2D & 3D Shapes

When it comes to recognizing and comparing 2D and 3D shapes, kids often mix the 2D ones up for the 3D ones and vice versa.  I like to play a lot of games that involve saying the names of the shapes repeatedly so they get a TON of exposure to them.

My favorite one involves the kids sitting in a circle on the carpet.  In the middle of the circle, I lay out 2D flashcards of shapes and small 3D models.  Then, I call out the name of a shape or some descriptors for a shape and students have to race the person across from them in the circle to grab the shape.  There are two of every shape in the middle of the carpet.  

If I say the descriptors only, the students must also name the shape correctly to score a point for their team.   It gets a little heated! But it promotes good discussion about some of their common misconceptions.

We also build models of the 3D shapes with toothpicks and marshmallows, and as a wrap-up for the unit, we have a shape snack sort.

Real-Life Number Talks

Need a refresher on what Number Talks are and how to conduct them?  Click HERE for that post.

Ever since I've started doing Number Talks, I've become obsessed with them.  They are such a great way to gain insight on how students see and think about a given number of objects! But sometimes, I'm not sure they see how it applies to real life.  Whenever I see the opportunity to swap out some dot cards for real-life number talks, I do.  We've dropped cereal pieces before and searched for groups that way.  When I attended the Air Show at RAFB recently, all I could think was, "THESE PICTURES WILL BE PERFECT FOR NUMBER TALKS!" (I say think, but I definitely said it out loud repeatedly to David.)  Anyway, I was right! The kids really enjoyed it.

Next time you're out with your child, look for a way to incorporate a conversation about numbers!

You'll find opportunities everywhere.

Time for Shaving Cream!

So, before I talk about shaving cream... I forgot to post this activity a couple weeks ago, but the kids enjoy it and it's a great quick assessment.  It takes a little prep, though. To work on counting and numeral formation, students pair up and get a large bag that has post-its and smaller bags of beads inside.  Students count the beads together, then write the corresponding numeral on the post-it.  Bags contain between 0-15 beads. 

When the students are done, they can bring you the bags for you to check their work.  If any are incorrect, you can just ask the team to go back and correct their work with a new post-it.

Alright, now that we've gotten that out of the way.... This week I introduced shaving cream while we practiced more numeral formation!

I love using shaving cream for writing numbers, letters, sight words, names, etc. 

Whenever I buy shaving cream at the store, I always get between 10-12 cans and the cashier looks at me like I'm planning some elaborate prank.  

No, I assure them... it's for learning. :)

I try to teach everything through various modes of learning: visual, auditory & kinesthetic.  It usually starts with me talking about what we're learning, modeling what the kids are supposed to do, singing some variety of song, and then some hands-on experience! (Remember our toolbags? They make the hands-on piece so easy.)

But there's something about how messy shaving cream is that really keeps the kids entertained.  And the desks get clean.  And the room smells nice. 

For the numerals, I said our number poem as I modeled writing each number and the kids listened/watched before forming the number.  

I had parents last year asking for some ideas on how to teach sight words that weren't just flash cards. 

For sight words, I usually introduce the new word in our morning journal.  This way they see the new word in a sentence first.  "Look at the cat." Then I highlight the word as I say what it is and spell it on the board.  "Look. L-O-O-K. Look." Once the kids have an introduction to the word, we watch a sight word video by HaveFunTeaching or a similar YouTube channel.  (Just Google: "Sight word ___ song" and you'll get something!)

After the auditory and visual learning, kiddos get to have the kinesthetic/tactile piece by writing it in the shaving cream.  I don't put a word on the word wall until we've learned it all three ways.

Adults don't all learn the same way; why should we expect our kids to? 

Math: Circles, Triangles & Positional Words

In math recently, we've been talking about shapes (specifically, circles and triangles) and using positional words to describe where we've found them.  For example, "I see a circle on the wall above the window and next to the color monkeys." (The color monkeys are just that, by the way.  An assortment of monkeys in various colors labeled with the color names.)  Anyway, that circle I was describing is ..... a clock!  

To teach circles and triangles, we read a book about each and reviewed the shape poems.  

Circle: Round and round and round I go, I look like a ball,* I'm Circle Joe. 

Triangle: Count my sides, 1-2-3, Tommy Triangle, that is me!

*This is deceiving. Really a sphere looks like a ball, not a circle, but since we don't introduce spheres yet I think it's okay.

After we looked at the shapes and said their poems, students got a single page to add to a class book with an outline of a circle on the first day and an outline of a triangle on the second day.  Students turned their circles and triangles into something else that naturally has the same shape.  We found out that a circle can be.... a whole pizza, a pumpkin, an eyeball, a bowling ball, a pig's face, and much more!  A triangle can be... a nose, a triangle in music, a jack-o-lantern's eyes, a cat's ears, a slice of pizza, a piece of cake and a wedge of cheese, among other things!

