New Year, Math Centers, and Snow!

I love coming back to school in January – well, I love being on vacation too – maybe a little bit more than I love coming back to school.  But, I love the idea that we have a “fresh start.”  We talk about new year’s resolutions, and things that we did in 2010 that we aren’t going to do in 2011….i.e. certain not very nice behaviors .  We also talk about getting ready for first grade….raising the bar to a whole new level.  The children really seem to get this and work extra, extra hard! 


Onto math centers – these centers are some of my favorites I’ve made, I think!  The kids started off with them today, and did an excellent job! I try to keep math and literacy centers similar every round (8 centers over 2 weeks).  Meaning…we’ll practice the same concept, but I’ll tweak it a bit, so I don’t have to re-explain the centers over and over again, and they basically know what to do.

**I just noticed that this little lady had it ALL wrong! Don’t worry, ww went back and fixed them when
I saw her mistakes!!**

The children also use real mittens to measure the objects.  I bought the infant/toddler ones at Wal-Mart.  They are $1 for 2 pairs! What a deal!

This little guy turned over his paper when he finished and started making patterns with the money! I will often have them do something like this if they finish quickly.  Often, it’s practicing writing their numbers to whatever day of school we are on (since that is how far the growing number line goes!)

There are 3 options of this activity included – counting by 1s,5s,10s.  When they are finished sequencing, I have them color the pictures in a pattern.  If they are sequencing by 1s, they can write the number word on the bottom snowball.

I also have die cut mittens for the children if they need to “see” the pattern before they color it.  This great patterning book was shared with me by a friend - it's fantastic!

All of these great centers plus MORE are included in the pack. Check it out!
We have also played “Spilled the Snowmen” – this time counting backwards from 10.  I found these cute glittery snowmen at Michael’s, and I think I got the box there too.

We made a graph of weather or not children have built a snowman.  The “no’s” were surprising to me, since we do live in snowy North Dakota!  However, some families just moved her last spring, and it’s been way too cold to be outside building anything!

We read a non-fiction book about snow and charted our schema (before we read) and added the new facts that we learned.  I guess we must know a lot about snow, because we had no misconceptions!


After we learned about snow, we talked about how it melted, and then played this great ice melting game!  There were sure a lot of giggles and laughs coming from room 126!!
More on snow and snowmen tomorrow!