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.