October Math Work Stations

Math stations are moving along...we're still working on things like noise level and cooperating with our partners, however the students are independent enough now that I don't need to be constantly monitoring the stations. This has been particularly nice this week since I have been able to use my math station time to pull students for some of the endless report card testing that needs to be done one-on-one.

This week the math games were a bit of a hodge podge of all our October themes (bats, fire safety, pumpkins). We are currently working on numbers 1-10 in our math book, and our math stations this week focused heavily on number recognition and counting skills.

Station 1: Boo Game

(This game is from Mrs. Wills' Halloween Math Work Stations Pack. Students roll the dice and cover up the ghost on the game board with that number. Mrs. Wills also offers a more challenging game board with bigger numbers to help differentiate this activity.)

Station 2: Halloween Counting

(This free game is from Kelly's Kindergarten. Students pick a game card, count how many pumpkins are on the card, and then cover up that number on the game board's gate. The students had such fun folding up the paper to cover the gate on this game. Kelly also offers a fall version of this game board-which is a good option if you can't use a game board with witches on it.)

Station 3: Spooky Numbers

(This game is from Mrs. Wills' Halloween Math Work Stations Pack. My kids never tire of this game. You roll a dice and then trace the corresponding number on the game board. Somehow just the name "spooky numbers" and the clipart of "spooky eyes" at the top of the sheet made this game seem completely new to my students even though they play some variation on this game every week! Mrs. Wills also includes a more challenging recording sheet with larger numbers where students can roll two dice. )

Station 4: Firedog Math

(One of my teammates created this game long before we were all using computers to design math stations! I love how simple it is, you just roll the dice and color in a square with the number you rolled. The kids liked seeing which firedog would win by getting the number above him rolled the most.)

Station 5: Number Matching Game

(This game is from Julie Lee's October Small Group Intervention Pack. Students counted the objects on the picture cards and then matched the picture card to the corresponding number card and number word (the number words provided a nice challenge to really get my students thinking!)

Station 5-part 2: Pumpkin Seed Counting

(Since the number matching game above doesn't take that long, I also included this simple game in Station 5. Students counted how many pumpkin seeds each pumpkin card had and then matched it to the corresponding number card. This game could easily be made by drawing seeds onto pumpkin die-cuts.)

Station 6: Candy Corn Count

(This game is from Julie Lee and Deanna Jump's Autumn Math and Literacy Centers Pack. Students took a card out of the candy corn bag (finally a use for this darling bag from Target's dollar spot!), colored a candy corn on their sheet the same color as the border on their card, and then recorded how many candy corns were on the card. I just found another cute candy corn math game to put in my little candy corn bag next week-check out this free set of candy corn number puzzles at Mrs. Freshwater's Class.)

Station 7: Pumpkin Counting

(This was probably the most exciting station for my kinders this week. I bought the little pumpkin containers a few years ago (possibly at Target?) and wrote a number on the back of each one. Students can practice lining the pumpkin containers up in number order and then they count out the right number of pumpkin erasers to put into each little basket.)

Station 8: Batty Ten Frames

(This game is from the Nocturnal Animals Math and Literacy Centers Pack by Katie at Little Warriors. The students pick a bat card, color a bat on their sheet the same color as the bat card, and then record how many dots were on the bat's ten frame.)

Station 9: Polka-Dot Pumpkins

(This game is from Julie Lee and Deanna Jump's Autumn Math and Literacy Centers Pack. Students picked a pumpkin card, colored a pumpkin on their sheet the same color as the polka-dots on their pumpkin card, and recorded how many dots were on the pumpkin.) 

Halloween Eraser Patterns

(This was not actually one of our math stations this week. However, yesterday I had a student that was causing some trouble during math stations time and needed a little time out from her station and a little time away from her partner! After a few minutes though, I figured I didn't really want her just sitting in time out wasting her precious math time, so I had her practice making patterns with these mini erasers. I am finding so many great uses for these little erasers that I will have to do a separate post on them!)

I'd love to hear how your math stations have been going this month!

Also, if you post about your stations, then be sure to link up to Mrs. Wills' Stations Linky Party.

If you decide to post about another fun part of your week, go ahead and link up to Clutter-Free Classroom's A Peek in My Planbook Week in Review Linky Party.  

Bat & Owl Books

My class had so much fun learning all about bats and owls last week! There are some great books out there about bats and owls-both fiction and nonfiction. Here are some of my favorites.

I think my favorite book about bats is Hello, Bumblebee Bat by Darrin Lunde. This cute book is written in a question and answer format, and tells all about the smallest bat in the world- the bumblebee bat. After reading this book, we of course had to find out what the smallest owl in the world is- the elf owl.

I just happened to spot a wonderful book about elf owls at the Scholastic book fair my school had last month. It is called The Perfect Place for an Elf Owl. You absolutely have to check it out-it was written by first and second grade students! It has a darling repeating format, where a baby elf owl looks for his mama owl in all different environments (the forest, the arctic, etc.) so you get info on the owls that live in all of those different places. Finally at the end of the book the baby owl finds his mama where elf owls live-in a cactus nest in the desert. My students adored this book-because they could tell the illustrations were made by kids like them. There are also several pages at the back of the book with photos of the book's student authors researching owls and writing the book-so inspiring for my young writers!

