Spectacular Sorting Ideas & Freebies

Boy, I am tired today!  I feel like I've run a marathon.  Well, I did go to my school's Halloween dance on Thursday and all of my little kinders wanted to dance with me.  So I guess that's similar to a marathon.

We started a new unit in math this week: sorting and classifying.  I feel that I'm teaching this unit very concisely.  The books from the carousel above really helped to bring home rules about sorting and classifying.  In the past, when I've asked my students what sorting was, they've told me "You know.  You put the red ones with the red ones.  You put the yellow ones with the yellow ones."  This year, when I ask them what sorting is, they're telling me that you can put similar things in a group.  Yes!  Why am I so excited?  Well, on our mandatory quarter test the students have to be able to look at a group of objects and know how to sort them by the sorting rule.  They also have to sort and then tell which group has more objects and which has fewer objects.  I made this paper specifically for that purpose.

Color Graph Rabbit.pdf by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Another reason I made this paper was that a friend bought me these sorting rabbits for Christmas.

Sorting Bunnies with Hat from Learning Resources

There is something so magical about pulling rabbits out of a hat.  Ok, maybe it's just me, but I love unique manipulatives.  Some people collect shoes, some people collect purses.  I collect all types of unusual math manipulatives.

I found a video on the internet about sorting and classifying that's just so cute!  I love the woman's Indian accent.

Sorting and classifying songs are hard to find, but I spent a while researching and I found these and bought them from iTunes:

"Socks in the Dryer - Sorting" by Jeff Johnson
"Sorting Socks (Sorting by Attribute)" by Judy and David
"The Sorting Song" by Heidi Butkus

In years past, I've used:

"Make a Group" by Jack Hartmann
"Color, Shape & Size" by Jack Hartmann

If you know of more sorting songs, please tell me about them in a comment!

This week I also sorted by size with bear manipulatives and plastic pumpkins that I found in a variety of places.  I have a freebie on TPT for coloring pumpkins by size.  And here is an apple size sorting paper:

Apple Color By Size.pdf by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I'd love to hear about what all of you are doing for sorting and classifying this year!  If you can, leave a comment below.

Wow!

I love my county!  Two really sweet gentlemen from the Communications Office of my school district came to my classroom last Tuesday to film a video segment about me.  There was an interview and they recorded us doing our morning message and circle routine.  I found out today that the video is on the front page of my county's web site.  Here it is:



With all the excitement, I forgot that I wanted to share with you some ideas for March.  "Sing Into Spring" by Jack Hartmann is really great for calendar time because it talks about how winter will end and spring will begin.  "The Leprechaun Song" by Newbridge Songs For Learning is sort of a little story that the kids can act out as they're singing the song.  Another cool song that I just found yesterday on iTunes is "The Leprechaun" by Joe Guida the Singing School Bus Driver.  I like this one because it has a very Irish folk sound to it.

I have really been trying to make calendar time more exciting for my kids by changing the numbers every month.  Here is a giveaway that you can use in your calendar kit, or as a number sequencing game in Math Center:

Calendar Numbers in Shamrocks for March

"The Story of the Leprechaun" by Katherine Tegen

I think it's also helpful for the children to hear books about different holidays so that they can recognize what special days occur in each season.  I really enjoy reading books about magical creatures to my kids.  School is so tough these days with so many facts that we have to impart to our children.  I think some of the sparkle and magic has been lost.  The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine Tegen helps restore a little of that fantasy that children need, and it teaches a nice message about not being greedy.  I think what I'm going to do with this story is tell the children that the leprechaun must have visited our classroom early in the morning because I found some green Play Doh that smells like mint.  Then I can have the students continue working on making shapes with part-part-whole.

I would love to know which books you all use in the month of March.  Please leave a comment below.