Snowflake Math with Dominoes

Snowy days are here! Today I'd like to share a low-prep but effective way to do some snowflake math with dominoes.

No matter if your thoughts about snow are love it, hate it or somewhere in the middle, we know that our kiddos are C-R-A-Z-Y for the white stuff!  Connecting snow with learning is definitely a win-win situation!

When I saw these foam snowflakes at the dollar store, my brain started whirling like the snowflakes in a snowglobe!

The six sides of a snowflake make an easy match-up for lots of math practice. For this addition and subtraction activity, you'll need a snowflake for each player plus some dominoes to share. The game works well with two players, but if you have enough dominoes, it would be good for a small group activity, too. I used a Sharpie to label each of the points one through six, and then put a zero in the center.

To play, scatter all of the dominoes face down between the players. Then take turns turning over one domino. Add or subtract the numbers on it to make one of the numbers on the snowflake.  If you can make one of the numbers, put the domino on that branch of your snowflake. If there's already a domino on that number, put the domino to the side and it's on to the other player's turn. The exception is zero. Whenever a player subtracts to make zero, he or she puts that domino on the zero, continuing to add to the stack whenever a sum or difference of zero is made.

In this picture, my granddaughter, who is becoming quite a practiced hand model ;) , has used 6-1 to cover five, 4+0 to cover four (might also have been 4-0), and 5-3 to cover two.










There are two ways to win: Be the first player to either cover all of the numbers around the tips of the snowflake OR stack three dominoes on zero. I love games with two ways to win - it opens up so many more possibilities for strategic thinking and keeps your students very involved in the game!


There are lots of easy ways to scale this game up or down to meet your students' needs:

* For the youngest learners, use dice instead of dominoes and get some quick practice in subitizing. Just leave the zero out of the center and roll one die. A great big foam die adds extra fun to this version!

* Sort through your dominoes to turn this into an addition game. Look for dominoes that total six or  less for this version. (Have your students do the sorting to put even more math practice into this activity!)  Now they'll use only addition to find the sums one through six.

* For subtraction using dice, roll two dice and subtract. For this version, label only the tips of the snowflake, using the numbers zero through five.

* Working on the addition doubles strategy? Label your branches 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12. Roll one die, double the number, and cover it.



One word of advice: these dollar store snowflakes are the right choice for price but definitely on the flimsy side. At craft stores, you can find much sturdier versions that will be more durable... and we all know that counts for a lot in the classroom! And of course you could always have your students draw snowflakes, or use paper copies to work on.

I love this activity, because there are so many ways to switch things up to adapt it to your students' current needs! Looking for even more ways to extend this activity?  Click here to head to Anne Gardner's Educational Resources, where you can find these free templates for snowflakes and cubes for higher numbers!

Keep the snowy math learning going with this free set of four winter math games for first grade! Each game is just one page, with no cards to prepare or to lose. Click here to get this set free at my TPT store!

Happy Teaching!

Winter Freebies for Math, CVC Words, and More!

Happy New Year, Teaching Friends!

I'd love to share a few of my winter freebies with you ... something for reading and math - something for everybody!

Are you working on CVC words? Here's a free game that will give your little guys lots and lots of practice blending to read short vowel words!

Because fluency instruction is so critical to successful comprehension, here's a set of free winter sight word phrases, to help your new readers cluster words appropriately, smoothly, and quickly. You'll find 19 phrase cards in this set - just punch holes and join them with a key ring or carabiner and you've got an instant center activity!

And finally, math!

Here are some matching cards for my PreK and kindergarten friends, with numerals, number word, objects to count or subitize, and ten frames for one to ten.

Best wishes to you all for a happy and healthy new year - a successful year of learning and growing with your class!

Happy Teaching!

CVC Freebie for Winter

CVC words are one of the main gateways to reading success. This CVC freebie game is a fun way to practice short vowel words!

Young readers will get lots of practice blending sounds as they read simple CVC words when they play this game. The ability to blend quickly and smoothly, combined with a strong sight word base and lots of practice with early reading strategies, will get them well on their way.  Then it's on to enjoying the excitement of independently reading more and more of those wonderful early level books!

Here's Snowy Day Four-in-a-Row. The format is probably already familiar to most of your students, so it will be easy to add to your literacy centers. And as for the prep, this is just a one page printable, so you'll find that this game is a quick one to put into play!

Click here to download your free copy!

If you're looking for CVC practice to use at any time of year, here are two resources you may like!

    

Happy Teaching!

Snowman Ten Frames Freebie!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Not long ago, I wrote a post about the power of ten frames for young mathematicians. If you missed it, you can find it here. I also learned some new-to-me things about ten frames as well as ideas for using them Ten Frames Math System site, a great find for both teachers and parents.

Here's a free seasonal set of ten frames for you, featuring everybody's favorite - snowmen! 

How will you use these snowman ten frames with your students?

⭐  Read Around the Room is a fun and effective activity that will keep even the wiggliest student engaged in learning! Print, cut, and laminate the cards and post them around your classroom. Then print a copy of the recording page for each of your students, give each child a clipboard and a pencil, and send them off to "show what they know" about ten frames!

⭐  Use the cards for sequencing values 1-10.

⭐  Print two sets of the cards.  Mix them up for a matching activity.

Click here or on the picture to download your snowman ten frames from Google Drive.

*****

If you're searching for more hands-on winter math for your little learners, here's a set you'll like!  This collection of nine winter math activities with a snowman theme addresses these math topics: 

✅  One-to-one correspondence

✅  Counting up and back on a number line

✅  Subitizing 

✅  Describing, sorting, and classifying by attributes

✅  Comparing numbers 1-12 ( greater than, less than)

✅  Ten frames activities:  matching frame to numeral for numbers through 20

✅  Graphing and data analysis

Click here to see this resource!

