sutton034

What an exciting week for back to school!  A few weeks ago, I wrote about making magnetic counting strips  and using paper clips to do a variety of early numeracy activities.  That post has been super popular and shared many, many times!  As I continue to revisit ideas from Teach Like a Pirate  my creativity has been great and I have really been trying to think outside the box. Today I want to share with you how I have taken the same sticks and gone to the next level for mathematical thinking and worked with combinations of numbers.   Here are the original counting sticks.  You can see how I used them, what materials I used and find directions for making these here .   So here is the difference.  I made the sticks exactly the same way but instead of making the numbers 1-9, I made the numbers from 5-10.  For each number, I made at least 3 sticks.  I still had plenty of colored sticks  left from my box of 500 and I grabbed a...

Like many teachers, I have a thing for school supplies.  I use them every day and want quality at a good price.  My philosophy for school supplies is not to buy the cheapest things, but rather the things that will give me the best value over their lifetime.  A teacher I work with has a paper cutter that she purchased when she first started teaching in 1962.  It is huge, heavy, sharp and still works like a charm.  That is ideally what I want from my school supplies.  If that can't happen, I do want them to last as long as possible.   Last spring, I shared with you my favorite pencil sharpener and today I want to tell you about another one of my school supply loves. I purchased this 3 hole puncher in the spring of 2004.  I was working as a classroom teacher in a 4th grade class and had already gone through several 3 hole punches when I decided enough was enough.  I took a pool of other teachers in the school to see what they were using, what t...

Today I am teaming up with some of the best math bloggers out there to bring you 12 different math books that will change your teaching!  Each blogger has chosen a different book to tell you about and will be giving away a copy of that book on their blog.  Check out this great group of blog hop participants!  I spend a lot of my time reading math and teaching professional development books.  I always get some good information out of the books I read but only a handful of them get a special spot on my shelf as the books that I will recommend over and over again to other teachers.  Today I want to tell you about one of those books.   A Focus on Fractions: Bringing Research to the Classroom I first read this book when it came out in 2010 and it completely changed the way I teach fractions.  The authors of this book read all of the research on how kids learn fractions and present it in an easy to read format.   Chapter 1: Modeling and Developing Under...

This summer, I read three great professional development books ( Teach Like a Pirate , Guided Math in Action and Teaching Numeracy ) and participated in 3 fun book studies.  I love the feeling of empowerment I get from reading a good professional development book and would like to continue reading more empowering books during the school year.  Back to school season is in full swing in my area and despite my decision to only work part time, I will be busier than ever.  With that in mind, I know the only way to make sure I keep up with my own professional reading is to participate in another book study.   In the last few weeks, I have been hearing a lot of buzz on Facebook and on other blogs about Whole Brain Teaching.  I discovered this amazing website and this great book! Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids (and the rest of your class, too!) I spent some time exploring in the first steps category and liked what I read so I have decided to jump right int...

If you missed last week's post on using a bug theme and working on numbers to 20, you can see it here ! This week I want to share with you a story that you might already be familiar with.  I first fell in love with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom  very early in my teaching career.  When I left teaching a straight grade classroom to become a math specialist, my class gave me the number version of this book. Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 I love using this book with preschoolers, in Kindergarten and in first grade.  It is great for working on symbolic notation.  I find it a wonderful book to work on basic numeral recognition and an excellent resource when kids are struggling with teen versus ten numbers such as 17 and 70 etc.   There are so many activities you can do to follow up this book!  I could write about a bunch of them but instead I will send you over to Making Learning Fun  where you will find many ideas and free printables to go along with this great story...

I have been working on some fun number recognition activities using these super cute number buttons .  I like these buttons because they are bright and colorful and I have already found many ways to use them.   Number Buttons and Water Beads Recently, I was at the dollar store looking for a cookie sheet for my magnetic 10 frame project when I stumbled upon water beads .  I had heard a teacher talk about these as a sensory bin material at a conference several months ago so I grabbed a pack to try out with my number  buttons  I made sure I had at least 1 of each number then grabbed another handful Dump in the water beads and the number buttons and you are ready to go! My kids had a great time playing in the water beads and working on recognizing numbers.  Some quick easy things you can do: 1) Have kids find a particular number.  Find me a 7, now a 3 etc. 2) Have kids fish out all the numbers and sort them according to number or color 3) Have kids pick 3...

Last week, I purchased some foam sheets to make pool noodle boats and have a few leftovers.  I also have colored craft sticks left over from my number sticks project . I got out my little used stencil collection and made some fun shadow puppets with my extra supplies.  Of course I love including math in everything I do so I made all the basic shapes in addition to other animals and such.   Easy steps!  Cut foam shapes, hot glue to craft sticks! Add a flashlight and you are ready to go! Star oval Bear who likes to eat the basic shapes! This made a great rainy day activity and will be equally useful as a purposeful center in a Kindergarten or preschool classroom!  All of these shadow puppets and a small flashlight will fit in a quart size freezer bag giving you something ready to go in browse boxes or to keep kids buys while you are meeting with small groups! For some fun songs about shapes check out my favorite You Tube videos about shapes!

If you missed last week's post about Ten Black Dots and the ten frame freebie, you can check it out here ! This week I want to share with you a great piece of literature that you would not traditionally think about using during math class.  The author, Jerry Pallotta  has written several great math literature books but this one is a bit different. The Icky Bug Alphabet Book I have been so inspired by the Math and Literature  series, I have started to look at my collection of children's literature with a math lens.  I used this lesson with a group of kids who will be in Kindergarten or first grade this fall. There are a lot of facts about bugs in this book!  It is a great way to build vocabulary and non-fiction knowledge about bugs but let's talk about using this for math.  This crew of kids has been working on numbers to 20 and we used this book and some realistic plastic bugs  to further explore counting, numbers to 20 and pairs that make 20. Many pag...