Rounding 3 Digit Numbers


I've always found that little learners grasp the concept of rounding quite readily - but then forget it just as quickly. When this happens, as teachers we need to plan to revisit the key concepts consistently over the remainder of the year.

The most fun and engaging way I have found to do this is with fast prep, easy set-up math activities. Write-n-wipe cards are perfect. Sit a bin of them down on the floor and let your learners use them as a fast-finisher to reengage with past content.

Our latest printable math center activity can be used in this way after you have introduced it in rotations or workshops. It will help students learn to round 3 digit numbers to the nearest hundred.

On each card they will record, with a dry erase marker, the nearest hundred - using the balance visual prompt to assist them if necessary.

We've included:
  • detailed instructions
  • 72 game cards
  • a worksheet to record
  • a cover page to help you organize your resources for future reference

Here you can see how Sam used the ruler-balance visual to assist in rounding 479 to 500.


Find these cards over in our TpT store HERE

Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects

Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Exciting news! We've got a brand new directed drawing packet! This edition is perfect when you are teaching a unit of work on The Farm.

Directed drawing allows young students to feel successful on their journey learning to draw and helps to motivate their writing.

We bound our pages into a book to show you easily what is included! You could make a drawing book like this for your little ones, or just use the pages as stand lone projects.

Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

As always, there are 4 main project styles for each drawing.
  • classic directed drawing
  • big draw
  • draw and write OR
  • Read-Draw-Write

Big Draw 

This project style provides the steps on one page, and a page sized, bordered worksheet for students to create a large artwork. Here is the one we did with the duck drawing.

Duck Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Draw and Write 

This project style uses the same separate page (or project on your board) of steps as in 'Big Draw' but has  a project page with room for drawing and a few lines to write a sentence or two.
Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Classic directed drawing 

Our original and traditional style, with everything on one page. Drawing only. As we did here, encourage your students to be create something unique using the directed drawing as a springboard. Other characters, a setting or background for example!

Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Read, Draw, Write

This style worksheet encourages students to read the words in the word bank, follow the directed steps to draw a picture and then lines are provided for students to write a sentence or two about their picture or the topic.

Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

This packet has 10 pictures to draw:
  • duck
  • cow
  • pig
  • sheep
  • hen
  • turkey
  • goat
  • horse
  • barn
  • scarecrow
We'd love to show you a few of them! We drew and painted them with watercolor before outlining in black sharpie.

Cow Directed Drawing

Cow Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Hen Directed Drawing

Pig Directed Drawing

Pig Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Sheep Directed Drawing

Sheep Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Turkey Directed Drawing

Turkey Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

We do hope . you love creating special art projects with your learners and think they will make your classroom come alive with the joy of the farm!

Hop over to our store to find this new pack!

Farm Directed Drawing Art Projects For Kids

Spotty Spiders Art Project


We have a new Reading Pack with a fun rhyming text Five Spotty Spiders. Our packs include a printable and digital text to use during a shared reading session with your learners. Ten activities are also in the pack to accompany the story.

Today we'd love to share an art project that you can do alongside or independent of this pack. We took the steps over 3 different sessions, allowing drying time in between.

Spotty Spider Art Project

You will need:
  • art paper
  • 5 paint colors + white
  • googly eyes (optional)
  • black sharpie
  • scissors
  • glue
  • black paper
  • white oil pastel


  • Use your finder to make ovals with the paint and create 8 legs extending out from the ovals.



  • Once dry, use a contrasting color to dab dots on each spider.
  • Make white dots for eyes. When dry, use a black marker for eyeballs.

  • Alternatively you could use googly eyes and stickers!

  • Cut out each spider when they are dry.

  • Use a white oil pastel to draw a web on black paper.

  • Glue the spiders on the black paper!


The spiders can be created with finger painting or by using a brush. Your little ones will delight in the exploration of color and shape and by creating something truly unique!

If you would like to check out the reading pack that pairs perfectly with this project, hop over to TpT:



Comparing 3 Digit Numbers - Spider Style


Sam and I had fun this afternoon making and comparing 3 digit numbers - with a little spider twist! We each rolled 3 dice and created the biggest number we could on our own mat. Then we compared them, found the largest and worked out the difference. 

I supported Sam and showed him place value and jump-back strategies to work out the difference.

You could provide more challenge to students by using 9 sided dice and also by asking to add the numbers to find an overall total.


Here you can see how Sam worked out the difference between 655 and 552 using a whiteboard and a jump-back number line strategy.




Bright Spiders Screen Wallpaper

I'd love to share a brand new screen wallpaper for your home and classroom electronic boards, iPads, computers and phones. This one is a bright spider design - hopefully it brings big smiles and joy to your week.

Simply download the images from google drive from the links below. Store them on your camera roll and choose them for your screen saver and/or wallpaper!

Find the Computer Screensaver HERE
and the Phone Screensaver HERE

{These are for your personal use only and cannot be redistributed or shared in distribution folders}

We've also added a spider coloring page to the Premium Coloring Club recently -  hop over to our website to find it if you're a member. Share and tag us in your projects on social media - we'd love to see them! 


Coordinating Printables

We've also added our cute spider design, in print quality to the 'Banner and Paper' pack. This pack allows you to coordinate your home office or classroom elements with printable papers, folder covers and banner pennants.



