TPT Seller Challenge: Make Your Masterpiece

Happy 4th of July!  I am so excited to share that I have finished my masterpiece for the TPT Seller Challenge this week!  Week 3's theme is Make Your Masterpiece.  One of the first math units we tackle at the beginning of the year is all about shapes.

There are 6 great activities included to build fluency with identifying shapes and reading shape words.

 With 2 different recording sheet options.

 Great for building fine motor strength!

 Gets students up and moving and looking for shapes in their environment.

 Both color and black and white options are included!

2 different ways to sort and record.

Who doesn't love Bingo!?  Color and black & white options are included.

You can find this unit in my TPT store by clicking here!

A HUGE thank you to these ladies for the motivation to create something new!

Make sure to head over to their blogs to see the other masterpieces!

  

  

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Free Math Apps for the Primary Classroom

I have been using iPads in my Kindergarten classroom for the last 3 years.  I have 5 of them so it works best to use them in small groups.  We use them all day long and across the curriculum.  When I first got them, I was overwhelmed by the amount of apps out there.  You never know which ones are the best to use in the classroom.  At first, it was trial and error.  I'll admit, I downloaded some doozies!  Some were free.  Others I paid for.  But over the last few years, I've found some that work best for both me and my students.

To save you some time, I thought I'd share 5 of my favorite apps to use for Math.  And the best part?  They are all FREE!

 Our district adopted Everyday Math years ago.  I tried it.  I'm not a fan.  But, they do have some fun math apps that we like to use!  First up is an app called Monster Squeeze.  This app is a great partner game that reinforces number recognition, number line concepts, and number comparisons.  Players take turns finding the secret number on the number line.

 Another app from Everyday Math that we love is Addition Top It!  This 2 player game is great for practicing math facts up to 10.  There is also a paid version for subtraction.

 Early in the year, we do a unit on flat and solid shapes.  I found this great Geoboard app that allows my Kinders to make different shapes, put shapes together to make other shapes and make pictures out of shapes.  They LOVE it!

 This is another great app to reinforce number recognition, number order and the number line.  It's called Line 'Em Up.  What I love about this app (besides the fact that it's free!) is that you can easily differentiate it for your students.  You can select the number of tiles the student must order (10, 15 or 20), select the starting number for the number line, as well as how the remaining numbers are laid out (in a single pile or spread out).  

10 Frame Fill is an app for building fluency with composing and decomposing the number 10 using a ten frame.  You can set the ten frame to fill sequentially or randomly and if and how the number sentence will show up.

What are some of your favorite apps?

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Five for Friday

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for this week's Five for Friday!  

Spring has definitely sprung this week!  We were back at it and spring break feels like a distant memory.  We started our unit on Insects and my kinders couldn't be more excited!

We did these great directed drawings and the kids labeled the parts of the insect.  I led them through the basic insect shape and then they could decide to add wings, a mouth, and other details.  They each turned out so different and wonderful all at the same time.

 

We have an amazing outdoor educator at our school.  For our garden lesson this week, she brought in food from the garden for the kids to build edible insects!  The kids were super engaged and wanted to show off their insect creations.  They got to talk with partners in their small groups to describe what they created and named the parts of their insects.  We then drizzled honey over the top so they could eat their hard work! 

After looking at the work of Eric Carle, we made these insects inspired by the famous author/illustrator!  My good friend Molly over at Lucky to Be in First has a fabulous tutorial on how to prep the paper to make your own Eric Carle inspired artwork.

We are wrapping up a unit on addition this week and of course all of our math activities were insect themed!  I took a little help from some of my bloggy friends for our Math Stations.  The activities are from 

Caitlin Clabby (Kindergarten Smiles) 

and 

Marsha McGuire (A Differentiated Kindergarten).

The activities came from these units:

find it here

find it here

find it here

Baseball Season started.  'Nuff said.

Head over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to see what everyone else has been up to this week!

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