More Ways to Use 10 More 10 Less

Our free 10 More 10 Less game will help you create a hands-on mental math activity for your students. They will work towards being able to quickly identify numbers that are 10 more and 10 less than those they spin or roll. 

Have some number charts  ready to assist students who need support. Show them how to quickly visualize a number position on the chart by going up or down a row. 

Today I want to share 3 more ways to use the playing mats now that you have them printed and laminated. Once your students are confident with the skills in this game you can use them for:

Making 10, 20 or 30

• on their turn a stduents places counters down on any number combination that makes the total
• e.g. if you're playing to 20 they may cover an 18 and a 2
• keep covering numbers until no more combinations can be found
• the winner is the last player who paced counters down

Choose 2 and Total It

• on their turn a student must cover any two numbers and find the total (or difference)
• option: record the addition or subtraction on paper
• variation: total or any 3, 4 or 5 numbers

Find a Double

• on their turn students cover 2 numbers that show a double relationship
• eg. they may cover 28 and 14, 5 and 10, 15 and 30
• keep covering numbers until no more combinations can be found
• the winner is the last player who paced counters down

If you don't have this game from our store in your collection it is free today for you!

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Addition, Subtraction

Fairy Equal Groups

Your students can have fun with numbers and counting to 12 with a new page in our coloring club! If you use the Fairy Garden action rhyme text in your classroom this can link in nicely. 

Students can play with a partner or independently, rolling to color a set number of dots in the center of a flower. Once 12 are completed the whole flower can be claimed by the player.

After playing, the rest of the page can be colored. Take some time to ask if your students notice that the 12 are in rows of 3. Help them skip-count by 3s to make the 12 total. Number them or point-and-count also.

Here is another math warm-up or mini-lesson. It's for equal groups (or fair-shares). 

Use the flower from the free fairy craft page I added last year. 

Let students paint or color a flower. This will serve as a game mat (and can be later used for a math display or to finish the craft). 

Rows of 3 on the Flower

• show students how to make equal rows of 3
• they roll a dice - here in this example, 2
• they make 2 rows of 3 with counters
• ask them to describe the rows and give you the total
• there is no winner to this game/activity - just lots of making equal ros and math talk

• here is another example, 4 rows of 3

It takes a lot of practice to have students understand the concept and language:

 ... rows of ... makes ...

Have word cards out and point to them as you model how to describe one of the arrangements of counters. 

Here are some word cards (in Google Drive)  if you need them.

Math Display: Flowers in the Fairy Garden

After your mini-lesson, create a collaborative display of equal rows and label it. Encourage students to describe the math they see. Provide some counters and let students make some more equal group arrangements as a math-play activity. 

Before your students add their flower to the display, ask them to spiral-scribble the center of the flower. Use a crayon, and show them how to draw round-and-round with yellow. Encourage them to do a reverse-direction spiral in black in the very center. 

(More for spirals here.)

Also play Where is Fairy? Tuck a fairy (from the craft page) behind one of the flowers. Choose a student to give directional language to describe her position. As they give steps, you point with a ruler to demonstrate their language. Will you get to the fairy?

Positional language takes lots of practice and this is a fun brain-break or math talk warm-up that can provide another opportunity for students to use their math.

Some positional language used may be:

above, across, along, around, after, back, before, below, beneath, beside, between, center, down, forward, from, here, high, last, left, over, past, right, right along, side, sideways, there, turn, under, underneath, up

Perhaps each morning fairy can be in a new position and it will encourage your class to do some informal math-talk with each other! 

I used our Number Tiles for the display. A few printed sets in your main teaching area are a wonderful standby for games, activities and displays. 

I hope these ideas help you make math fun and engaging for your students this week! I'd love to send you more support - join my newsletters. 

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math warm up, Multiplication

A Math Warm Up Helps

We have a new display pack in our classroom decor collection to make your classroom jobs or helpers rotation engaging and practical! You can use the name cards to help your students remember what role they are being main-helper for this week! It's ready in our TPT store! 

I have something to help your math lessons at the small-group table this week too - a fast paced and fun, skill focused game! Just use a cup/container and craft sticks (or even pencils)! 

• play in pairs
• the aim is to be the player to make a total of 10 - either on the table or in the cup
• take turns to roll and choose to move sticks from the table to the cup or from the cup to the table
• the whole number must be made from where they are taken from
• start with 5 in the cup, 5 on the table

• let's take a look at one game in action
• player rolls a 3 
• if a 6 is rolled on the first roll, roll again
• 3 is taken from the table and added to the cup

• player rolls a 6
• takes 6 from the cup and adds to the table

• player rolls a 3
• moves 3 from the table to the cup

• player rolls a 5
• moves 5 from the table to the cup
• makes a complete 10 with this move so wins

This game is fast to prep and integrates counting, addition, subtraction, comparing, decision making in math and strategy. 