Our class books turned out so cute that I'm going to turn them into digital books, so I'll upload them and post a link here once I've scanned them in.

To introduce positional words, we had Pete the Cat give us a hand.  After reading Pete the Cat The Wheels on the Bus, we reviewed a chart showing what above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to mean.  Then students got to manipulate a stuffed Pete around their body according to my instructions.

Students practiced manipulating a paper Pete the Cat around a bus cut-out with a partner for independent practice using positional words.

100th Day!

Mrs. Axelrod, if you're reading this, I'm sorry that I never dressed as a 100-year-old in the past when you begged me to.  BECAUSE NOW I SEE HOW HILARIOUS AND EASY IT IS!   You don't have to buy a wig at all!

Mrs. Sayles refused to talk to me all day. She thought I looked creepy.

One of my students said "But wait, are you actually old now?" 

Want your hair to look gray? Check out the WikiHow article HERE. I actually used both of the two techniques they explain. First, I rinsed my hair in lime juice.  Then I applied a nice layer of the shampoo/flour combo.  I quickly realized that was a little clumpier than I'd have liked, so I switched to the baby powder option.  I dumped a ton of it all over my head, sprayed with hairspray, and dumped a ton more.  Then I put eyebrow gel on my eyebrows, followed by some baby powder.  After that, I used a brown eyebrow pencil for all those wrinkles.  It was pretty refreshing to wash my face and hair at the end of the day!  

Check out these elderly kiddos:

Between our canes, our poor eyesight, and poor hearing, it's a wonder we got anything accomplished! When I called Davarious over to take a picture, he picked up his cane and walked with the most adorably slow old-man walk. I asked him, "are you really going to make me wait this long?" He nodded yes. He took his character very seriously!

We shared our 100th Day Projects, made using 100 items:

We went on a search for 100 hidden Hershey Kisses:

We made our 100th day snack, with 10 pieces of 10 different snack foods:

Finally, we worked on our necklace with 100 Fruit Loops:

Then it was time to go home!

Shape HedBanz

You guys know this game, right? The "What Am I?" game where you hold an unknown card up to your head (or, well, place it in a headband) (or hold your phone up to your head in this app version; go here if you're an iPhone user) and have to guess what's on the card? It is hilariously fun to play. So I figured, why not use it for shape recognition and description? 

THE KIDS WERE SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS. I previewed it in our morning message. They were waiting for math all day. THEY CHEERED SO EXCITEDLY WHEN IT WAS MATH TIME! 

We broke up into four teams, based on the colored rows on the carpet. The first team to help their player guess the mystery shape won a point. If you shouted out the name of the shape, your team was disqualified that round. If a player looked at the card before guessing, that was also grounds for disqualification.  Students had to help their peers guess what the shape was by giving helpful clues: 2D or 3D, number of sides, number of angles, various shapes that make up a 3D shape, length of sides, etc.  The players holding the cards were allowed to ask questions, also.

I really can't believe I didn't think of using this game in the classroom before now. 

It's amazing for review.  We play it again on Thursday. Hooray!! 

Making Spooky Graham Houses

To celebrate Halloween this year, students got to make and decorate Spooky Houses using chocolate graham crackers and a variety of gross, creepy Halloween candy.  We did this during math time, to incorporate counting, shapes, positional words and general strategy & problem solving. 

Here was my example:

I had a good time making this. Thanks, Ms. Ingram, for the Oreo eyeball!

Let me start off with the fact that this could not have been done without parent volunteers! We had six parents come in, in addition to myself and Mrs. Dean. (Sorry to those not pictured with their child. It was hard to get pictures while also helping!)

At Christmas time, I always do gingerbread houses with my students, but those are a bit more structured.  We use milk cartons as the base and I help kiddos create the houses the day before so they have a chance to harden.  There's less freedom in the design.  I wanted these houses to be a bit more of a puzzle for the kids, so they could have the chance to design the houses as they saw fit to be as scary as possible! But trying to put them together freely like this would be impossible without at least one parent per table.  I pre-cut the graham crackers in either a tall, skinny template or a short, wide template, depending on what the kids told me they preferred.  I used this picture as a guide for the short, wide houses and altered slightly for the tall ones:

For the tall ones, I just cut the ends higher up, flipped the sides (same measurement as above) so they'd be tall and skinny and used half a graham cracker each for the roof.  I forgot to show this picture as we were working on them, though (sorry!) so kids kind of put them together however.  I think that worked out better! The variety and creativity was neat to see.  Students chose which color frosting they wanted to use as the glue: red, orange, or black.

