Happy More Math Monday!
In my classroom, I use a guided math approach during math time, so I use math games and centers daily. I have recently created some fun games and activities that my students have enjoyed again and again.
One of my (and their) favorite things to do is “Write the Room” type activities. I print out cards, hang them up around the room, and it’s like a math scavenger hunt around the classroom. I have used them with all 16 of my first graders working at once, and I have also used it as a center. Another neat thing about these cards is that I leave them up for a few days, so even when the children are not at the center, they are seeing and solving math facts throughout the day.
Another one of our favorite activities is “Color by Math Fact”. These types of activities require students to practice some basic “drill” practice, but in a fun engaging way. Color by fact also gives students a strategy to start self monitoring their own work. If the color doesn’t make sense, or the sum/difference is not listed, the students know to go back and check their work.
Here’s a my holiday activity pack, which includes write the room activities, color by number, partner games, and Christmas word problem solvers.
In my classroom now, we are also working to develop fluency through learning about fact families. My students have enjoyed these cute gingerbread fact family packs so much! I laminated the pages and have students use white board markers. For some of my struggling students I put sticky notes with the “fact family” numbers in the roof and they moved the stickies around in order to create number sentences in the fact families.
I also want to add that last year I taught third grade, and a huge focus of my teaching was to teach repeated addition and multiplication. I developed this 12 days of Christmas lesson set for students, which they absolutely loved! I couldn’t believe their excitement for a challenging math task on the day before Christmas break!
