8 Math Games Hacks...

...or tips or tricks or whatever you call 'em! Just keep reading for eight ways to make your teacher life a little easier! And, they're all for math class. 

The first two weeks of school, we primarily learned math in a whole group setting. Then, during week 3, we started following our whole group lesson and guided practice with some games. We practiced playing games independently and in pairs, but everyone played the same game at the same time. Tip 1: MATCHING GAMES/CARD GAMES are great introductory games to start with because there aren't a bunch of components. There's only cards. We learned to play War!. War! is great practice for comparing numbers and teaching the kiddos to use math talk. 

Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math Unit

Reagan Tunstall's Fundamentals and Friendships Math Centers

TIP 2: When there isn't time to laminate, bust out the sheet protectors. Laminating is great for durability and you can write on it a dry erase marker. But, I've been using more and more sheet protectors as an alternative to lamination because it's faster AND the dry erase marker actually wipes off more easily and leaves less residue behind. In this picture, the kiddos are playing an addition game called Roll & Record. Roll two dot cubes and find the sum, then write your answer on the recording document. The recording sheet in this picture comes from an old textbook adoption called Investigations.

Week 4 we began practicing playing different games at the same time. So while some teams played games with dot cubes, others played card games. By Week 5, we were ready to begin guided math rotations. We play lots of math games at the teacher table.  Tip 3: Learn games at the teacher table first, then transition them to math tubs. Before I switched to a Guided Math model, I tried teaching games whole group and then putting the games in tubs, but there was always someone (or more than one someones) who had been playing the game wrong for the first ten minutes by the time I made my way around the room. Then, after the time it took to re-taught them how to play correctly, time was up and we had to move on. Arghhhh. Now, I teach the kiddos in a small group as part of my teacher table lesson. I rarely stumble upon a group that is playing a game incorrectly. Knock on wood! 

The following pictures are all addition games we learned at the teacher table BEFORE the game went in a tub. 

Intro to Addition Games

Intro to Addition Games

Tip 4: Use clip art as math manipulatives. This does require a little effort and some ink, but my firsties loved these fireflies and frogs. 

Tip 5: Erasers and random dollar store goodies make excellent math manipulatives. I have a drawer of random toys I've collected from various places, so I don't know where I got these frog pencil toppers or the fish toys, but the frogs are super popular. Everybody wants to play Inside/Outside with these frogs!

Inside/Outside is a great game for learning combinations of numbers. In the picture below, there are four frogs in the pond and six frogs outside the pond. So, one combination of ten is 4 and 6. 

Intro to Addition Games

Intro to Addition Games

Intro to Addition Games

Tip 6: Think outside the toy box. The bats in this picture are actually cup-cake toppers that I found at Dollar Tree. I just snapped off the sticks. We played How Many am I Hiding? with the bats. This cave work mat is from Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math Unit. I repurposed the mat for this game. One student places some bats on the cave, and hides the remaining bats in a cup. His partner uses a strategy, such as drawing the missing bats or counting on, to figure out how may bats are hiding. It's essentially a missing addend game.

Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math Lessons

Tip 7: Use magnets on the back of manipulatives. I own a million little round magnets. Well, maybe not a million, but A LOT. I hot glue or ticky tack them onto the back of all kinds of manipulatives. I primarily do this during whole group math lessons, so I can gather the class on the carpet in front of the white board. In the picture below, I ticky tacked two sided chips (mine are red on one side and yellow on the other) to magents to demonstrate how to use two ten frames to Make 10. If you're not familiar with Make 10, place red dots in the top ten frame to represent the first addend. Place yellow dots in the second ten frame to represent the second addend. Next, move some yellow dots up to the top frame to Make 10. Finally re-write the addition equation and find the sum. I take volunteers to come up to the board to move the magnetized chips. For some reason, my students really like moving around magnets on my white board! After a few demonstrations, we took a baggie of two-sided chips and two tens frames to our desks to practice independently...

...which brings me to my final hack. Tip 8: Keep dry erase markers inside old children's socks. I don't have a picture of this one, but I have a bucket of markers inside socks. We write on our desks with dry erase markers, then erase our work with the sock. So, when my students worked at their desks to Make 10, they had two frames, a baggie of two-sided chips, and a sock with a dry erase marker in it. 

Here are links to the math resources referenced in this post.

Intro to Addition Math Games & Activities

Fundamentals and Friendships Math Centers

Guided Math Lessons

Organize Your Math Centers

Recently I read a post from Amy Lemons about how she re-organized her math centers. She created some really beautiful labels which inspired me to create my own set that complemented my classroom decor. If you have a brightly colored classroom, you'll love these labels. Check them out HERE.

Here the lables are taped in two Sterilite (14 1/4" L x 9 5/8" W x 6 7/8" H) and backed with scrapbooking paper. 

Here I laminated the labels so I could adhere them to the outside of the box. I think I like this way better. And, the hot glue will peel right off the plastic if I need to change the label!

Happy organizing!