Once the pieces were put together, students were able to buy items from the decoration store.  Each student had 100 pennies to spend. 20 of these were loose, plastic pennies and 80 were paper pennies, in strips of 10.  I included this part of the activity because K kiddos are meant to be able to count a collection of up to ten pennies, and I wanted them to count, but in retrospect... this part was a disaster.  It took too long for students to wait in line and spend the pennies, and plastic pennies + frosting do not make a good mix.  So I had to alter this in the midst of creating.

We ended up having a "Flash Sale!" where everything was on sale for 5 cents, but even that didn't get out the decorations fast enough.  I changed it again to say what I was coming around with and how much it cost (e.g., "If you'd like a scoop of dirt to go around the base of your house, it costs 20 cents," or "Gummy worms, 30 cents").  Things we had enough of for each child ended up being free, and the items that had a higher demand cost money.  Basically what I'm saying here is, if you do this activity, rethink how you distribute the decorations.  You could have them count out a certain amount of each decoration, but then everyone has the same decorations so there's less variety. 

Once students finished adding decorations, I gave everyone a non-edible stretchy skeleton to practice positional words.  I asked students to "put the skeleton above the house," "put the skeleton behind the house," etc.  They seemed to have the most trouble with behind. 

All in all, it was a fun day! I had one student say at the end of the day "I wish we had done math tubs today." Mrs. Dean replied, "Instead of these fun houses???" Mrs. Buzzell commented that kids just like routine. At least they enjoy math tubs!  Hopefully they didn't eat the houses all at once. They were full of sugar!

The downside to not using the milk cartons was that, unfortunately, many of the houses fell apart when placed in bags to take home. I still think I'd allow the freedom in design next year, but I may make the houses in two days with frosting 'glue' instead of how we assembled them this year.  

SHAPES!

We spent some time modeling 2d and 3d shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. The kids were surprisingly good at figuring out how to make the 3d shapes! I didn't give them any help on this.... Look at how well they did! 

Place Value with Teen Numbers

This week is all about those numbers in the teens. The ever-tricky 11-19.  Kids often write 31 instead of 13, or confuse 12 for 11. Beyond that, they have difficulty recognizing that numbers in the teens are a group of ten with x amount of leftover ones. 

To help teach this, of course we're playing some more HarryKindergarten videos! 

For writing numbers, "Numbers in the Teens... They start with a 1."

For recognizing place value," Numbers in the Teens Have a Group of 10"

We played the Eraser Challenge for writing and recognizing numerals. The kids loved this. I didn't print the number strips the game rules suggest... I just showed the numbers on the SmartBoard and told the kids to copy whichever color we were on.

We also made our Teen Number Counting Books and discussed the value of teen numbers with unifix cubes. The Counting Teens Number Mat really helped keep us organized! 

As a quick assessment to see who understood the concept of teen number place value, I made a ten frame addition worksheet: Hot Dog!

We are certainly making progress, but the true value of these numbers doesn't come easily. It's not enough to know "12" is called twelve and is written as a 1 and a 2. Kids really need to understand that 12 is 10 and 2 ones, or 6 and 6 or 5 and 7 (really any decomposition).  I've never really looked at teaching numbers quite so in depth before, so it's neat to see how the kids are picking it up and doing better at math in general as a result. 

Fall

We've been talking about the seasons in Science, and I was surprised to find out that the student favorite is Winter... "because you can play in the snow."  I asked if Georgia really gets snow,  and Mrs. Dean said she thinks Winter won because snow is so rare in Georgia.. So when it does come along, the kids are soooooooooo excited!

We are done with our writing like scientists unit and back onto narrative writing, but I thought the kids would enjoy writing about a fall leaf. So we each chose a leaf on our way back in from recess and used all we know about writing to share and comment about our  unique leaves. 

 Everyday I'm impressed with the quality of the writing I'm getting. The spacing, the correctly spelled sight words, the letter formation, yay! Yay! Yay! 

All of our practice is paying off! 

In math we were back to focusing on 2D and 3D shapes. We went on a shape hunt, explored the different features of shapes (attempting to work together at a table to foster discussion), and played Mystery Shape! The kids LOVE anything that's in a mystery bag. I put some shapes in a dark bag (we used a backpack) and hand them a random shape inside the bag without looking. Students have to describe the shape out loud ("It's 2d, it has four sides, they're different sizes")  and make a guess ("I think it's a...  Rectangle!")  before taking it out of the bag for the big reveal. Everyone listens so intently, eager for a chance to play! 

Most of the kiddos have 2d and 3d shapes down now, but 'hexagon' is still throwing the class off... 

We are all very excited about the upcoming week, with parent drop-in day on Tuesday and the field trip on Friday! Can you believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner?? 

I'll post some turkey projects the week of Thanksgiving. They all turned out so cute!