Christmas Stations and Crafts

Hey all!

So, it's been a while. I now teach kindergarten and boy is it busy! It is so much different than second grade but I love how excited my kids are about learning their letters, sounds, and beginning to read!  Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to keep BUILD going in K, but I am going to work on it over the summer.  In my new district, we are lucky enough to have iPads and laptops as a station with programs that work at each individual kids speed (ding ding ding differentiation!), so there is always something to do throughout the day!


Here are some links to freebies we have been doing, sorry if it is overload but the more the merrier!

TONS of sight words activities: cut and paste, rainbow write, etc.  This site is amazing! I am using one group of words per week since there are multiple activities for each set of words.

Sight word games: Egg flip and gum balls Okay, confession. I haven't actually used these yet BUT they have been ready to go for a few months…so it will be soon!

Number sense to 5-- I received this from a workshop and will have to play around with some sites, but it should be a freebie somewhere- stay tuned!

Snowman counting (1:1)-- Okay the link shows the general idea, I just made it up at lunch one day…. see pics below! The kids loved it. For a challenge, they placed two hats on the head and had to add or count on.

Slowly rewinding to Christmas….

Needs and Wants stockings-- I printed two copies and wrote "needs" and "wants" on the cuff.  We collected kid friendly magazines and the kids got to sort out pictures of needs and wants. They had SO much fun with this!

Christmas Treat Bags- Okay.. I am obsessed with how these turned out!!! Love, love, love! And SO easy!  I just bought the regular bags of green and red milk chocolate M&M's and put them in snack sized baggies.  I went through 4 bags for 25 kids.

CRAFTS

I ran an after school craft program this year and it is definitely my favorite craft I've done.

Here's what you need:
Wooden frames from Michaels (only $1 each!)
Cardstock (I used tan/beige)
Brown paint (kid friendly)
Googley eyes
Red ball noses
a camera!

The picture frames from Michaels come with a little wooden stick to stand it up. I had the kids paint the back first, then I inserted the stick and flipped it to the front so they could finish painting.

While the frames were drying, I took pictures of the kids with a green paper background and sent the pictures straight to CVS.

Did I mention this craft only took one hour?!

Once dried, students worked on gluing the eyes and nose while I ran around painting each students hands brown.  They planted their hands on a sheet of card stock and cut around to make it look like antlers.  This definitely took some assistance for the younger kids in the class.

I let these dry over night, picked up the pictures, and sent them home the next day.  I let the students use regular glue so that they were able to do the project on their own… however if you are doing this at home I HIGHLY suggest hot glue.  We had lots of pieces fall off.

Non-school related: Love this stocking!  I got the plaid stocking from Target, the burlap at Michaels, and the letter from a craft fair but I am sure you can find them anywhere.

I tied the bow FIRST.  I found a few different tutorials on Pinterest, then I hot glued it around the stocking. Then, the letter had a very thin string attached to it so I slipped that around the bow so that it would blend in and added a little more glue. Simple and super cute!

**Notice the doggy bagel "hiding" near the stocking. That would be our puppy child, Riley… who just hides all of her treats.

I bought the "Ho Ho Ho" sign from Etsy and it matched perfectly.

What would I do without Pinterest and Etsy?

Thanks for stopping by!

Holiday Crafting

Ok- last one for the day! I haven't updated in a month, so I want to give you guys lots of different ideas! This has nothing to do with teaching, but during the power outage I had some extra time to decorate and get ready for the holidays...

I went to Michael's with a 50% an item coupon AND my teacher ID for another 15% discount, and I bought the letter H, jingle bells (silver and gold, small and big) and some gold Styrofoam glitter balls.  I grabbed a hot glue gun and started gluing away! I covered the whole H, but there are definitely some gaps. Maybeeee I was supposed to paint the H first, but it still looks good. So easy, cheap, and CUTE!

I got a really cute white ribbon with gold lining from Michael's as well, glued it to the back, and walah! We have a door hanger for the holidays. :)

Snowball Sort- Odd vs. Even

This has been a crazy week.  We had a big storm on Sunday and it knocked out the power in our building.  We had Monday and Tuesday off!  It was definitely a nice and much needed break, but now we are playing catch up with all of our lessons. We have our end of unit 5 math test coming up (tomorrow.. if all goes as planned).  The students were having a really hard time grasping odd vs. even and place value, so we did this fun activity that I did with my first grade friends during student teaching. 

 This time, I decided to make it a whole class activity. Each student pulled a card and decided if it was odd or even, THEN they had to tell the class WHY! If they weren't sure, we helped them out. While the students were deciding, I was recording on a dry erase board as well.

I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine! Here you go! It's FREE

Thanksgiving Contractions!

I love planning lessons around holidays. It's not only more engaging for the kids, but for me too! I get excited when we get to do something a little out of the ordinary.  We started talking about contractions the other day after a previous discussion on compound words.  After making an anchor chart and doing some together, I split the students up into groups to match up two words to the appropriate contraction!

There is a recording sheet that goes along with this, but I'm going to have them do it again and record their answers later. Today was just a practice day to see if they were understanding it or not (and to see who could work in groups).  The words are written on either a pilgrim hat, or a turkey! I found this fun (AND FREE!!) activity on teachers pay teachers! Enjoy!

Halloween BUILD Centers!

We are still doing our BUILD centers everyday in second grade! I wanted to give a quick update on some of our centers. We continue to keep the old activities in the centers, but I spruced things up a bit with some new Halloween themed activities!

