Fraction Fun

It's amazing what you can fit into a week with a snow day, 2 hr delay, and a full moon!

I swear, the effects of the full moon did not wear off for days.....

We're right into the swing with our fraction unit.  I vamped up some past activities this year.

Learning parts of a whole - there's a great Discovery Education video where parts of a whole is compared to pizza.  Been using it for years!  Check out my math wiki page on fractions to see more (I use Internet Explorer for it, since Firefox does not like to recognize Windows Media).  We created pizzas, as we've done in the past, but this year I had a brainstorm, and we "ordered" pizzas and then made them, complete with a "box" (made from the large construction paper).

 We used the book, The Lion's Share to discuss how even though denominators may seem big, in "fraction world," the bigger the number, the smaller the piece!  We created animal pies to feed each of our hungry furry/scaly friends!

 

 

Then, we moved on to parts of a set - doughnuts.  We then became a bakery and created doughnuts!

Yep, it's kind of a "fraction foodcourt" outside our room right now.

Today, we continued our map studies and students had to follow clues and the cardinal directions to find their egg.  It was a big hit with my kids who apparently (I found out later) were bragging in the hallway to other kids during Title I about it.  Too cute! :)  For your copy, please refer to my earlier post about it!

At some point, (Spring Break?  Summer?) I will have the fraction unit up (we don't finish it for another week) as well as some map activities for you to use.  I think I've discovered that it's best to have my kiddos do it first, then tweak it.  For example, those "order forms" that go on the front of the pizza box?  Yeah, a little big.  Also, they were supposed to have a doughnut box to put those in, but 12 doughnuts were just too big.  It turned out cute, though! :)  

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter/Spring Break (whether it's ending or beginning) and stays safe!  We'll be traveling to my parents' house for the annual Easter celebration, then Sunday we have our men's breakfast (yum!  prepared by all the men in the church!) and then on to the inlaws for some celebrating and possibly another egg hunt!  

Monday is my "official" start to Spring Break for myself and my 2 personal kiddos, so hopefully something productive will come out of it! :)  Until then, thanks for reading and be sure to check out my TpT sale that starts April 1 (Monday) and the Teachers Notebook sale going on now! ;)

Egg Hunt Freebie

So, we are beginning our unit on maps and YIKES Easter is so stinkin' early this year, I decided to combine the two.

Since we are on another *sigh* S-word day, I've been mostly doing...well, nothing pertaining to school.  Shame on me! Slept in, spent some time giggling over funny stuff on Pinterest, playing with the kids, and reading an actual ADULT book (guilty pleasure!).  The "oh crap, wasted most of the day when I could've been catching up on what's in my schoolbag" hit me this evening. :(

So, I wanted to share with you the brainstorm I got for my lack of attention to the calendar/holidays, since you know, we JUST celebrated St. Pat's Day and I never got a letter out to my parents requesting eggs.

I stopped by Walmart and grabbed some of the large eggs for my kids.

 

Each of my students has a number for mailbox purposes and for my sanity - it makes it much easier to find out whose paper is missing!  So, I plan on numbering the eggs and handing each one of my kiddos a map of the room and instructions on how to find their egg (which I will be diligently hiding during lunch).  I even created a post sheet for those that find their eggs first, where they have to practice using the cardinal directions.

I intentionally left the map and cards blank.  I'm waiting to go in my room and actually mark off how many steps east, west, etc.  I also wanted to draw the map - or have the option of the kids actually drawing the map and coming up with their own symbols - when I was in my classroom.  I just don't trust my memory lately. :(

I just love these bunnies from mycutegraphics.com!  So, if you'd like to borrow the idea, click {here} to take you to Google Drive, where it's a PDF.  

I'm off to complete another idea, this one inspired by Pinterest and have my students follow directions using habitat maps and plastic animals. Promise I'll share it when finished! :)

Spring Centers

I didn't go whole hog into Spring Centers this time, just because we had a field trip scheduled for that Friday. However, we celebrated a bit on Thursday, so I wanted to share what we did!

First, my team put together an egg hunt that was a review for Science and History. Students had a numbered sheet, 1-20, and had to work in partners and find each egg, read the slip inside, write the answer on their sheet, and put the egg back.

I don't know why...maybe it was the excitement, the fullish moon, the field trip the next day...but my students had the worst time putting the eggs back where they found them! Some would be holding clues in their hand, with no idea where the egg was! The bad thing was, we were FIRST! We finally got it all settled and taken care of but...whew!

Since it was our math time, we came in and did our usual math rotation, except with a twist. We usually do a group/independent/center rotation (the center this year being with my assistant, who does different activities with the students....when students finish their independent work at their seat, they have time for centers...each rotation is 30 minutes or so).

With my assistant, they created bookmarks with fun foam spring stickers (Dollar Tree!) and had to write on the back the fraction of what each item was (to emphasize parts of a set!). With me, they had two activities: Estimation Station and a fraction activity using spring erasers (also from Dollar Tree!). I've included them both here, and you can also click on them and find them as a free download on TpT!


So, know Easter's over, but if you'd like to use them after break or for next year ;) feel free! The kids had a lot of fun with them! It was a fun way to review fractions....I' m also going to be posting my fraction centers on TpT that we're going to use on Monday to ease us back in from a week off! If you'd like a free copy of the fraction centers, be one of the first three to comment and leave your email address!

The emphasis is on recognizing fractions, determining the denominator and numerator, and being able to represent fractions! Included are 4 different games that use fraction tiles, fraction dice, cubes/colored blocks, two-colored chips and a "graffiti wall." If you don't have those manipulatives, I've either included a link to a free download, or provided them in the packet.