Intro to Addition Math Games and Activities

This is week 3 of the TpT Seller Challenge! This week's theme is:

I'm late to the party because I like to make a grand entrance I spent the first half of the week beachside in a cozy cottage and it was fantastic! Now, about the challenge...

Last year my school district adopted the Pearson enVision MATH 2.0 Grade 1Texas edition. I wonder how it differs from the Common Core or Florida edition...or is it just a label? Before enVision, we used Investigations. My district does not require that we use or follow any program exclusively, but does provide a scope & sequence and suggests and references materials from the adopted programs. I like some things about enVision (like the short introductory videos for each lesson), but I still like to use many of the Investigations hands-on activities. So, I added hands-on math games and activities that complement enVision to my summer to-do list.

Even though, enVision does provide some math centers, they are generally a black and white worksheets. There is nothing wrong with back and white worksheet games, per say, but I like to promote engagement and buy-in and a "This looks fun!" mindset with colorful or thematic games and activities during math class. As a result, I've began creating math games and activities (perfect for the teacher table and math tubs) to supplement the enVision program. 

Of course, you do not need to use the enVision Math program to utilize these fabulous math activities! Here's a peek at some of what's included.

This is one of the games that will help students recognize the quantities of structured arrangements. Play with dots, ten frames, tally marks, or combine all three. 

The lighting in this pic stinks...that is a bright neon green paper, not the pea soup color seen here. 

Inside/Outside games are fabulous way for students to use objects to represent addition problems. Use the cut-outs included in the packet, or seasonal manipulatives, or snack foods, or whatever you have on hand. 

Use the cut-outs included in the packet, dollar store manipulatives, snack foods, erasers or whatever you have on hand. It is not lost on me that the fish out of water will die :-(

I love story mats. I have children tell the story out loud. My daughter prefered dinosaurs to birds, so the story sounded something like this, "5 dinosaurs were picking flowers. Then, 5 more dinosaurs came to pick flowers. Now there are 10 dinosaurs picking flowers." At the beginning of the year, we work on oral story problems. It helps us with writing story problems later. 

There are four different story mats included in the Intro to Addition packet, plus lots more!

Intro to Additon Math Games and Activites can be found in my store now for 20% off today through Monday!

Here are a couple of other masterpieces I've recently completed too!

Surviving Until Summer!!!

Happy Friday! This week I'm combining the Surviving until Summer and Five Three for Friday linky parties. I'm short on my Five for Friday because of my horrible picture taking skills.

It's THAT time of year. The time of year when a teacher has to work extra, extra hard to keep students engaged (i.e. to keep them from going craaaazy). We've got a case of  the Talking-More-Focusing-Less-Not-Following-Directions-As-Quickly-Volume-Of-A-Rock-Concert-Blues in first grade. Here are a few things I'm tried out this week to get us through to summer!

This week I flipped our schedule to create some novelty. For the first 140+ days of school we followed this basic schedule:

Reading

Recess

Lunch

Math

Specials

Science/Social Studies

So this week, we did it all in reverse to add a little novelty:

Science/Social Studies

Math

Recess

Lunch

Reading Part 1

Specials

Reading Part 2

The kids think math in the morning is great and so do I. But I figured out that I like any subject in the morning better, because I do NOT prefer reading in the afternoon. I think school should be 8-12. Ha!

This is my second year in first grade, so my math class as been ever evolving. I'm still trying to find a "style" I like. My district got a new math curriculum this year. It is comprised of three main parts:

Short Interactive Video for Whole Group Time

Workbook for Guided Practice, Independent Practice, and Problem Solving

Math Games for extension

Anyway, I've been saying over and over, "I just think this would work so much better IF I interwined this curriculum with guided math and math tub rotations. I think I'll do that next year." On Wednesday I decided not to wait. After all, I've got twenty little scientists/mathemeticians ready and willing to try something new. They were very happy to be part of an "experiment" to see if they liked math this new way:

Short Interactive Video for Whole Group

Five rotations: teacher table, math journal, and three tubs with related games/activities

For now we are working on the workbook at the teacher table instead of as a large group. I like it more. The kids like it more. It's a win-win!

I busted out some "old" math tub games. These have Christmas lights on them, but it saved me some prep time (and sanity). These come from Reagan Tunstall's Big Bundle of Math Centers.

And, I found these old overhead projector place value tens and ones. Recently we've worked with Base Ten blocks A LOT, so this was a change. And the kids thought these flat, neon manipulatives were cool colors. Remember overhead projectors??? 

That's how I survived this week at school. Seven more weeks to go!

Get Yo Math On! {Addition & Subtraction Strategies}

It's rodeo season in Houston so, .... howdy yaaaaa'lllllll! But, let's not talk rodeo just yet, let's talk MATH. My class has been learning and practicing new addition and subtraction strategies. By new, I mean NOT drawing pictures, using our fingers, or counting forward or backwards to find the answer. Don't get me wrong, couting on our fingers still works, but it's time to introduce some new (and a bit more sophisticated) strategies.