Frankenstein fact families-- I will start this one tomorrow and I can't wait! I think that I will pull some groups with me to complete this activity for a few minutes at a time. For example, if studentes are at the "D" center, I will pull the whole group for about ten minutes to work with me, then they can go back and continue their center activities. Here is a link! Frankenstein Fact Families for FREE

UPDATE*** I have been pulling the groups for about 10-15 minutes on the day that they are at the Buddy games center and I do the Frankenstein Fact Families with them! We complete the activity like it's a game. One student pulls a task card and all of the students see if they can come up with a fact family for the numbers or picture given. They love the Frankenstein on the cards!


At the "B" center, students can play a doubles game that has a pumpkin theme! For students that are still working to learn their basic doubles, there is a game board that deals with rolling one die, doubling the number, and covering your answer with a counter. For more advanced learners, there is  a game board where students can roll two dice, then double the sum of that addition problem and cover their answer with a counter! They love it! Here is the link-- Pumpkin doubles- FREE!


At the "D" center I added a baseball themed activity (nothing to do with Halloween-- but Tigers playoff games!!)  Students match the doubles fact or the near doubles fact to the bat or ball with the correct sum. Then students record their answers on the recording sheet. They turn these in to my bin and I look over them ASAP! :) Here is the link to the double header sums-- GOOOO TIGERS!!!

I will update with pictures soon!

2 weeks until Halloween ;-)
What will you be?!
-Taylor

Halloween crafts!

I'm running an after school craft program for the next four weeks. It's the perfect opportunity to do some Halloween and Thanksgiving crafts! I have students for about an hour.  I wanted to do a generic fall craft first, so we started by tracing our arms and hand on brown paper to make a tree trunk and then scrunching up fall colored tissue paper and gluing it all around the tree and on the ground. One student made leaf piles on the ground! It was cute, but I forgot to take pictures!

ANYWAY-- On to the Halloween craft. I saw a SUPER SIMPLE ghost craft on pinterest the other night but there was no template. I drew a ghost on a piece of white paper (rounded top with round waves at the bottom). Students put a little glue on a cotton ball (a dot does a lot!) and fills the ghost with cotton balls to make it white and fluffy. Once done with that, they can trace eyes and a mouth on black paper, cut it out, and glue it on top of the cotton balls. Here is one of our finished projects- and it was so cute and quick!!

You can see how there are gaps at the bottom (from the squiggly waves). Enjoy!

B.U.I.L.D. Math Centers

I have adapted the "BUILD" math centers into our second grade classroom this year. I have never used it before so I'm definitely not an expert, but it seems to be a great management system and an easy way to keep revisiting topics while adding new ones to the mix.  I have read the BUILD acronym as a few different things, but the way we use it is:
B-Buddy Games
U-Using manipulatives
I-Independent math
L-Learning about numbers
D-Doing math

I feel like "I, L, and D" are fairly similar, but I have tried to do different things at those centers. I have a designated spot for each center and a shelf with manipulatives that students are welcome to use!  I love that students are using the word "manipulative" thanks to the centers!

Here is a quick breakdown of my basic center ideas:

B- Our school uses Envision math, so for the buddy games I use the math game at the beginning of the unit, then gradually add to it. Students are allowed to play games from any unit that we have introduced so far.  I also add fun games in there that go along with our topic. For example, during Fire Prevention Week I found a fun two player addition game. Our current unit is called "Addition Strategies" so it was perfect! They loved it.

U- I have three bins at this center labeled "help!" "right on" and "challenge." Students choose an appropriate bin and then see what activities are inside. Usually I confer with students about what bin they should be pulling from for whichever unit, but if they want to work together at the centers that is TOTALLY fine. Students are in mixed ability groups so that they can learn from each other and they don't necessarily need my help.

Ex: Help- matching cubes to numbers to develop number sense, using one ten frame and counters to make number sentences- find the tens frames here for FREE on teacherspayteachers
Ex: Right on- Using two tens frames and counters to make number sentences(find them here), doubles activities, doubles plus 1
Ex: Challenge- Place value activities using base ten blocks- I use this as a challenge activity because we have not yet talked about place value this year. If students can remember it from the end of first grade then they can gladly do those activities! If students aren't quite sure how to do it, I will pull them in a small group and review, and they usually catch on quick.

I just introduced this part-part-whole diagram to the manipulatives center today. I put some in each bin because students can adapt it to any level. I had one student ask questions like, "Can you tell me the parts?" "Can you tell me the whole?" "Can you give me an addition sentence about the diagram?" "Can you give me a subtraction sentence about the diagram?" It really made them think!

I- I copied number of the day activities from a book my mom gave me once. They are basic story problems, addition problems, and subtraction problems. I laminated these and students use dry erase markers to complete. I try to check over them before they use their pom-pom erasers to clear it off. This is done at their seats.

L-I have been putting math facts or matching numbers in different forms at this center. For example, students can quiz one another on math facts flash cards (dollar bin at Target again!) or they can complete matching puzzles that I found on Pinterest- and love! Check out Cassandra's post to get the puzzles!

One of my students brought in the Old Maid card game. I decided the students could play this at the L center since you have to match the number word to the number. However, I try to monitor it because there are more challenging activities they can do and I don't want them to always be playing Old Maid.

D-I tried to make this different from the I center by putting a little twist on it-- students CAN'T use manipulatives here. I want to see if they can do certain math activities without relying on manipulatives, and for the students that still need to- it pushes them to try without them! Activities that I have at this center are independent games like rolling two die, adding them up and creating a number sentence, or doing the same thing but making it subtraction. I also found some mini dry erase boards at target (go figure) that have addition and subtraction problems on them and they can write the sum or difference and wipe them down when they're done! They LOVE these little mini pages! I can't seem to find the link to the dice game, I will update when I find it!

Here is a picture of the mini dry erase boards!

Please feel free to comment with questions. I hope this helps you get started with math centers!

Have a wonderful week!
Taylor