I love holidays!  I think they are so fun and there are so many fun activities to do in the classroom that go along with different holidays.  I also love to give my team little treats throughout the year and especially on a holiday!

  Candy heart graphs are so much fun.  I am planning to have my students complete this Candy Heart Graph and then they are going to pick two candy heart colors to add together and write an addition number sentence.  I am going to have them do that on a sentence strip and then tape it on their graph.  Just click the image to grab your FREE Candy Heart Graph!

  I also have some Valentine's Day Gift Tags for your students.  They are in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for FREE.  I bought some bubbles from Target and I am going to attach them to the tag.  You could really attach any little gift to the tag or just give them the tag by itself!  Just click the image to head over to my TpT store and download your FREEBIE.

  I mentioned that I love to give my team holiday gifts.  I found the most adorable mason jars at Target for only $3 each!  I put some red paper shreds in the jar and then filled it with a Reese heart and some Dove chocolate hearts - YUM!  I attached a gift tag to it and TADA...a sweet Valentine's Day gift for my sweet teammates!  Just click the image below to grab your FREE Valentine's Day gift tags for your coworkers.

  This week I had my students use some adorable heart buttons from the Dollar Tree to represent the dots on a domino.  Then, they recorded the addition number sentence.  My students LOVED these heart buttons.  Those cute little heart tubs came from Walmart. You can grab that FREE domino recording sheet in my Domino Math blog post by clicking here.

  This Valentine Day Math Chat is part of my Valentine Math Pack in my TpT Store.  I have done many Math Chats with my students this school year so I decided to have them work in partners to write about the Math Chat.  I was so impressed with their work!

  You can check out my Valentine Math Pack by clicking the image below.

  Happy Valentine's Day!  

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Recipe for Teaching

We had tons of HOLIDAY FUN LEARNING in our classroom before the Winter Break and I wanted to share some of it with you!

Jingle Bell Math Chat I have blogged about Math Chats before and I just love doing them with my students.  I posted the picture with the jingle bells and then we talked about what my students saw on the picture.  You can see all of the ideas they came up with.  Tons of learning in this simple activity.  

Jingle Bell Problem Solving To go along with the Jingle Bell Math Chat, I brought in a box with 15 bells.  Some of the bells were red and some of the bells were green.  I had my students work to determine how many they thought were red and how many they though were green.  They were able to use red and green cubes if they wanted to help them solve the problem.   I also differentiated this activity by giving some students the recording sheet with 15 bells on it and some students a paper with a blank space to draw the bells independently.  

Gingerbread Cookie Math We decorated gingerbread cookies with icing, chocolate chips, marshmallows, jelly beans, and m&m's.  I had my students record how many of each candy they used.  They ate their gingerbread cookie after decorating and recording the number of candies.  Yum!  

   Student Holiday Gift Tags I gave my students a container of white Play-Doh (thank you Walmart for having Play-Doh for 50 cents a container) as a holiday gift with a tag that said, "Do you want to build a snowman?  Happy Holidays!"  I told them it was "Snowman building Play-Doh."  They were super excited about it!   If you want to use these resources with your students, just click the image below to grab them for FREE!

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Recipe for Teaching

As a Kindergarten teacher, I know that I am really setting the foundation for the years to come regarding math instruction.  It is so important to build a strong knowledge of number sense with our youngest learners.  I love using Math Chats to talk about math with my students and really begin building that strong number sense.

  We just recently did our very first Math Chat and the kids LOVED it.  I like to use Math Chats as warm-ups to my math lessons.  Math Chats are great because you can use them all week and continue extending upon them throughout the week.  As the year goes on, you are really able to have more in depth discussions with your students about what they see. 

Day 1: I displayed the Math Chat to my students and had them think about what they noticed.  We used our inflatable microphones to share our ideas with a friend.  After they shared their ideas with a friend, I recorded their ideas. *Vickie from Primary Press had shared how she uses inflatable microphones in a blog post and I knew I just had to have some inflatable microphones too!  

Day 2: We reviewed the Math Chat (do this each day).  Then I had my students close their eyes and listen to me drop counters into a bucket.  They had to count the drops they heard.  After they opened their eyes, we found which picture on the Math Chat was the same as the number of drops they heard.  For example, when they heard two counters drop, it was the same as the two crayons.  They loved this!  

Day 3: We used ten frames to represent the number of each picture on the Math Chat.  For example, they showed me four counters on the ten frame when I asked them to show me the number of buses.  We used "Gator Tweezers" for this and they are awesome!   *Tara over at Little Minds at Work shared about Gator Tweezers in one of her blog posts!!  

 Day 4: I introduced Rekenreks to my students.  I did the same activity as Thursday, only the Rekenrek is a different tool for them to use.  It is definitely important to expose your students to a variety of math tools so they are able to eventually choose appropriate tools to help them with their math, which goes perfectly with Math Practice 5.

 

Day 5: I had my students use their Notebook of Learning to record something from the Math Chat.  If they were able to write the number along with their picture, I definitely encouraged them to do so.  This friend noticed that he could use the Math Chat to help him write his idea!!   If you want to try a sample of my Math Chats Pack, just click the picture to download the Back to School Math Chat I shared in this post!  I'd love to hear back from you if you use this with your students!

If you would like to try Math Chats in your classroom, my Math Chats Pack has Math Chats that you could use with your class throughout the school year.  Click the image to check it out!

 

 

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Recipe for Teaching

Happy SPRING!!  Are you enjoying warm weather where you are??  We keep going back and forth between warm and cool days! I wanted to share a few of the fun spring themed activities we have been doing!

Warning - You are about to see a lot of FREEBIES!!!!!!    Spring Math Chat

 If you missed my "You Oughta Know" blog post about math chats, you can find it here.  I explained why I LOVE math chats and gave you some simple directions for doing a math chat in your classroom within that post!  I shared the math chat as a freebie in that post and I am sharing it with you here too.  Just click the picture to download!

Jellybean Math

My students really enjoyed this activity!  

Jellybeans + Math = FUN!

 You can find this in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for FREE!!  Just click the picture to go to my TpT store and download!

"Crack the Egg" Word Work 

So do you own Miss Kindergarten's "Read and Reveal" CVC words activity?!?!  If not, it is AMAZING!!  My kiddos love doing this activity!  Click the picture to buy it!!

I have been using her cards with my students during small groups.  I also have it at a letter magnet center to tap out words and spell with letter magnets.  The idea came to me to print the cards smaller and put them in eggs and the "crack the egg" activity was born!!

I shared this idea on Instagram and had some interest from some of you to get a copy of the recording sheet.  So...just click the picture to download!  Enjoy!

Hope you enjoy these spring freebies!!  Have a great rest of the week!!

 

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Recipe for Teaching