Penguin Addition {FREEBIE!}

We are knee-deep in a penguin study in my classroom.  We've studied arctic animals in the winter before, but never penguins.  This year, I wanted to try something new, and.....I mean, penguins.

They are so cute.  So sweet.  So lovable!

My students are officially in love and obsessed.  My heart pitter-patters when I hear them use the words rookery, predator, or even regurgitate (that one's a favorite!) in conversation with their friends.

They talk about the different types of penguins like they are family!  Emperor, Adelie, Macaroni, Crested, Rockhopper, Little Blue.... so cute and so fun!

I wanted an addition practice page for my students, and I knew that if I included penguins they would be suddenly motivated.  And goldfish crackers?  Done deal.

Students rolled two dice and used goldfish crackers to build the groups.  Then, they recorded their addition sentences on the recording sheet.  Simple, but fun!  My class loved it today!

 These cutie pie penguins came from Deanna Jump's Penguin pack.  I laminated them with my new at-home laminator of course because I am in.love.with.it.

 If you'd like to use this page with your students, CLICK HERE to grab it from Google Drive!

Happy weekend, friends!!

Five for Friday {May 30}

It's a great Friday!

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs to share my Five for Friday.

We're still having lots of fun at school, but truth be told, we're all fading.  When Kindergarteners begin fading, you know you're in trouble.

Summer!  It's so close I feel like I can reach out and grab it!

I'm craving lazy days and oodles of time with my kids, but we're finishing off the year strong.  I know I'll miss my kindies like crazy when they leave me, so I'm soaking up their almost first-grader goodness with the time we have left.

1.  We're still starting every day by popping our countdown balloons.  This week we had a bubble party with the other Kindergarten class, we hung out with bare feet in the classroom, we chewed bubble gum, and we enjoyed some outside reading time.  

2. We planted seeds over a week ago and watching them grow has been such a disappointment!!  I'm not sure what we did wrong.  Maybe the seeds were old???  Only about one third of the class has a sprout.  Bummer. :(  

On a positive note, next week is Worm Week (LOVE!), so all will be forgotten with these boring old plants.

3.  We made these addition ladybugs this week.  A fun craftivity to go along with our BIG addition/subtraction review push to finish off the year!

4. We received our last pen pal letter for the year this week.  We have been so lucky this year to be class pen pals with two awesome classes.  My in real life bestie is a kindergarten teacher in Colorado, and one of my blogging besties teaches Kindergarten in Texas.....it's been so much fun for us to write back and forth and for my students to learn more about these very different places!  They were intrigued by the mountains in Colorado and the Spring dust storms in Texas!  So much fun!  

5. My students completed their final writing assessment this week.  This piece goes into their permanent file at school.  Both of these sweeties began the school year barely able to write their names.  They are going to first grade as writers!  So proud of how hard they've worked this year!

My weekend will be filled with baseball, planting flowers, and getting Memory Books put together!  Bring it on!  Hope yours is awesome as well!

Three for Friday (on Saturday)

Hi there, friends!

I'm popping in today with a three for Friday!  On Saturday.  Seriously, what is that??!?  I hardly had my camera out at all this week, so I only have four things to share.  And I had plans last night, so I'm posting on Saturday instead.  I knew you all would forgive me because the last few weeks of school are not for the faint of heart and teachers are just BUSY in May.  There is no way around it!

1. I hosted our Girls Only Lunch on Tuesday.  I only have six girls this year, so I was really looking forward to this day of pampering and loving on these sweeties. 

We had a picnic at our carpet area complete with girly cupcakes.

 I invited each of the girls' moms to join us and they were all able to make it!  It was so much fun.  After lunch, all the moms painted their daughters' fingernails and toenails.

I picked up some nail polish and each girl got to choose a color to take home with them.

 Melt me.  These girls.  We had the best time.  There were so many smiles and giggles.  Definitely a highlight of my year.  Hopefully a highlight of theirs too!

Now I get to look forward to my Boys Only Lunch with all 18 of my busy boys.  I might be asking for prayers on that day!  Ha!

2. I changed out my math stations this week and the kids had a lot of fun with the new activities!

Addition, addition, addition is our focus right now!  We are practicing like crazy!

 I whipped this activity up quickly and it was a hit!  We use these bugs for all sorts of things -- especially in the Spring.

CLICK HERE to grab this page from Google Drive!

 Race to 100!  Just change up the graphics on the page and the kids think it's a brand new game!

Again, we're working hard on addition, so the kids used two dice and added them together.  

You can grab a copy of this game by heading back to THIS POST from last year.

