Monday, October 17, 2011

MathCenter Linky Party

Head on over to Chalk Talk and check out the Math Workstation Linky Party, there are a lot of wonderful ideas to spice up your math centers!

My math center is a pumpkin themed pattern block center.  I start this lesson by reviewing a variety of shapes, and we discuss how to create shapes from other shapes. Using patter blocks I give students some time to build a variety of pumpkin faces using pattern blocks. Students choose their favorite face, then trace it on to the pumpkin.  The shapes can then be painted in.  In the end we graph together how many of each shape were used, then we discuss our results.   ENJOY :)




Friday, October 14, 2011

Autumn Poems

 In class we talked about a variety of leaves.  I had a parent helper trace and cut out the leaves.  The students colored them with fall colored oil pastels... then we had to try and blend the colors together.  We LOVE oil pastels.  After that we worked with our fifth grade buddies to create Autumn poems. ENJOY!

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Even & Odd Street

 I saw this great idea on Pinterest, and with the help of our wonderful Kindergarten class we worked together to create our Even & Odd Street!  This was used as a Social Studies and Math lesson for First Grade.  **On Pinterest they were flat houses, but we wanted to add some dimension.

Math:  We worked with shapes on the first day of this lesson to build houses (Even houses have normal shapes, Odd houses look odd/crazy). Shapes was a great lesson for Kindergarten, while being a great review for First Grade.  To build the house we stuffed lunch bags then glued the shapes/materials on to it.  This gave it a great 3D look.  We gave each house an "address" either an odd or even number to match the type of house it was.

On the second day we grouped them into even and odd houses, then we placed the houses in order according to the number it was given. 

Social Studies: We have been talking about community within S.S.  We wrapped this around the idea of building a community, we talked about how each street has an even and an odd side, then we did some work with their own addresses. 

**I did see this referenced on theteacherwife.blogspot.com as well, she also found it on Pinterest.  She does have some blackline masters you can download for flat houses if you want.  We did not use them, because we wanted to houses to stick out when taped/glued to the street.

ENJOY!!!