Five Little Penguins Movie Freebie

Five Little Penguins

Song

We are in the middle of our unit on penguins, hope you'll enjoy this little movie. I am also including the song.  It was a big hit with my class. Enjoy!

Target Finds and a Math Game Freebie

Why do they put the Target Dollar Spot where they do? Because they know a kindergarten teacher has no willpower whatsoever! I prove their theory right each time I walk through their door. This season they have ghost and bat table scatters, along with pumpkins, acorns and leaves (in 2 colors!!) They also have pumpkin, black cat, and ghost erasers in 2 sizes. Did I have to buy them all? Of course! We have been working on the Common Core Math Standard:
K.CC.6  
 Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group, e.g., by using matching and counting strategies. 

I made two levels for my students and I'll include both gameboards. You don't have to have erasers either, orange and white unifix cubes work just as well!

10 Gameboard

25 Gameboard

Tally sheet

Have a supply of 2 types of  unifix cubes or erasers for students and dice. They will take turns rolling and placing their erasers on the gameboard. When the gameboard is filled, students will each count their erasers and determine which set is greater/less. I also am including a tally sheet, because they will be encouraged to play several games.

Pete the Cat Counts Buttons Assessment

 Pete the Cat Assessment Pack

In my last post, I promised an assessment for my Pet the Cat Counts Buttons  math workstation. I am going to endeavor to create assessments for workstations this year to help me document my student's progress.

Oriental Trading

 I love buttons and I'm always on the lookout for them. Oriental Trading has two sets that I love. If you need buttons these are some you might want to look at.
 

Pete the Cat Counts Buttons

Pete the Cat Counts Buttons Activity

I was so excited when Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons was published! I love buttons and always use them in my beginning of the year math work stations. So, to celebrate that I have transcribed all 128 Civil War letters that I discussed in my last post, I'm taking a break to create some math workstations for buttons featuring Pete the Cat and other favorite button books. I will try to post an activity several times a week. (I still have a long way to go in finishing my book, but I miss creating new activities for my blogging friends and my upcoming kindergarten class!) Just click on the link under Pete for the download.

P.S. I have found some great Pete the Cat activities out on the web, go to my Pinterest page (http://pinterest.com/lmccardle/) and look for the Pete the Cat board I've created.

Dollar Tree Valentine Eraser Patterns Freebie

 

Valentine Eraser Patterns

Here are your Dollar Tree Valentine eraser patterns. If you haven't made it to Dollar Tree, there are pattern pieces included. Thank you for all the positive comments and emails!

"Goblin" Good Graphing Ideas and Freebies

I found these mini packs of Boo Mallows at Walmart yesterday (also saw them at Target today). I look for these every year and this year I was lucky! The children love sorting the marshmallows and graphing them.
Just click on the graphing sheet  title below to download it.

Boo Mallow Graph

The Ghostmallows come only in large bags, but I use snack bags and make individual packs for the children.

Ghost Mallows Graph

Fall Math Work Station Freebies and Ideas

I am loving math work stations and so are the children! They look forward to math time everyday. I am also enjoying designing activities for stations. I made a trip to Dollar Tree and Target last week and picked up some great manipulatives.

The jack-o-lantern erasers are from Target, you can download the gameboards below. In this game, students each have 20 erasers and a set of numeral cards 1-9, they each choose a card from the container and place that number of jack-o-lanterns on their board. The partner who has the most, gives their erasers to the other player. The player who ends up with all the erasers wins.

The acrylic pumpkins are also from Target, the gameboards can be downloaded below.The game is the same as the one above.

 I found these adorable ice cube trays from Dollar Tree, each student will have 20 pompoms (or you could use pumpkin seeds). Each player takes a turn shaking the dice and putting the correct number of pompoms in the pumpkins. The last roll must be the correct number of spaces left for the student to win.

I found this adorable pumpkin pattern on Kristin Poindexter's blog Kristen's Kindergarten. Students will spin a pattern block spinner and fill the pumpkin pattern. They will then count each shape and record on a response sheet. I use magnetic pattern blocks on a magnetic dry erase board. It helps keep shapes in place!!
(I made several sets of blocks by putting a magnet on the back of thin plastic pattern blocks on a magnetic dry erase board.)

I also found the erasers at Dollar Tree. This week my children will make sets and next week I will use them for patterning. I will be uploading the patterning strips next week.

Gameboards

Double click on the gameboards below and insert them in a powerpoint slide.

 

October Calendar

Here is the October 2011 calendar. just click on the image above to download in powerpoint. As I mentioned in the September calendar post, if you would like the calendar in notebook for Smartboard, comment and I'll send it to you. The font I used is Impress BT. Click on font name for a free download.