If you have children who struggle with competitive games, consider letting them play solo. 

I hope your students love this new warm-up! Perhaps the equipment-helper can clear away all the supplies and let you get ready for the main lesson!

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math warm up

Kitten Art Project

Help your kindergarten students draw and form simple spiral and curved lines with our kitten directed drawing steps.

They're free over in the Pond Coloring Club today!

After drawing have your students paint or crayon to create a beautiful classroom display of their art! 

Perhaps you could extend their learning with:

• a talk about artworks that feature bright bold colors
• an investigation of the color wheel and how to find contrasting colors
• share a story about pets

Here is a favorite of ours - Can I Keep Him by Steven Kellogg. Not only is it an engaging story but it's perfect for an early-years level lesson on persuasive texts.

Have fun creating a kindle of kittens in your classroom!

• Find more practice for drawing spirals, shape and curved lines with our City Kitty tracing page pack!
• find more for pets 
• find more drawing projects

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Cat Sat Mat or the City Kitty

I had a chance to update our Cat on the Mat word family craft for you! Your students can have fun with fine motor while creating a record of their learning in word families! 

The printable file now includes 2 more options for you:

• a 2 Page Craft (all the pieces you need for one student on 2 pages)
• a Quick Craft (no gluing, all in one piece to cut)

I've also added a little digital activity option. You could use this as part of your lesson introduction or a mini lesson to review words in the at-family a few days later! 



Here on the blog I will share with you a no-prep listening game that you can integrate into your week. Students will listen to you say words and differentiate between -at and -it words. Here is a list of words if you'd like to create a display like mine. 

As well you can integrate:

• awareness of hard and soft c (cat/city)
• rhyming words
• onset and rime
• past / present tense

1. tell students that cat sat on the mat and show the hand movement of lacing your fingers to make a mat
2. tell students that kitty went to the city and show them how to stretch their arms into the air like a tall city building (the words on our board look like tall buildings with windows too)
3. ask them to listen to the words you say and make the movement (and repeat the word) to distinguish if it has a medial a or i (make a mat for a, a city building for i)
4. say words at random and support your students where necessary
5. you may need to emphasize the medial short vowel, or stretch the words out to begin with as they get used to the actions and format of the listening game

Please note that the words on our display are only in boxes to look like buildings, doors and windows. This is a listening game.

I hope you and your students have fun with the Cat on the Mat and the Kitty in the City! 

• Find the craft in our TPT store!
• Let City Kitty help students with pre-writing 
• Find more listening and aural activities/games here

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Talking and Listening, Word Families

Puppy Needs Love and Play

 This week you can talk to your children about the needs of their pets with the Quick Craft that has been added to the Pond Coloring Club. It's Love Your Pet Day this week!

You may like to break the craft completion up over several days:

• share a book and talk about the needs of living things
• make a collaborative classroom chart to record some details about the needs of living things / pets / animals
• link the chart construction into your literacy program by linking it with your reading and writing instruction
• ask questions and have students retrieve information from the chart to answer or elaborate further (talking and listening)
• talk about pets at home and their needs
• write a list of the main needs of pets (water, food, shelter, love/care, play/exercise)
• show students the Quick Craft and provide time and space for them to paint the puppy - you can set up a painting table and let a few students at a time paint or do as a whole class 
• before writing, coloring or cutting use it during your small-group math time

Math Warm Up - Puppy Likes a Pattern

• review repeating patterns with your students
• suggest that patterns do not always follow a straight, horizontal line - some go in a circle - e.g. necklace, rim of a vase, belt, the edge of a cake etc
• ask students to make a repeating pattern with some counters you provide
• encourage them to make the pattern around the circle that puppy is holding on their craft
• ask them to describe the pattern to you
• talk about how the pattern is continuous 
• students could draw the pattern on the circle with pencils or crayons

• after the math lesson, have your students write the needs of their pet or an animal of their choice and finish coloring their craft ready for display with the collaborative class chart you made

If you're not yet in the Pond Coloring Club, we'd love to have you join! 

This week, you may also like

• Most Loved Pet graphing activity
• Puppy and Cat Addition Games with Dice
• Pets Classroom Banner

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Craft for Kids, math warm up, pattern blocks, pets

On the Weekend

A practical routine for Monday morning is to have your students share and write about their weekend. There are ways you can make it more engaging for students as their confidence grows.

