Fun at the Beach! Math Centers

Well, I guess it took me a week to post my beach math centers! Sorry!!

Here they are!

At this center, the children scooped out shells from the bucket, counted them and tallied the number.

Practicing subtraction!

My kiddos LOVE to play Flip 5 and practice sums to 5.  I made an Ocean theme for them to play at centers.

We also practiced reading the dime with “digital numbers” – this was tricky for some!  But, we’ve been working on time to the hour, half hour, and even quarter after and quarter to during our calendar time!

School is out for me now, but I’m already thinking and planning ahead to next year.  I’ve got a long list of ideas to work on and books to read this summer!

I would love to hear what you would like me to blog about this summer – anything that you’ve been wanting to know just comment below and I’ll try to blog about it this summer!

Here is me and my girls on the last day of school! My oldest will start middle school next year *gasp!* and my youngest just finished Kindergarten.  I love these girls so  much and am looking forward to spending the summer with them!

Yep, we’ll be doing a lot of this this summer!

Fun at the Beach! Literacy Centers!

The last few weeks of school are simply CRAZY!  Constant interruptions, assessments, organizing, special events and so on! I try to keep the day as consistent as possible for the kiddos.

They loved our literacy centers this week.  Here is a peek of what we did!

We used our Lakeshore fishing rods (love these!) to go fishing for sight words.

 

Had a little beach ball fun by rolling the ball to each other and writing the sight word that was closest to our hands when we caught the ball.

Played some CVC UNO.

and unscrambled our sentences.

I am so happy that the children love our centers – they stay engaged the whole time, and I am able to pull kids for assessments, for small groups, or for one on one work. 

These centers are all from my Fun at the Beach unit if you’re interested!  I’ll post pictures of math centers tomorrow!

Wild and Crazy Insta Review…

If you’re not following me on Instagram – find me @growingkinders – I try to post something everyday! You can get a little peek into my daily goings on in my classroom! Stop on by, I would love to have you!

These last few weeks have been wild and crazy in my house!

First…it was recital week.  If you are a dance mom, you know that these are crazy times! My 11 year old danced in 9 dances this spring.  Phew.  That meant 9 dress rehearsals. Add in the 6 year old and you have 2 more dances.  Dance week is CRAZY in my house!  But, we LOVE it. I LOVE seeing my girls on stage doing what they love!

We also had our exquisite wedding of q and u! This is one of my favorite days of the whole school year, and the children just LOVE it.  We chicken danced, bunny hopped, and macarena’d the afternoon away! And of course, we had wedding cake!

We had so much fun doing our animal research projects! We gathered data from book and from websites – compiled our info sheet, wrote our books, and then published using eduCreations.  SO fun!

We went on a little lion hunt…

and made our kiss boxes for mom!

I know this time of year is a bit crazy for everyone!  I hope you’re having fun with your kiddos and enjoying the last days and weeks of the school year!

I’ll be back soon with a peek at our ocean centers!

I appreciate you :)

It’s that time of year again! The time we fill up our shopping cards with items to help us make it through the rest of this school year and the beginning of next year!

Thanks Hope for the cute graphic!!

I will be discounting the items in my shop 20% and TpT will kick in an extra 10% if you use the code TAD13.

If you’re looking for a few things from my shop to finish out the year, here is what I use….

Just had our wedding on Friday – this is always a blast for the kids!

We are also finishing up our farm centers:

and Fix-It Up sentences are always a great time filler:

and reviewing those tricky teens!

We will also be starting our end of the year beach/ocean unit

and playing some more Flip Five! (my kiddos LOVE this game!)

and now is a great time to grab my calendar set.  I’m testing out another version that I’ll be adding to this set – so grab it now and you’ll get the updates before the price increases!

Here’s some goodies for next year too…

   

and if you need a couple of last minute Mother’s Day ideas – grab these below!

 

and here is what I start out the year with…

See you there! My cart is loaded and ready to shop for fantastic goodies for the end of the year and the beginning of next year!

…and just a little shout out to my girl who turned 11 today! So proud of this girl! Happy Birthday, K!!

Instagram!

Do you love Instagram?  Did you know that Growing Kinders has an Instagram account?  I post things on my Insta that might not necessarily make it on the blog or my facebook page!  It’s super easy to follow!

You can follow me online or download the FREE Instagram app at the iTunes store or Google Play store.  My user name is:

growingkinders

Or you can just click {here} to follow online

Here’s another fun thing! Every Tuesday, teachers will be posting something on their Insta using the hashtag (#) #teachertalktuesday

When you use hashtags, your content is grouped together with others that have also used that hashtag.  You’ll be able to find lots of new people to follow and see lots of fun ideas!

Why don’t you come and join in on the fun!?

On a side note…. Farm Frenzy is ready!

Ten Frame Game..another one!

Here is another super fun, super easy 10 frame game that you can play with your kiddos TOMORROW! I prepped it in about 5 minutes!

You need some ten frames (1 for each student)

Some wooden cubes

some counters

and some sticky dots

Label 6 sticky dots

and stick them to the cubes.  You’ll need enough cubes for each pair of students.

The object of the game is to fill the ten frame.  The children will roll the dice and either add or take away that many counters.  The first to make it to 10 is the winner!  When they fill the frame, simply clear it and start all over again!  Super easy, and the kids LOVE to play it over and over again!

      

I hope you’ll try this game out with your kiddos! It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and sometimes you just don’t need anything fancy or cute to get the job done! 

But, if you’re looking for something fancy and cute to finish out your school year.  How about a little number review?  Fun with Numbers Part 2 and Fun with Numbers Part 1 are both available at my TpT store.  I’ve been working on Part 3 for a while now, just haven’t been able to get it done!  If you’re interested, just click below!

Practicing Coin ID with QR Codes

I’ve been playing around a bit with QR codes in the classroom over the last few weeks.  It’s really been a trial and error type thing! 

The children really enjoy using the iPads to scan the QR codes and see what pops up!

As is typical (it seems) for me this year, I don’t have many pictures!! So sorry!

My plan was to use the QR codes in my favorite foam dice, but the children were having trouble scanning the shiny surface, so we ended up just taking the cards out and laying them upside down on the table.  They would choose one, scan it, and then write the value. 

Yes, there are 6 cards and only 4 coins!  Two of the cards are links to quick you tube coin songs.  I also included the coin songs at the top of the paper so they can scan the QR codes at home.

If you would like to try this math activity at home you can download the file below! Let me know how it works for you!

Oh, one more thing – I added a couple of Mother’s Day activities to TpT if you’re interested!