Math With My Firsties!!!!!

Don't you love it when everything goes as planned??? I have been creating and tweaking this Math Unit for over a year. I want my kiddos to be critical thinkers but I also want them to know their math facts. One of my goals is for them to know their math facts to 18, addition and subtraction. Last year we did a one minute math assessment almost everyday and I was amazed at how well they did! They improved week after week. I was thrilled to hear from their second grade teacher that they were scoring very high on their assessments this year. Yay!!! Another goal I have is to be more mindful of teaching math vocabulary and to teach them to be critical thinkers. So far, we are off to a great start.

We have been working on addition facts. I've been using the Smartboard to introduce what addends equal the sum of 6. Of course my kiddos are always excited and engaged when we use the Smartboard. For this lesson I put an interactive die and a blank die on my SB along with a circle. My kiddos took turns coming to the board and  rolling the die. Then they moved circles onto the blank die until they had a total of six. Then they wrote the number sentence below it.

Techie Tip: Give your kiddos a large pompom when writing on the SB. I found they struggled writing with the markers. Now I put a marker in my pocket so that when they write with the pompom it works!

Another activity we did this week was Don't Spill the Beans. They loved it! I used some old play dough containers that I had saved and made some cute labels for them.

Then I put in some bean counters I had purchased. I put 6 beans in each container.

I used this response sheet for them to write their number sentences on. You can get a freebie by clicking here!

I also did an activity with missing addends. I gave each group of 2-3 some cards, 0-9. Then I gave them a game card that had two missing addends with a sum of 7. They had to find two cards that would equal 7. Then they put their number sentence on their response sheet. They loved the kitty cards I made!! They are sooo cute! The clipart is from Melonheadz!

Along with hands on activities I have been doing one minute assessments every day. Everyone gets a math sheet with 20 problems that they have to do within a minute. I start off with 3's. It's only addition in the beginning and they equal 3 or less. Once they are able to do 20 problems in a minute, with 100% accuracy, they move on to 4's. This is done as a group activity but each student is at their own level.

All of these ideas are available in my Number Sense Unit. It is over 250 pages long and filled with lots of hands on activities. You can get it by clicking here!