Spooky Spider Craft Project

Did you notice the adorable spiders hanging in our office. Brett will love them I'm sure! They are made from templates in our Spooky Spiders craftivity pack.


As well as a selection of spider shape options, we've included writing papers for your students to complete a writing project too!


Spinning Spiders by Melvin Berger is perfect for reading before your students complete the writing projects. Informative texts set out in the style of story books, Let's Read and Find Out Science books are favorites here in our house!



Of course, any spider book would work or your little learners can research online for some spider facts and information. Follow or Spider Activities pinterest board to see all the wonderful ideas we find!

Have a wonderful day friend, and thanks so much for stopping by!

Fall Learning Activities


We added two new autumn themed coloring pages to our free Coloring Club today! We hope you love them too. Simply download and print them out as a special creative project for your little ones to complete.

This one has some of our cutie-pie stick kids who are seemingly smitten with pumpkins.


And this one another two stick kids who are feeling the spider love! 


What a wonderful time of year to be creative and colorful. Over in our store we have:
And be sure to follow our Autumn Classroom Ideas Pinterest board as we are always finding wonderfully creative and clever projects and activities to save.

Doubles for Addition


Make learning 2 digit doubles engaging, skill-based and fun with our new Math Pack! These 5 activities will allow you to extend on your students' knowledge of single digit doubles. This is Pack 41 in our series of sequenced math activity packs.

This bundle will help students learning to:
  • use knowledge of single digit doubles to attempt 2-digit doubles
  • double multiples of ten
  • double 2 digit numbers ending in 5 (combine split and double strategies)
  • double teen numbers (using split strategy to double tens and ones separately)
  • apply mental strategies to double 2 digit numbers

Activity 1: Think Doubles

In this write-n-wipe activity, your learners will use our frog, ladybug and owl game boards and use their thinking of single digit addition to double 2 digit multiples of ten.


Add some place value blocks to have them model out the connection. Here they can see the connection between 2 units (dots on the frog) and 2 ten blocks. 


This activity set also includes some game mats that have a mix of single/2 digit related doubles for consolidation. 

Activity 2: Doubles with Five

In this activity, your little learners will make sets of pictures and words to represent various double facts. They will be able to see how 2 fives can be separated / partitioned from the problem and regrouped to make a ten. In the photo below you see that two 25s have been made. Students will count - 20, 40 and 10 (linking the two fives) makes 50 to find this total.

Activity 3: Teen Double

Students will double teen numbers in this activity. They can build number towers from connecting cubes or use these printable cards. They will  place a double side by side and first double the tens and then the ones to find the overall total.


Activity 4: Frog Double

In this activity your learners will be encouraged to fluently double teen numbers using some of the mental strategies they may have developed over the course of completing the previous three activities. They can mentally partition numbers into tens and ones and find the total to cover with a counter of their color. This game is played in pairs.

Activity 5: Double Scoop

Students go beyond teen numbers to all 2-digit numbers up to 50 using mental strategies in this activity. Students love to match scoops and cones to build ice-creams and this activity provides for a wonderful scaffold into 2 digit vertical algorithms.






Each of the 5 small-group activities has:
  • detailed instructions
  • playing cards/boards/templates
  • a worksheet (either a recording worksheet or a fun-follow-up)
  • a cover page to help you organize your resources for future reference
Math Pack 41 is over in our TpT store waiting for you!

Black Cat Puppet Craft


We made cat paper bag puppets yesterday. It's kind of a long story, involving mice, books, puppets and chocolate cake. What started out as a gently-suggested frog soon became a cat in our little impromptu puppet show. #whoamItointerruptthefun - so puppet making we commenced. Largely because, of the 350 puppets we seem to have here, 'black cat' is missing from the fold.

Never mind. We do not need much of an excuse to craft. 

To make our adorable cuties we gathered up:
  • paper bags
  • black paint
  • sponge brushes
  • googley eyes
  • heart shaped buttons - you could use paper or felt
  • glitter glue pens
  • glue stick
  • white craft glue (for eyes and button)


After painting the bags and waiting for them to dry (insert hair dryer here), we:

  • folded back a small section at the bottom of the bag, (which is the head of the cat)
  • found the center of the fold and held it down with a finger
  • peeled back the corner from this center point to make pointy ears
  • glued down flap and ears
  • drew a mouth and whiskers with the glitter glue



We used ours as a puppet in a story we are putting together (more on that later), and then hung them up on our display board. We'd love to see yours - tag us on Instagram so we can see!


Earlier this week we released Math Pack 41 which helps your learners with 2 digit doubles for addition. We've been playing some of these games too and will pop back tomorrow to show you in more detail. But in the meantime I am excited to share with you a cat (or course!) themed play-on-the-page game for doubling teen numbers! See how fast your students can be at memorizing these addition facts. Start by helping them partition the tens and ones and doubling each side before combining. In no time they will memorize them I'm sure!


Play-on-the-page games are SO easy to prep - just print one per pair of learners in your classroom. They can each use a different colored pencil to keep track of turns - or place in a sheet protecter and use with dry erase markers! 

Download this one from Google Drive to play today: Halloween Spin and Double Teen Numbers Game