Halloween Pumpkin Math rounding to the nearest 10

Freebie Found below...stay tuned! :)

We are using our pumpkins to have a little fun rounding numbers to the nearest 10.  Stay tuned a little freebie coming at the end. 

We have been working on learning how to round numbers to the nearest 10 .  I wanted to make it a little fun and go along with the season.  We talked about what we do to round numbers to the nearest 10.  We sang a little rhyme.  4,3,2,1 roll the pumpkin down.  5,6,7,8,9 roll the pumpkin up.  Of course we discussed that rolling the pumpkin down or up meant to the number below or above. 

So here is what we did to have a little pumpkin fun.  I printed out a number line and placed it on a table (or you could put it on the floor).  I found a little pumpkin that I picked up at Target dollar spot...don't you love that place...and we used it as our little manipulative to show those students who need a little hands out activity to help with their understanding.   Don't have time to make a trip to Target just grab some orange play

 
 
dough and roll away.     

We rolled the dice and looked at the number.  Next, we located it on the number line.  We placed the pumpkin on the number line and then sang our little rhyme.  Then, we rolled the pumpkin up the line to the next number or down to the number below.  The kids enjoyed rolling the pumpkins.  We did this several times and then....

Here comes the FREEBIE.  Everything you need is in there.  Here you go:  Enjoy ! 

 

 

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The Teaching Bug

Animal Cell Project

Projects!!!!!  You either love them or hate them.  There is a definite love/hate relationship with them.  Can I just say how much I appreciate the clip artists on Teachers Pay Teachers.   You are making this teacher's job so much easier.  We have an animal cell project due and we decided to head on over to Pinterest and get some ideas.  We knew that animal cells were circular in shape and we immediately thought pizza.  Who doesn't like pizza?   We found some ideas and decided to make it our own. 

First , we ordered pizza.  Sounded good to me on a Friday night and got a box in return.  We then went over to Teachers Pay Teachers and purchased some clip art and went to work. 

We printed out pieces of the pizza crust in sections on cardstock.  We cut them out and put them together like a puzzle.  A little resizing and working it together is all it took.  It looked like this. 

Next, we decided what parts of the pizza would represent the nucleus, vacuole, chloroplast, and cytoplasm.  At this point in our science studies that as many parts as we needed to label.  Pepperoni became the nucleus and onions became the vacuoles.  We added the other elements we haven't been studying yet to the animal cell to make it look more authentic. 

Next, we added the fun pizza chef from Creative Clips and made a menu (key) of the parts we were required to do for this project. 

This is how it turned out.  We were very happy with the way it turned out.

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The Teaching Bug

Teaching Kindergartners to create Sentences

In the past, teaching my kindergartners to write sentences was challenging.   You have little ones who can not quite read yet.  Often I heard I don't know what to write about or we would provide them a picture and some of them could write a sentence and others could not.  So this activity came to mind and it worked.   We used this over and over again before we turned them loose on their own sentence writing. 

First,  I modeled the activity and walked the students through each part step by step.  At this age that is critical to success.  I laminated all the pieces, just my preference, and then once it was modeled I had the students work with the one sentence collection with partners.  Each page has a different picture on it so the kids can see what their sentence is about.  It also helps them think about some other sentences they can add  to it later.  Each group was required to get their sentences put together correctly and then have me and my assistant to go around and check.  Then the children were given the recording sheet to write out the sentence they made.  The next day we used the same sentence sheets but they were switched among the groups so the kids did not receive the same one and asked the do the activity again. 

   For the first week or so, depending on my group, I had the first set of one sentence sheets placed in my writing center.  After they seemed to get it and we worked on additional sentence making activities I introduced the next set of two sentences and then finally the set of three sentences. 

The recording sheets that are included in the pack were turned in at the end of the center activity time and it let me assess to see who was struggling with forming sentences. 

After the kids worked for a while on these.  I also required them to come up with a sentence on their own and record it on the recording sheets as they progressively got better. 

 

 

 

 

If you like what you see you can pick it up here:
  

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The Teaching Bug