Building Number Sense in Kindergarten and First Grade

We are THREE weeks in! Already! I can hardly believe it.

We have been working hard on building number sense in my 1st grade classroom, but I noticed pretty quickly that this crew would need to take a few steps back before we went into my Numbers to 120 unit. Many of my students needed to work on ordering, identifying, comparing and building the numbers 1-20 before we could kick it up a few notches and work on higher numbers.

In order to help my students build up this background knowledge I created some of the following hand-on activities:

 Number line remake! Students work together to put together this number line puzzle in which students need to be able to identify numbers 1-20 in all different forms.

 Match and make! Students make the numeral with the number word and then make that number with a math manipulative of their choice. These 2 chose pattern blocks.

 Roll and build: Students play against one another to roll dice and build towers with that amount of cubes. Once the whole board is covered up, students challenge themselves to count up their color cubes and see who had the most. There are 2 levels of difficulty of this game.

 Button jars. This is a simple, hands-on activity that lets students pull a a button jar, fill it with that many buttons, and put it in order. There are jars 0-20,

Tens frame spin & color! This activity has students using spinners to identify different numbers and number words. Students color accordingly.

My kids have been having a lot of fun with these hands-on activities and games and I am confident that after another week of practice, we will be ready for some bigger numbers!

There are a few other activities that are included in my Building Number Sense unit and 5 practice pages. You can snag the unit below for 20% off through tomorrow night (9/8):

I made this unit with a beginning-of-the-year 1st grader or a kindergartner in mind!

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Life as of late!

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for a little 5 for Friday action! It has been quite awhile since I've blogged here at TGIF because.... well... life is life... and life can just be busy! Here is a little peek into my life as of late:

1.

Being pregnant! This journey sure has its ups and downs, but I am enjoying almost every minute of it. I can tell you my belly is way bigger already than it was above and I know I will just be getting larger and larger and LARGER! Yikes.

2.

Field trip!! I am so happy to be back living on the East Coast... right on the water. Granted the water is always cold and it's not like we go IN the ocean ever, but it sure is beautiful. We had a FUN field trip to Odiorne State Park where there are a bunch of tidepools for my kids to explore and search for tidepool animals and sealife. I was lucky enough to have my mom, my sister, and my husband chaperone this field trip. The kids were in heaven to meet these special people in my life and they thought this day was "THE BEST DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!" I agreed.

3.

School is O-V-E-R! I had such a great class this year and I am going to miss them so much! My summer will be jam-packed with packing and moving into my mom's house with husband and baby-to-be, but it will be nice to know that my classroom will be waiting for me in August. The top picture is an adorable gift one of my students gave me for Theo. He was so proud to give me those onesies and they sparked some tears in my eyes for sure! The second picture is our annual last day breakfast! We all sat around our big family table and ate breakfast, shared memories, and drew pictures/wrote notes on our butcher paper tablecloths! It was a great way to end our year together.

4.

That last picture above is depressing! It is so bare in my classroom and I was ready for some new classroom decor, so oddly enough, only a day out of school, I created a classroom decor set that I will be using in my room. It is simple and bright and primary and I love it. Here is what's inside:

I am really excited about this set and I will be sure to take lots of pictures in August when I can set up my room!

5.

Last but not least, a few weeks ago, I was getting prepared for those first weeks of school in August and our first math unit is Numbers to 120. I love the unit I made 2 years ago, but it was in need of some major updating. So that's just what I did. I added a few new activities, updated the clipart and look of the pack!

These activities are some tried and true favorites from the pack, but with a little updated look:

Spin & Graph - number recognition and graphing (6 differentiated games)

10s and 20s frames - cards for matching and memory games

120 charts - for student reference as well as 4 different games to be played with the chart

Read the Room - activity for identifying number words

Number cards 1-120 - cards as well as 3 different games to play with the cards

120 chart puzzles - 7 different chart puzzles with varying degrees of difficulty

Assessment - 3 page assessment to check the Common Core Standard: 1.NBT.1

I also added a center game: before, after, & in between with recording sheets as well as 4 different practice pages to help students reinforce skills learned in this pack. My favorite is the number detective one!

So that is just a *little* bit of what I have been up to lately. Now that I am out of school, I will be sure to blog more often and keep up with everything else in the teaching/blogging world!

Happy Summertime :) :)

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Recognizing, Representing, and Ordering Numbers to 120

These past couple weeks have been spent building our number knowledge!

We are practicing recognizing our numbers, representing our numbers with pictures and manipulatives, and ordering our numbers all the way to 120!

We started with out numbers to 20. I had students cut out these simple number cards, order them, and represent each number using cubes:

After much practice with our 120 charts, we started ordering numbers 1-120 which was MUCH harder for my kids! I use numbers cards 1-120 and the students must pull 4 at a time and put them in order. At this time in the year, I allow my students to use their 120 charts as reference. A few weeks down the road, we will be trying this again without the 120 chart and instead we will rely on place value and our number sense to order the numbers.

Some of my lower groups are still working on identifying and representing numbers 1-20 so we we've been using 10s frames to help us quickly identify our numbers:

A little memory matching fun!

We have also been practicing our number words using spin and graph! Students work with a partner to spin the spinner 10 times and tally their results. After they tally, students graph how many of each number they landed on. The graphing page contains the number words for students to read instead of the numerals! This group was working on the numbers 1-8, while my higher groups were working on numbers in their teens:

They are getting it and I am loving it! They have been working SO hard and while I cannot wait to go on my honeymoon next week, I will miss these little sweeties!!!

If you are looking for any of the games/activities above, they are available in my Numbers to 120 unit:

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Numbers to 120 unit is up!

 Ladies and gents - the Back to School SALE is here!! I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' to let everyone know my entire store will be 20% off August 12-13 and you can get an extra 10% off with the code BTS12!

Right in time for the sale I have finished my newest unit:

 This unit focuses primarily on number recognition and the Common Core standard 1.NBT.1. There are tons of activities using number cards, spinners, 120 charts, 10s and 20s frames, etc. There are also 3 different assessments included to use throughout the unit.

 Here are some highlights:

6 different spin n' graph activities for students to begin identifying numbers between 1-120. The different versions, allow for plenty of differentiation!

Number cards, tens-frames cards, and 120 charts with over 10 different activities for students!

One of my favorite activities are 120 chart puzzles!

120 charts are cutup into puzzle pieces and students try to put them back together.

Lastly, there are 3 different assessments to use throughout this unit. {example below}

Click on the cover image above or {here} to be magically transported to my store if you'd like to see more!

I am very excited about this unit and I think it will be a HUGE help at the beginning of the year to start my firsties off right :)

Now I'm off to Blog Hoppin' to see how many more items I can fit in my cart (17 and counting...) Ahhh!

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Hunger Games!!

Was anyone else as excited as I was to see Hunger Games this weekend?!? 

My fiance and I went to see it yesterday afternoon and I loved it just as much as I thought I would. I have yet to read the second and third book, but Spring Break is only one week away so I might have to buy them.

I hadn't been to a movie in awhile so I went all out and bought some buttered popcorn, sour patch kids, AND a large diet coke (I also went to Zumba this morning).

Speaking of popcorn....

I posted this popcorn number identification freebie on TpT this weekend. It is great for both your high and low students. Have a look and see if you could use it in your classroom!

Popcorn Freebie

Enjoy!

Susan

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