SIDE NOTE: I try really hard to think up ways (or beg, borrow, steal, or Pin ways) to start math class with an interactive hands-on lesson. Somedays what I come up with works really, really well. And, some days I wonder what on earth was I thinking when I decided to try that!??? The conversation in my head sounds something like this, "It must be a full moon...no, maybe the barometric pressure dropped...errr...maybe we will try this a DIFFERENT way tomorrow." But to avoid embarrasing myself, I'm going to limit this post to lessons that worked :-)

This week's Humpday Highlight (with Ms. Stanford's class) is all about math strategies we have been learning.

Making Ten to Add
I used masking tape to make a ten frame on the floor and some foam circles I found in a cabinet as counters. Our goal was to take an addition problem and make it start with 10, because adding anything to 10 is super fast and easy!

After the students assisted me with the floor demo, they each got a baggie of counters and a ten frame, so we could all practice at the same time. 

My firsties thought making ten was fun, and almost everybody caught on quickly. 

Number Bonds and Fact Families
We used one full size hula hoop and two mini hula hoops (Dollar Tree, baby!) to create human number bonds and human fact families. I gave three students foam discs with numbers written on them. The kiddos stood in the hoops to make a number bond. Next, I gave two more students a +/- sign and an = sign. The students in the hoops joined the other two students to create a number sentence. Finally, a volunteer student played "director" and told the students that were holding the numbers how to rearrange themselves to make three other number sentences that were part of the same fact family. 

Related facts (Using an addition fact to solve a subtraction problem.)

I made a tic-tac-toe board using white butcher paper. Inside the squares I wrote two subtraction facts in the same fact family. The class split into two teams and sat together around the board. A player rolled two large dice and then stated an addtion fact that could be made with the two numbers on the dice, "I rolled a six and a three. Six plus three equals nine."  Then I asked, "Do you see a subraction fact on the board that is part of the same fact family as 6+3=9?" If there was a related fact (like 9-6=3), then the student got to cover it with a foam dot (pink for the girl team, blue for the boy team) after he/she read the facts out loud. If a related fact could not be found, then the team lost its turn.

First team to get three in a row wins.

Tomorrow, we will take it a step further and explain HOW an addition fact can help solve a related subtration problem. I wrote related facts on cookie and milk bulletin board decor (Dollar Tree for the win!) so partners can turn and talk about a pair of related facts with each other. Then, we will play a matching game (like Memory). If a student flips over two related facts, he/she will explain how the addition fact helps find the answer to the subtraction probem. Give an explanation and the correct answer to earn a point for your team.

Happy strategizing! 

Engaging Math Activities for 3D Shapes

This week we've been learning about solid shapes. We've done all the normal stuff: identify shapes, count faces, vertices, and edges, sort into groups, identified objects in our classroom that are a solid shape. And those things are all good learning activities, but none of those things put a smile on the kiddos faces quite like these three fun activities did.

Activity One: Bringing objects from home for a math show & tell. 

Simple, right? But the kids were just so happy to share their objects and tell about them. One day the children brought objects that were cubes or rectangular prisms. Surprisingly, they really enjoyed describing the shape to their friends. Students that brought an object explained what the object was, what 3D shape it is, the shape of each face and how many faces it has, and led the class in counting the vertices. 

The next day students brought spheres, cones, and cylinders from home. (I forgot to take a picture.) There were lots of soccer balls and a funnel, but not a single cylinder in the bunch. 

Activity Two: Constructing a cube using tooth picks and marshmallows.

About three-fourths of the class was able to construct the cube while I built a cube under the document camera. The remaining firsties got a little help from their friends. This lil guy built a very sturdy cube! A few other cubes had the wobbles. 

We talked about how the marshmallows are the vertices and the toothpicks are the edges. 

Of course, the best part was eating the marshmallows when we were done!

Activity Three: Guided drawing of a cone and sphere followed by an ice cream treat.

Today we did a guided drawing of a cone topped with a sphere.

Then I told the class to color their shapes to make them look like ice cream cones. 

They really did a great job! You can imagine their shock and surprise when I told them they could eat their eat their cone and sphere and pulled out mini party cones to eat :-)

Everybody LOVED math today.

This has nothing to do with 3D shapes, but one other very popular activity in math these days is SWAT. Every.single.day I get asked if we are going to play SWAT. 

Plane Shape SWAT

Time to the hour and half hour SWAT

If you are not familiar with SWAT, it's a speed game. Two students race to locate and swat the named shape, time, or object with a ruler or pointer. The winner gets to stay for the next round and the loser passes his ruler to the next player. I drew those shapes on small paper plates one day at lunch and I got the clock flash cards from School Specialty. If you can SWAT it, we've swatted it! (HELPFUL HINT: Make a one gentle swat limit or the kids will just swat them all.)

It's that time of year when I really have to kick it up a notch to keep the kids on task...there's just something about an impending break and a major holiday that gives first graders the wiggles. 

Happy holidays!