Celebrate Spring With Games!

I am so ready for Spring!  

Here in New Hampshire, the temperature seems to have trouble getting past the 40s, and there are still patches of snow everywhere, including my garden!

But Spring is in my heart, as well as my classroom.  

Here are some of my Spring Products that you'll find my students using!  

Earth Day Vocabulary Match is a fun way to review words related to Earth Day and protecting the environment.  There are several variations of play!

 

Spring Flower "Go Fish" Game is a great way to practice the prefixes un-, dis-, re-, and pre- as well as the meanings of these prefixes.

Here's another game with prefixes, with suffix practice as well!

Rainy Day Prefixes and Suffixes gives the children practice finding the base word of words with prefixes and suffixes.  The children can focus on just prefixes, just suffixes, or combine the two!

Two Rainbow Games:  Nouns and Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs is a great opportunity to practice making up adjectives to go with nouns, and making up adverbs to go with verbs.  

Mental Math Addition and Subtraction Game With a Spring Theme allows the students to add or subtract multiples of ten mentally.  

I have a whole lot of sports-related products, and baseball season is upon us!  Here are a few baseball-themed games:

Baseball Antonyms is a simple matching game for antonyms.  It can also be played as an "Old Maid" game, which the kids love!

Home Run Two Digit Addition is a BINGO type of game to practice two-digit addition skills (with or without regrouping).

Looking for more sports-related resources? See HERE!

How are you celebrating Spring in your classroom?

Golfing for Tens

Thursday I had 3 doctor's appointments.  Not 1, not 2, but 3. (I'm fine, just happened to schedule them on the same day!) I also went to the dentist on Tuesday and had my flu shot on Wednesday, so I should be all set for a while!

Since 2 of the 3 doctors are a half hour away, I was looking to fill time between appointments, so I went into the local dollar store.

I'm always looking for cute ideas for school in the dollar store. I'm either looking for organizational ideas or game ideas.  As I was browsing through the toy section, I saw the perfect game for my sports themed classroom:  golf sets!
I was planning the math game I was going to make while standing in line to make my purchase. (Do all teachers do this sort of thing when they take a day for doctors appointments?)

We've been working with addition of single digit numbers in our new math pilot program:  enVisions. The math part was so easy, I wanted to bump it up to adding tens. I figured they could work in teams, working on adding tens. I set up 3 lines, each a foot apart, and decided they could and take a few shots from different level.

As you might have guessed, the kids loved it! They were even good about working quietly while the other groups did their "sitting down" work, which is not easy for adults, never mind second graders! However, they knew they'd lose the privilege, so they worked hard to golf quietly!

The only problem? Those plastic golf balls were so light, the kids had trouble aiming them. Therefore, hardly any balls went into the cup, so they didn't get much practicing adding up points. I'm going to bring in real golf balls tomorrow, and I'm sure the extra weight will help them have more real "adding tens" practice. In the meantime, it was a great lesson in adding zeroes, and the kids really enjoyed it!

See the picture or HERE for your "golfing for tens" resource. I'm sure they have the golf sets in the toy section of most dollar stores!  

 Enjoy your golfing!

 

 

Playing Math Games to Strengthen Important Skills

I find games to be a great way to learn and develop skills.

Brain research tells us that adding the element of fun helps to connect the memory. Isn't that a great reason to play learning games?

I like to teach a game during small group instruction time, so I can watch the children play and make sure they are focused on the learning goal. I'll have them play a couple of times with guidance before I let them play on their own.

After a game has been introduced and practiced, it will be available as a choice during math stations or centers.  There are times when certain children are assigned a particular game as well.

It's a good idea to allow the children to play games below their level, as these are important skills that should be mastered in order to perform the higher skills with ease. Just because the skills are easy for the child doesn't mean they don't have value! In fact, if the game isn't somewhat easy, it won't be fun for the children. Also, if the game isn't somewhat easy, the children will be more likely to make mistakes, which won't help them master the skills. I've learned "practice makes permanent," and we don't want to make incorrect skills permanent, do we? If you've ever had to unlearn a bad habit, you'll know just what I mean!

I have a series of BINGO games that I designed to go along with second-grade skills. They all have a sports theme, which is a big draw for the kids. I find once they learn the format of a particular game, it takes less time to teach a similar game, meaning more time practicing each skill!

You can find this resource here:  Par 3 Adding 3 Addends

As mentioned above, once the students know the format and how the game works, they can play similar games to strengthen similar skills. It just so happens that I have several math games that follow this same format with different sports themes that can be found here:

Sports Themed Bingo Math Games

Still looking for more math games to strengthen their skills?

Here are plenty more Math games, including several freebies! Math Games Category
 

Games are a great way to build skills AND have fun!  Enjoy!