Doubles Land Neighborhoods

Teaching first graders to use double and near double strategies to solve addition problems is a difficult task. We made these little neighborhoods to help get a visual of the different counting patterns doubles and near doubles make including even and odd. The kids suggested the cul-de-sac. Funny!

Just some handy little tidbits about how to show kids the attributes of shapes in fun and more visual ways...

Corners or Vertices....









Sides... (Yes! I wrote on my manipulatives!)







Edges and Vertices (I showed the kids the pieces and built the shapes in front of them.)

Labeling Attributes of 3D Shapes

Our kids take 6 weeks tests in our district so getting from concrete to abstract pencil paper tasks is an important step to prepare them. I created this activity (see photos) to help with this. We completed this evaluative activity after doing the other activity I will post next building 3D shapes with coffee stirrers and marshmallows. The students had access to the real shapes while completing this.

Fun with the Sun

Circle maps about the sun...All of the words on circle maps all over the place drive me crazy, and my students have a hard time reading what they wrote afterwards. So.... we learned how to organize our info using bullets and some lines. Worked great! They could actually tell how many facts they listed and could read them! :)

Place Value With Students' Initials

Just a cute way to have a little fun with place value... Photos are pretty self explanatory. The kids had so much fun. My colleague next door, Ms. Pollard, had her students make the initial larger, and this worked a little better giving them a higher number of tens and ones to count.

Weekly Word Wall Activity Sheet - posted on TPT Free

For those interested, I just posted my Weekly Word Wall Activity Sheet mentioned on a previous post at Teachers Pay Teachers. It's free. It's my first TPT freebie. Hope it works! :)

The Seasonal Cycle in Movement

To help my students remember the order of the seasonal cycle, we act it out with motions. 1. Winter (sleeping pose) 2. Spring (spring awake with small hands to represent buds) 3. Summer (hands up high for full leaves and then into a circle for a big sun) 4. Fall (hands fall as fingers wiggle to represent the leaves falling down) Maybe kinda kookie but the kids like it, and it works. :)