A Monday morning recount as a regular fixture on your schedule will also bring some consistency to your teaching and class community. Start with a straightforward lesson format and as the year progresses think of ways to make it more creative.

To help your students unpack the features of a retelling or recount, model how to share about your weekend. You may like to use the printable accents from our Retell Rainbow and point out each section as you share. Keep it fairly simple to start - you are teaching the structure here, not detailed descriptive writing at this stage. 

Let students share in a way that suits your program - choose a few students each week to share to the whole class, let students turn-and-talk to a peer or group or have a day of the week designated to each child and allocate a 'news' or sharing time. 

Transition to writing by having your students record the main parts of their oral recount. They can draw, write a few words or sentences if able. This butterfly from our Coloring Club craft page works well - and as a bonus you can create a class display. Alternatively you could project it onto your board and model one recount from a student who shared with the class - writing collaboratively with yoru students. 

Later in the week students can take their butterfly (writing plan) and create a longer piece of text with additional detail and descriptive writing. Perhaps in a journal or typed into the computer. 



To support spelling in writing have a word wall up for students to access. Our one page word wall makes a lovely alphabet frieze while supporting your students independence.



I'll pop back with another blog post next weekend with a few more tips for a Monday morning recount. 

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Oral Language, Writing

Time to the Hour Math Warm Up

 

Here is a fast-prep idea for a math warm up to help your students become familiar or review time to the hour. 

Use a real clock with the glass/cover removed or make one. I made this one using the free page from our Pond Coloring Club. Printing it on card or laminating would work best. 

You'll need to create some hands. Glue the minute hand down pointing to the 12 and keep the hour hand spinning with a brad / paper clip. Test a few materials to ensure it spins freely before you start to play.

To play simply place the clock down in the middle of your small group table and tell students to call the time when the spinner stops. Spin the hour hand multiple times and have students identify the time. Ask them to say time in full - 5 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 2 o'clock etc.

You can find the clock page over in the math page category of the club! 

If you're looking for ways to make hour time and clocks fun for your little learners, you'll love our new tracing pages!

They can provide practice for:

• tracing simple shapes
• tracing numbers
• tracing letters
• identifying time to the hour
• drawing clock hands to match hour time

They're over in our TPT store with a bonus workbook cover!

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Telling Time

oo Word Mini Lesson

Our action rhyme Space Cat can be used in your classroom as part of your literacy program, a brain break or for engagement and classroom management. Children love joining in with collaborative reading and getting to move in their lessons. 

If you've taught your students this rhyme here is a mini lesson you can use as a literacy warm up or lesson transition. You can use the exact steps, or adapt them to suit your own classroom curriculum. 

• say/read the rhyme together
• help your students identify the words noon and moon and talk about them
• create a chart of oo words, asking students to suggest ones
• have them watch you write with a marker and create the classroom chart
• talk about how you are writing as you write the words and how you think of the letters to write
• read the words with your students (I am sharing a reference list of oo words that are decodable, below)
• point to different words and have your students read them back
• now tell them to listen as you say some longer phrases/sentences and they will call out the missing word
• here students are working on attentive listening, accessing the collaborative chart they helped make and building voabulary

Examples

• I sweep the floor with a ...
• Both apples and oranges are delicious, it's so difficult to ...
• We saw many different animals on our trip to the ...
• Last night I heard an owl ...

Leave the collaborative word bank chart up in your classroom for more language based activities and brain breaks throughout the week.  

Here is a list of words to reference (in Google Dive): oo Word Reference List

In the Coloring Club today I have a page for drawing stars. If you're reviewing fluency to 5 and zooming to the moon, talk about the 5 stars and 5 points on the stars too!

If you'd like to use Space Cat in your classroom, find him HERE

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Finger Play, Long Vowels, Talking and Listening

Five Fluency to the Moon and Back

 Last week I shared some minimal-prep math warm up ideas for developing fluency with numbers to 5. Number fluency will support addition and subtraction concepts.

Today I have 3 more ideas to share with you! They have a to the moon and back theme! 

To the Moon and Back Fluency Within 5 Math Warm Up Ideas

• show students how to count forward and backward on their hand 
• show them how they can make a rocket, with all fingers down and zoom it up to the moon
• practice lots of counting and showing different numbers with fingers

Warm Up 1 - Countdown

• model with 1 student first
• student places their hand down on your small-group-table and you present a number of counters to them, lining one up per finger
• count back together (or forwards if you're students are not up to this)
• you stop counting
• student continues counting back and then zooms their rocket up
• for example, you lay out 3 counters - and say 5, 4, 3 - children say 2, 1, 0
• now use other students' hands and have everyone count along

This is helping them with position of numbers, counting and getting them ready for subtraction (number before).  Lining a counter up with their fingers will help them with 1:1 correspondence and also help them begin to visualize difference/partitioning numbers. 

