Dice Number Freebies

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day!  I'm going to Washington, DC tonight, to a wonderful chocolate-specialty restaurant called Co Co Sala.  I've never been there before, so wish me luck!  I hope it's delicious.

I wanted to share with you that my children were having a little trouble with addition.  Alright, to tell the truth they were having a LOT of trouble with addition.  So, I reflected on my teaching and thought I needed something a little more motivating than what I was doing.  I start off my math lesson with a little bit of calendar, then I do a math message on the whiteboard where I talk about what we're going to learn for that day.  Then I give the children a problem to solve together.  That always works fine, because the kids turn-and-talk and my smarties always help the kids who are really confused.  I made a slideshow for the computer, for addition, using dice.  I thought this way the kids could count the pips and also see the numbers.  On one slide they have to guess the answer, and I don't tell them whether they're right or not until they see the following slide with the answer.  I also had kids explain why they thought the answer was right or wrong.  This was done whole group.

Addition Dice Slideshow by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Then I had my class divided into three groups: centers, table work with dice, and a group with me with large, foam dice.  Some of my group still need practice writing their numerals.   I mean, I get papers back where the number is upside down, backwards, etc.  I also use manipulatives to show the different equations when they're working with me.  When they're at their seats, each child has two dice and these papers:

Addition Picture Groups Dice by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I also placed this mini poster on their desk to help them write their numerals when they're not with me.

Addition Dice Poster by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley


Enjoy these freebies, and let me know if this works for you.

Bear Addition

Happy New Year, everyone!  I am so sorry that I've been slacking on my blog.  I went to visit relatives in New York over the holidays and read lots of books.  Is anyone else experiencing really cold temperatures?  It's going to be in the teens tomorrow.  I can't believe that Maryland is having these temperatures!

Over the long break, I tried to think of really cool products I could make to match manipulatives that I already have in my classroom.  So I thought, why not do addition cards that would match the little plastic bears that we all have in our classrooms?  Here is a freebie, if you'd like to test it with your kids, to see how it works:

Addition Equations With Bear Pictures by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

On TPT I'm selling all the different combinations up to 10, including missing addends and sums.  The reason I made this is so that the children could use them with me in small group or in math center independently.  The bears are to scale so that the children can place the bears right on top of the cards.

Some really cool songs for addition are "Addition Pokey" by Dr. Jean, "Doubles" by Mr. Al, and "Butterfly Addition" by Miss Jenny.

Song Poster Doubles by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Also here are some addition videos put together by Harry Kindergarten:

Addition
Add 'em Up

A really great book to integrate reading and math is Monster Math: Picnic.  The thing I like about this book is that it shows different combinations to 10 in descending order: 10+0, 9+1, 8+2, etc.  The pictures in the story have a lot of kid appeal.  I've noticed lately that my kids are a lot more into monsters than they've ever been in the past.  Maybe that's because their parents are watching a lot of vampire and zombie shows.  I don't really know!  Why do you think the kids like monsters so much?

Integrating Spring

"Hopper Hunts for Spring" Book Cover

I'd like to start by thanking Linda at Primary Inspiration for hosting her Primary Math Linky Party.  What a terrific idea!  My contribution to the linky party is this integrated post featuring several freebies including addition bunnies.

I love using the book Hopper Hunts for Spring because it can tie in math, science, language arts, and writing all in one beautiful spring package.  The story itself focuses on a young bunny's confusion about who "Spring" is.  I think this book is fabulous for starting discussions with your class about the spring season.  I try really hard to encourage higher-level thinking by asking open-ended questions such as "What do you think Hopper is thinking?", "What kinds of things do you like to do in the spring?", and "What would you see, hear, smell, and taste in the spring if you were a bunny?".

For writing and art, I'm going to have my students use these differentiated spring cut-up sentences that they can also illustrate.

Spring Sentence Worksheets With Drawing by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

I've taken a few classes this year that say it's really important to use sentence starters for ESOL children.  Since my class is almost entirely ESOL, I've really embraced sentence starters throughout this school year.  Here is an example of one of them, with a picture word bank.

Spring Writing Prompt by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley


Even though Common Core has taken time and money out of kindergarten, I still think that a short calendar time is important.  I still use my calendar and I use different songs to represent special times of the year.  Some songs that I will use in April are:

"Five Little Bunnies" by Mar Harmon
"5 Little Bunnies" by Joanie Calem
"Celebrate the Spring" by Jack Hartmann
"It's Spring" by Tiana

I feel that my children focus much better when we sing and dance to bring us all together on the carpet and to transition between subjects.  I think all four of these songs give details about spring that some five-year-olds aren't yet familiar with.  They also provide a nice baseline to make connections between the book, what they're writing about, and what they're hearing.  The bunny songs are nice fingerplays for those students who still don't have one-to-one correspondence - I still have two in my kindergarten class who are having trouble with this.  It's still good for the other children in my class because they can focus on the rhyming parts of the song.

I'm going to cut up these addition bunnies, laminate them, and put them in my math center for further practice.  My children are going to use manipulatives of their choice from the center to check their answers.

Addition Bunnies by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Please let me know which ideas you like from this post.  Your feedback really helps me to decide what to write about next.

Cupcake Freebies and More

Book Cover of "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake"

I don't know about you, but I think books by Laura Numeroff really work for teaching cause and effect.  I found some great ideas for the book If You Give a Cat a Cupcake on the Mouse Cookie Books web site.  There's a really nice activity kit that includes a dot-to-dot paper, and matching pictures to words, fun games for the kids to play, and more.  I've been watching "Cupcake Wars" on TV lately, and it's really affected my choices of things to make for my class.  When I realized this, I thought "Why not blog about it?"

So, I'm going to start off tomorrow by giving my children this warm-up where they have to color each cupcake based on the color word:

Coloring Cupcakes by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

During morning message, I will ask the students to do a turn-and-talk and describe their favorite cupcake: what it looks like, smells like, and tastes like.  I will also sing "Do You Know the Cupcake Man?", sung to the tune of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?".  ;-)  And instead of saying "Mulberry Street" at the end, you can say the street that your school is on.

I'm going to use this guided reading book when I pull the kids, to teach more sight words.  I wish that I could have them decorate the cupcake like I've done in years past, but we're not allowed to use food in the classroom this year.  :-(  I will have them also make-and-break the word "will" with magnet letters (that's our new sight word this week) on magnetic white boards.

My Cupcake Face Book by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

When they work at their tables, I'm going to have them do this follow-up sight word coloring paper:

Sight Word Coloring Cupcakes by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

If you like this sight word paper, I sell a package of these on TPT that you might want to check out.

In math, we're doing addition right now.  To really grab my students' attention I'm going to use plastic cupcakes that I bought in a bakery set to model what I want them to do, and then I will give them this cupcake addition paper to check for understanding:

Addition With Cupcakes by Sharon A Blachowicz Dudley

Lastly, I'm going to put a cupcake tin with some Play Doh, along with some plastic candles, in math center so that they can practice counting by ones and skip counting by twos.  So if they're skip counting by twos, they would put two candles in each cupcake.

I hope you enjoy these cupcake freebies, let me know what you think.  I love hearing from all of you!