Have a great winter day, and Happy Teaching!

Activities Like This Put the Energy Back in Writing!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Do your students write in journals every day? In addition to all of the other writing that's part of the daily curriculum, most first graders enjoy sharing some of what's going on in their own lives in an ongoing personal narrative.

Of course, "most" is the tricky word in the previous sentence ... there are always a few reluctant writers who will tell us that there's not one new or interesting thing (or even an old and boring thing) that they can write about. When forced to dig into The Teacher's Bag of Tricks at those moments,
I've tried many of the same things I'm sure you also have...

*  Have a little informal chat with the child and hone in on a topic that he/she can expand.

*  Put two children together to talk with each other for a few moments. If need be, throw a "conversational ball" (figurative or literal!) at them and let it get their mouths and brains going ... "talk about what you'll do at recess today", "talk about what you see on the way to school", "talk about what you hope is in your lunchbox today". Talk often morphs into a renewed enthusiasm for writing.

*  Send the child off to the classroom library to find a favorite book to write about.



Sometimes variety is just what's needed to get the energy back into writing. Enter, "Variety Journals"!



Variety Journals come in two types ... but I use, "come in" loosely, since this is an idea, not a product!

First, there are whole class journals, with each child writing an entry to complete a book that will be perfect for your classroom library. Half page size is nice for this - that's part of the variety! :)
It's very easy to just chop up some copy paper, stick on a cover (made by you or a student), and staple to bind it. Another more durable alternative is to use a composition book, sliced in half horizontally. I've heard that many of the gracious employees at the big home improvement stores will do this for teachers. Use packing tape to affix a bright and inviting cover.


The whole class journals are nice as a "special writing day", when each student writes in a different journal. I know, you'll need so many journals! But a few minutes spent as a class generating an idea list will yield plenty of results for journal writing experiences that will probably last you a few months. Besides, making a class list is shared writing!! Bonus points for you and your kiddos!



Another Variety Journal that I've used with much success is a Monday Journal. Each child has his or her own writing book for this one, and simply uses it for journal writing on Mondays.  They write about who they saw, where they went, what they ate, what they wished they had done (a lot of that, with many tales of woe about missed amusement parks!), or whatever that wanted that related to the weekend. A nice benefit of the Monday Journal is that it builds an expectation that you will definitely be writing about your weekend, so you'd better come prepared with an idea to write about. I found that there was a good amount of carryover of that writing skill into general journal writing, and self-selecting topics started to become easier for some reluctant writers.



The third type of variety journal is an individual themed journal. Sometime we'd take a week and do all of our journal writing in these. Here's a free download of a Snow Journal that also includes eight ideas for writing. You might want to cut apart the idea list, fold the pieces up, and put them in a hat (maybe a snowman's top hat, just for fun?), and have a different child pull out a writing topic each day. With you controlling the topics, you can steer the writing  in themed journals in the direction of your class' needs or your current teaching topics - writing directions, lists, fantasy, labeling, persuasive writing, descriptive writing, math writing, friendly letters, etc.

Individual themed journals are great to use throughout the year. Connect them to your work in social studies and science to infuse more daily non-fiction writing into your curriculum. Will you share some of your ideas for themes in the comments? Thanks!


Happy Teaching!

Free Read-Aloud for the Snowy Days Ahead!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Whether you live in snowy Vermont or balmy Hawaii, kids everywhere love snowmen! What's not to love? Singing a rousing thumpety-thump-thump of "Frosty" or pouring on the glue and glitter to make your own crafty version, snowmen are just plain fun!

Add a good helping of sight words, some patterned text and sequencing in, and snowmen become another great opportunity for learning. Hey, Mr. Snowman! is a great way for your K's and firsties to listen to a story that will soon become accessible text to nearly all of them! Download a free printable 8 1/2 X 11 version here.

Then expand the learning opportunities with the set of coordinating literacy center activities that you'll find here. This set includes...

        * 2 printable versions of a guided reading book with the same text as the read-aloud version

        * A Readers' Theater version of the text

        * Sentence strips and word cards to use at the pocket chart

        * Props for improvising a new story {think, "Hey, Mr. Snowman, where are your sunglasses?" }

        * 3 writing prompt pages to extend the Mr. Snowman story

You can make an entire Mr. Snowman literacy center with these activities. Your needier students will get lots of chances to read and reread basic sight words, and  to attempt new words based on first letter and picture support. Those who need a challenge will enjoy creating and writing new adventures for Mr. Snowman. All of your students will benefit from the many opportunities offered in this story for fluency practice with inflection, reading the punctuation, phrasing, and using bold/italicized print.

Happy Teaching!

Snow Much Fun with Math!

There's no snow in the upcoming forecast for us here at the Jersey Shore, but there's lots of math fun predicted in your classroom with this new set of math games.  Good stuff here for your PreKs and kindergarteners - all easy to just print-and-go!

This set includes nine games and hand-on activities for ...

* One-to-one correspondence

* Using a numberline to count up and count back

* Subitizing numbers 1-6 (identifying dice dot patterns without counting)

* Describing, sorting, and classifying by attributes

* Comparing numbers 1-12 (greater than, less than)

* Ten frames activities: matching frame to numeral for numbers through 20, and sums of 10

* Graphing and data analysis

Download the preview now to try a free game!

Clink here to see more!

Happy Teaching!