Warm Up 2 - Stars

• put 5 counters on the table - they are 'stars'
• ask them to close their eyes
• take several stars away
• upon opening their eyes, they quickly call the total (without counting from 1) and continue counting back to 0
• for example, you start with 5, take 2 away, they say 3, 2, 1, 0 
• zooming a rocket into the air is optional

This warm up is getting your students familiar with backward counting from different positions ready for subtraction. 

Warm Up 3 - Build a Rocket

• have a collection of pattern blocks in a concealed bag or container
• on their turn students take a shape
• the aim is to build the rocket in the correct sequence
• have a rocket already built as a model (printable available through my newsletter, see below)
• students must pull a red trapezoid first - as they get more experience with identifying the shapes in a concealed bag they will get faster at this
• if they pull the wrong shape, they return it and wait their next turn
• talk about how many blocks they have so far, how many more they need etc

This warm up provides an opportunity for lots of math talk. Talk about shapes, sides on shapes, how many, how many more, how many left etc.

An example math talk/conversation during part of your warm up may sound something like this:

I see you have a red trapezoid and a yellow hexagon so far. So how many shapes do you have on your rocket? Oh yes, 2. The next number will be ....? And what shape is the next number? That's correct a square.  You'll be feeling for a shape with pointy corners. How many corners on a square? After you get the third shape on your rocket, how many left will you have to find? So you have 2 and then another 1 and then you will need .... ? So 2, 1 and another 2 makes 5? 

All informal math discussions are different. Keep encouraging students to share as naturally as they can and talk about their numbers and mathematical concepts.  

I hope your students have fun getting warmed up for math with these practical games!

• find more ideas for 1-5 here
• find activities for 5 pattern blocks HERE

If you'd like to create a classroom display of your little astronauts and the things they love to the moon and back, this template pack will help!

Fine Motor Rocket to the Moon Craft

In the free coloring club library you can find a free fine motor cutting and tracing skills craft to make a fun rocket to the moon craft today! Your children may love to make a mobile or just cut and paste onto a colored piece of card.

Newsletter Super Fans, I'm sending you some printables to support these math activities but you can easily adapt them without. 

If you'd like future newsletters, it's easy - just sign up on the website. 

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math warm up, Subtraction

Drawing Book Cover for February

February is the perfect month to get creative and draw, paint and make lovely things! If your children are enjoying drawing this month you may like to make them a special scrapbook to collect their pages. They can flip back through for years to come and treasure their growing creativity. 

I would love to share with you a page that can become a cover for their book - or inspiration for them to create their own! 

Find it in Google Drive: My Big Book of Lovely Drawings Cover


And if you are looking for something sweet to create for Valentine's Day, I have some steps your children can follow to draw a Bee Mine bee! 

They can:

• add it to their drawing book
• make it the cover of a card to give someone
• draw it on thick paper and create a tag for a special gift
• cut it and add it to a class display on a bulletin board or door

Be sure to join my email newsletter list for more ideas throughout the year! 

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Directed Drawing, Valentines Day

Panda and Puppy Play

If you get our newsletter you will have seen this cute panda friend in your inbox this week (it's still available - see base of this post). 

Students will become fluent with numbers and work with combinations that make 8.

Panda Plays

• cover the board with dice - randomly (or use the mat that has dots printed)
• stduents take turns to remove dice that make 8 - e.g. 5-3, 4-4, 5-2-1
• the player who is last able to find a combination may be declared the winner

Use the option with printed dots with coloring pencils. Students can color the squares that make 8 on their turn. 

Following on from that activity, you can have students use the More Puppies page from our Pond Coloring Club today!

Before coloring they can

• add more detail pattern to the ears
• play this making-8 review game:

Puppy Paws

• roll 2 dice on your turn
• when you make 8, find 2 circles on the page and turn them into 'paws' by drawing 4 extra circles on each
• talk about how 2 groups of 4 make 8 and that this is an equal number to the pair they rolled (eg. 5 and 3)

If you're not yet in the Pond Coloring Club, we'd love to have you! 

If you're students love puppies, their pets as well as fun in math - help them review combinations to 10 with our new math craft! It's ready over in our TPT store and includes 3 different activity styles to help you make them in the time you have available. 

I hope your learners have fun in math today and if you love they love teh panda game, there is more fun to be had with 19 other fun game mats:

If you didn't see panda in your inbox - get him now:

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Addition, Dice Grid Games, Making 10, Numbers, Valentines Day