Saturday, January 23, 2016

Magic Snowball Fun with Tens and Ones

Hello again Sweet Peeps. I am working really hard to blog more consistently this new year. I really do love it and have missed it. This is a fun little activity we did a couple of years ago but I never blogged about it.

Several years ago we started following the Envisions textbook scope and sequence pretty consistently. This meant not really digging deep into place value until much later in the year than I like. For some of my struggling sweet and lows, this makes understanding place value and tens and ones more difficult.

I am sure you have had a student or two who will count a stack of Unifix cubes even though you've told them there will ALWAYS be 10 in the stack. These are the same students that often count to be sure there are still 5 fingers on each hand. Because of this, I knew I wanted to create a hands-on way for them to understand to value of a ten rod....so, we needed to use some Magic Snowballs to help us. :)

The first step is to make the Magic Snowballs using small white pom pom balls, spray glue, and white glitter. All you need to do is spray the pom pom balls with the glue and sprinkle them with the white glitter.


After that, we receive a package from a friendly snowman containing the Magic Snowballs, craft sticks, number cards, and a poem. We also received a cute snowman bag to hold everything in.


Here is a closer look at the poem.


Students then help make the 10 rods we will be using to build numbers. Students glued 10 Magic Snowballs onto each craft stick.


I had my struggling students help create and build several 10 rods so we could talk about how many they had as they were building them. This really helped them to be able to know and understand that 3 rods=30 Magic Snowballs.

Here is a peek at the cards. I included all of the teen numbers because those are often tricky for some of my kiddos.


After making a huge set of 10 rods, students were able to start building numbers.


Since we made a lot, I sent home some snowball tens and ones so my struggling students could practice at home.

You can grab the cards and poem by clicking on the picture below. :)


I hope your kiddos enjoy this activity as much as my kiddos do. :)

From My Heart to Yours,

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Where are the Snowflakes? A Little Preposition Fun

Hi Sweet Peeps. I wanted to share a quick and easy activity we did to work on prepositions. I know for my ELL kiddos this can be very tricky. Since we do not get snow in East Texas often, I have to bring in the snow in fun ways...not as fun as real snow though. :)

We started with a fun little poem I wrote that was full of prepositions. After listening to the poem, we acted it out because movement and gestures help our brains learn better.


We then read the poem together again as we colored the prepositions.


Students were then given their own snowflake to decorate. We used some of these directions to discuss where we put our snowflakes.


The kiddos LOVED this and it really showed me who might still be struggling with prepositions. Here are a few pictures.



Here is a little assessment you can use as well. :)


Click here to grab this *freebie*.


I hope to be back sooner than the last time to share some more ideas from my head and my heart.

From My Heart to Yours,