Bump (an addition, subtraction, or multiplication math game)

So my mom taught me a math game called BUMP a while ago. The game of Bump is a fun way for students to practice basic facts. Here are some pictures that will help explain how to play.

Rolling a '0' counts as a 10

Players can "share" a circle by having one chip on the same sum. A"Bump" happens if one player rolls that sum a second time, they then BUMP the opposing player's chip off the "shared" circle and that player now has to try and place the chip back on the board.

To make the board, you need 11 circles, and an 11x17 piece of construction paper. Write the number you want them to add their rolls to on one circle, and then the sums on the other 10 circles.

You can do this for subtraction by writing the number you want them to start at and then writing the difference on the other circles (ex. 18-, answers: 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17)

For multiplication you write the number they need to multiply by in the corner, and then the products on the circles. (ex. x3 products: 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30)

I hope this makes sense. If not let me know, I will try and answer any questions.

Some Websites I Find Helpful

I thought I would post a few websites that I find helpful for teaching math and other subjects.

Virtual Manipulatives is a great site! It has workmats that you can use and different manipulatives such as counters or base ten blocks that you can use to supplement your math curriculim You can project it onto your board (not sure if it works on a Smartboard as I don't have that, but if it does let me know!) or you can have the students go on. Play around with it.

Another great site is Worksheet works. I love using it for making my own word searches and math drills, but there are so many different worksheets you can customize and print!

And something I use during Bible and Art is Adventures in Odyssey. They are great stories to listen to and the kids work quietly because they are listening so intently.

So there are three great sites, I hope you enjoy playing around (yes you need to play with technology) and I hope you find these useful.

Community Helpers

We did a great communities helper activity based on this great book, "This Plus That Life's Little Equations" by Amy Krause Rosenthal. The book has little equations in it such as," tall+coffee=grownup or small+bottle=baby". So to tweak it for community helpers I wrote up some equations like, "students+bus+driving= _______ (bus driver) or students+books+reading=____ (librarian/teacher) Then I had them come up with the descriptors and I had the equals part ________+ _______= firefighter. So they had to think about two words that would describe a firefighter. We went through a number of these, and then they had to think of their own equation. It had them thinking about community helpers in a different way, and after our flop of a brainstorming session, I actually think they are understanding what community helpers are. HAHA

Here is a link to the google doc if you want a copy.

Place Value Pirates

Today we made place value pirates! It was a little tricky for some of the little darlings, but with support they did a great job! I got the idea from pinterest of course, and made the template. The kids wrote the number word on the bandanna, the standard form in the mouth and the expanded form on the beard. They were very excited about this activity.

 We also finished our construction paper houses which are always cute! Most of them followed the expectations of making everything out of paper, but some "forgot".

Community Helpers

So this morning we talked about community helpers, and man was it difficult for my guys to come up with jobs in our community! I think we have to read some more books! They had no problem listing restaurants they loved (when we talked about jobs in the goods industry) but then asking them what jobs the people do in those restaurants was like pulling teeth. I asked, who brings you your food? Does it magically appear? Who cooks the food? I got blank stares! REALLY?? I have never had a class that had this much trouble! Then on the services side, I also had to prompt them A LOT! They came up with teacher and vet at first so I was like ok, this is good, then they hit the wall and I had to prompt them like crazy to give me police officer, nurse, doctor, ambulance driver etc. I was a tad shocked. So needless to say we will be reading some more books and revisiting our chart.... Sigh.... This afternoon we had a parent come in who is an E.R. nurse and she talked about her job and then of course right in the middle we had a fire drill (not great timing) so after that they were pretty squirrely. I felt bad for this mom, and we tried to keep them under control but they had lost any focus they had had before the drill, so it was pretty chaotic. Then I had them work on a sheet talking about what job they might want to do when they grew up. I think our discussion this morning may have helped a little, it did not seem like it was successful at all, but maybe something did sink in. Some memorable ones were, Zoo Keeper, Mom, Nurse, Pilot, and Pirate! haha

Here is the Page: The font is Kidprint (in case you want to print it in the original font)
when I grow up

SO that was my day....

Wanted Posters and The Start of Writing Power

Our last Pirate activity were wanted posters. The students were quite excited about them, and though they are pretty simple, some of them were quite funny!

We also started Writing Power this week, and our first activities was making invitations. We talk about how the writer and the reader are in a very close relationship and how the writer always keeps the reader in mind when writing their stories. We also talk about how our writing should invite the reader in and make them want to keep reading what we are writing. To do this we made invitations inviting our readers to a "Thinking Party"! Students understand that getting an invitation to a party is an exciting thing and that excitement should translate to their readers from their writing. Our next lesson is on Brain Pockets! Stay tuned!!

Word Work Activities

I introduced our word work activities today! We rotated through them like centers because I think that before they can use manipulatives for "educational purposes"  kids need a chance to play with them. Some of the centers allow for more play then others, but I did not have a specific skill or concept they had to focus on.

 Students used their week one word list from our spelling program and scrabble tiles to practice the words. They also made their names and other words they knew.

Students used wiki stix to make words, stick men, flowers, etc.

Similar to the other two stations, the used the foam letters to build words and made up a song when they found a sticky J in the mix! haha

Students used letter stamps to stamp words, their names, and a butterfly that they found in there for some reason....

I bought this game, BRAND NEW from a garage sale this summer for $5! It has word cubes inside with word chunks, blends, and individual letters. Students are encouraged to make words, but some of the weaker readers and writers decided to put the blocks together randomly. We will revisit this one, and use it during small group instruction.

The last station was Spellmaster. Its an older game where students choose a card with pictures on them, they find the letters to write the word that goes along with the picture. So if there is a picture of a cake the have to spell cake.

Most of these stations will be Word Work choices as we launch our full fledged Daily 5 in October!