets, click on the links below the images.

 

 

 

Counting Fun with Spinners

Counting Fun with Nature Spinners

Counting Fun with Seasons Spinners

Counting Fun with Thematic Spinners

 

Counting Fun with Spinners Bundle

  

Happy counting, friends!!

Perimeter and Area Activity

Here's my attempt at making perimeter and area just a little more exciting!  We haven't gotten to area, yet...but I'll be introducing perimeter today.  My students love working in small groups, and they love the dice in dice, so I figure this should be a winner!  Plus, with very little adaptation, they can play it at home and for whatever reason (and I'm not complaining one bit!), this class seems to like to do things at home with their families more than previous classes I've had.  Click HERE to download the activity for free.  Click HERE to download the graph paper to go with the activity.

Mean Mode Median and Range Posters

Just a quick little something to get you through your day :D

 

FREEBIE ALERT: Click here if you would like to download these free posters for use in your classroom!  I matted them on cardstock (matching colors to the print) and they look great!

New Products on TeachersPayTeachers

Ok, so here's what I've decided...being a full time mother and teacher leaves very little time for blogging during the school year!  I have the biggest class I've had in the last few years.  I only have 23 kiddos, but last year I had 13 so this is a BIG difference.  Last year's class also had 5/13 students in the Gifted and Talented program, so academically it was a very strong class!  I've also been working really hard to get more products up on TeachersPayTeachers.  There's just something about knowing I've helped another teacher reach their students that really warms my heart!

Here are some of the projects I've completed since school has started...

Properties of Addition and Multiplication Foldable Graphic Organizer

Social Studies Explorers of the New World Foldable Graphic Organizer

States of Matter Foldable Graphic Organizer

Odds and Evens Addition Game