A Place Value Game

I found a great resource on You Tube: Teacher Tipster.com . Mr Smith makes lots of videos and I saw one about a game he had made for place value. It was a great idea, just not appropriate for kindergarteners. So, I decided to use his great idea and modify it for my students. In the meantime, Fran Kramer at Kindergarten Crayons had posted a great place value activity using bean sticks (I made smaller bean sticks using red beans and regular size popsicle sticks). So, using both of these great ideas I made the Tens and Ones Game. I purchased the three section tray from the Dollar Tree, made labels to put in the bottom and made dice especially for beginning place value instruction. I bought some Avery color coding labels (5472) and used the Avery template to make the labels for the wooden cubes you see in the picture. I only put 1, 2, 3 on the 10's label (twice) and 1-6 on the other cube. I went ahead and made labels 3-5 and 4-9 for later games. (It's also a great differentiation strategy). Students are to roll for 1's, then place the number of beans in the 1's section, along with the number card. They then roll for the 10's number and place the correct number of bean sticks along with the number card. They must record the number on the recording sheet. This game can be played alone or with a partner with students having to decide who has the largest number after each roll. They can draw a star by the number that's the highest with each roll and the winner will be the one with the most stars on their sheet. The instructions and recording sheets are below. If you have any questions please leave me a comment and I'll address it immediately.

 

 Tens and Ones Game Instructions

Tens and Ones Recording Sheet

Number Cards

Math Work Stations Chapter 7 Geometry

Here's a pattern blocks game that I made for my students last year.

How Many Sides?

Math Talk Card

Math Work Stations Chp 4

First of all, thank you Fran Kramer for all the wonderful ideas and downloads you so graciously shared with us. (A link to Fran's blog Kindergrarten Crayons will be at the end of this post).You out did yourself with your post. I have taken all my ink cartridges to be refilled so I can get to work planning how to use all your great activities. I am going to share some pattern block activities that I use at the beginning of the year to help develop number concept. Using pattern blocks gives the children lots of hands on experience with pattern blocks that really helps when moving into geometry.

 Making Designs with Pattern Blocks
This activity can be used with number cards, I usually laminate 5X7 index cards with a number written in the upper right hand corner and have students make designs with each number. As an assessment, I will write a number on an index card or a quarter sheet of white construction paper, give students paper pattern blocks and have them make a design. There is a great pattern block website The Math Toy Box that the children can also use for making pattern block creations. 

 I also use premade pattern block task cards and have students make the designs then sort and count the patterns blocks and record their answers. You can also have students graph the number of pattern blocks. Another activity (game) is to have students spin for pattern blocks to make the pattern.  I will make a spinner and place it in this post a little later this week. I have used the books Patternables by Susan Sehi-Smith (less than $10.00) to make my task cards but I recently found a great website Prekinders.com. She has tons of patterns block patterns, in color and black and white. I particularly like her patterns, because there are patterns with smaller numbers of pattern blocks, great for differentiation. If you don't have the ellison die cuts for pattern blocks, I found a website where you can download blackline masters and run them on matching colored paper. 

I also have pattern block templates so students can trace designs. I bought one template and used large cool whip lids to make the rest. 

Here's a list of websites that will give you lots of pattern block fun for your classroom:

Pattern blocks pdf file
 

Prekinders.com

Pattern block templates 

 Pattern Block Activities

Here are 2 sheets to grab

Click here to download. (the circle in the right hand corner will correspond to the pattern block template they choose to make; it makes it quite easy to see if they counted correctly)

 

Here's the pattern block graph to download.

Once again, a great big thank you goes out to my new BFF Fran Kramer and all the other wonderfully talented and creative teachers I have met through this book study. I also want to thank Deedee Wills for putting this book study together.

 

http://kindergartencrayons.blogspot.com

Math Ideas on my website

I am a follower of Debbie Diller's blog. I am so excited to be participating in the book study of Math Work Stations. Just click on the link to her blog for information about the book study. I started this blog as a way to comment on trends in education, professional issues, etc. But I've decided to change the focus and share materials found on my website and links to other great websites and blogs. I hope this will be a forum to share ideas and activities for literacy and math as well as science and social studies.
Math on my website Linda's Learnng Links

This post was from  a workshop I presented in March:
http://www.lindaslearninglinks.com/marchmathness.htm

Fall Math Ideas: http://www.lindaslearninglinks.com/mathlitfall.html

Winter Math Ideas:http://www.lindaslearninglinks.com/mathlitwtr.html