 Lima bean math is a classic and always a great activity for addition practice.

3. My sweetie had her Kindergarten screening on Thursday.  She is so ready for Kindergarten, and I am thrilled for her because I know how much she'll love it!!  

That's it for me today!  I hope that you are having a wonderful weekend!

Lima Bean Addition

Way back when I first started teaching (over 10 years ago already!!) I entered a classroom with very few supplies and of course I had no money of my own to buy expensive teaching supplies with.  One of my most-used math manipulatives that year were lima beans that I bought at the store and spray painted one side of.   Ten years later and I am still using them with my students!  

We just finished our math chapter on addition, so I pulled out the lima beans for some independent addition practice.   

 I have a whole set of these lima bean recording sheets, all hand-made.  They definitely could be polished up.  It's on my to-do list, and I'll be sure to share them when I finish.

 But, maybe in the meantime you can find manipulatives in your own classroom to use for addition practice.

 Or, you could head to the store for some dry lima beans and spray paint. :)

This week's math stations

Here are my math stations for this week and next week.  Three from my "Three Cheers for BOOKS!" math and literacy pack (We have a major March is Reading Month focus in our classroom right now) and one favorite that I decided to keep around for one more rotation.

"Fill in the Bookworm Blanks"

Here, the students fill in the missing numbers to complete the addition sentences.

(P.S. -- how CUTE are these little DJ Inkers bookworms???)

This activity was a bit tricky for some, and a good challenge for others.  The kiddos that love math, loved the challenge.  Those that find math/addition tricky, struggled a bit and didn't enjoy it as much ;)  At least the bookworms are so cute.  I'm sure they appreciated that. :)

It was actually a great form of formative assessment, and I have put together a small group of students to work on this skill with my para-pro.

"What Comes Before the Book?"

Number order....again, a bit tricky for some.

Students choose a number and write the TWO numbers that come before it.  Most were able to get the hang of this activity quickly, but the whole TWO NUMBERS BEFORE thing was a challenge for some kids.  

If I talked them through it, everyone was able to get it without trouble.  I did make number lines available to some, for added support.

"I Can READ Number Words!"

Students match number words to groups of dots, then record the number words on their page.

 When they finished, I had them read the words to me.  Practice, practice, practice!  Any words that they weren't able to read, I wrote the number next to for them.

"Race to 100"

Who knew that this partner game would be such a hit?!?  Everyone LOVES it!

You can find it in my 100th Day pack.

These stations will bring us to Spring Break, which begins next week Wednesday!  Sooooo ready for that!  Now, if only it would stop snowing and warm up a bit!  Soooooo ready for that too!!

This week's math stations

 Weeeelllll, so I wasn't back tomorrow (Thursday), like I had hoped.  It was a busy week, and I was SO ready for the weekend.  Feeling a little jealous of all those teachers who started Spring Break yesterday!  We still have two and a half weeks before our break begins.  Hopefully all of the snow will melt by then and we'll be able to enjoy some mild, Spring-like temps.  My son was born during Spring Break 6 years ago, and it was a complete blizzard.  I'm very ready for the snow and COLD to be done!

Anywho...my math stations run on the same schedule as my lit stations, so they will continue through next week.

"Bean Flip"

I grabbed this page from Sara over at Kindergarten is a Hoot a long time ago and pull it out from time to time.  It's a fun little addition page.  My students love "rolling" the beans.  Then, they color the beans on their page and write the addition sentence.  Great practice for those math facts!

Remember when I posted about "Counting Snowballs"?  Remember how I was going to use it for math stations back in January?  Remember how I had planned to use white pom-poms for the snowballs?  Oh boy.  I am JUST NOW getting around to this activity.....and I didn't have the patience to dig through my bag of pom-poms for the white ones, so they are counting colorful snowballs in March!  Ha!

(And I even heard one little guy this past week say, "This is the best math station!"...and his friend agreed!  LOVE sweet Kindergarteners!  They are so forgiving and would count snowballs in May if I asked them to.)

"Race to 100"

This activity is a favorite for sure!  My kiddos LOVE this partner game.  The concept is super simple.  They each choose their own color.  They take turns rolling the dice and coloring in that many spaces.  The partner who lands on 100 wins!  It's included in my 100th Day of School pack.

"What's in my Bowl?" graphing game

I filled cheap Take 'n' Toss bowls with a variety of items (each is different).  The students grab a bowl and graph what is inside.  There are a few questions at the bottom of the page for analyzing their data.

Feel free to grab this page for yourself if you think you'd be able to use it!

Happy weekend!!!