We read many informational books during our study of bats and owls. Gail Gibbons is a great nonfiction author and my students enjoyed learning tons of facts from her Bats book and her Owls book. We learned about the different kinds of bats and owls, where they live, what they eat, and so much more! There are great diagrams in these books too for the parts of an owl/bat. After reading these two books we had lots of good information to use to compare bats and owls.

If you're looking for unbelieveable photos, you have to check out Seymour Simon's books. His nonfiction book Amazing Bats has amazing photos that fascinated my kindergarteners. There were lots of up close shots of bats and even little baby bats!

Two fun fiction stories about bats are Bat Jamboree and Bats Around the Clock. Both books are written by Kathi Appelt and have really cute illustrations. I especially like these two bat books because they can be used to tie in math concepts. Bat Jamboree is a counting book and Bats Around the Clock can be used for teaching about telling time to the hour. Both of these books also rhyme-which is always fun!

I have to admit, I'm a little sad to move on to studying fire safety this week since I don't have nearly as many good books around that theme! If you have any fun book recommendations for the month of October-please share. I am a total book addict and love finding new books to add to my classroom collection!

All About Owls!

This week in kindergarten we have been studying nocturnal animals. This is one of my favorite themes each year. Yesterday we focused on bats and Stellaluna was the star-the kids loved learning lots of interesting bat facts and then making Stellaluna puppets. Today was all about owls!

It started during shared reading this morning when we read a darling owl poem from Deanna Jump's owl unit (check it out here-I definitely recommend it-it also comes with a great book to use for shared reading). The kids had a hoot reading the owl poem in our pocket chart and locating letters and sight words. Over the weekend I made 5 little owls to decorate the pocket chart-spending an hour cutting and pasting scrapbook paper into owls was clearly a sane use of my time Sunday night because they look darling!

After the owl poem, we moved on to the big book Owl Babies. Now the text in this big book is pretty small, so it isn't ideal to use for teaching print strategies, however this book makes an amazing read aloud. It has a cute storyline about 3 little owls who miss their mom while she is out hunting for food. The 3 baby owls discuss where their mom might be and how much they miss her. My students think it is hilarious that on nearly every page, the littlest owlet- named Bill, says "I want my mommy!"  I used my owl puppets to act out the story as I read it, and then of course we had to retell the story several times throughout the day as all of my students were just desperate to get their hands on those little owl puppets. The owl puppets, along with my small and very durable boardbook copy of Owl Babies, will be a literacy station choice next week.

This afternoon we also read some information books about owls and then tomorrow we will make a Venn Diagram comparing bats and owls. The kids are always surprised to learn that bats aren't birds and they don't have feathers! I'll also be encouraging the kids to try out some informational writing themselves this week during writing workshop or while they our at our writing center during literacy station time (they have been mostly sticking to narrative writing so far). Drawing a bat or owl and labeling the parts would be an awesome piece of kindergarten writing for this time of year.

At the end of the day we had a ton of fun making our own colorful owls. When I was at Target over the weekend I happened to see a pack of scrapbook paper on sale, so I bought it and turns out it was perfect paper for making owls! I traced an owl body and two wings onto each the paper, and then let the kids pick out what color/pattern paper they wanted. Then we used orange paper to cut out beaks and feet for our owls. We rounded out white and black squares into circles for the eyes and our owls were complete.

I have a bit of an owl theme going in my classroom this year (totally obsessed with owls!) and I am seriously considering leaving our owls up on the classroom wall all year long since they look so cute. Maybe I'll add a caption on top, like "Kindergarten is a Hoot!"

Target Finds: Fall Edition

I have a bit of a mini eraser obsession. Honestly-I just can't resist them. I buy them at Target, and Party City, and Dollar Tree, and anywhere else I spot them. I'm sure the cashier at Target was wondering why I needed so many bags of erasers shaped like bats, pumpkins, and ghosts! For just a dollar each though, they were an awesome find in Target's dollar spot. We are doing a bat theme this week so that works perfectly, and in 2 weeks we'll be studying pumpkins and can use the pumpkin erasers! I plan to use the erasers in my math work stations this month in lots of ways.

Students can practice counting, by counting out the right number of erasers for each box on a counting mat. Click here to download these basic counting mats for the numbers 1-20.

These erasers also make awesome math manipulatives for pattern practice. Students can practice making different patterns with the bats, ghosts, and pumpkins.

The erasers also will make great game pieces for just about any math game. For example, I can have students play my Spin a Shape game-and use the mini erasers to cover up the shapes they spin.

Most of my kindergarten students aren't quite ready for addition and subtraction yet, but these mini erasers also make fun manipulatives for practicing math facts. I might have some of my more advanced students play an additon game with the erasers. I think I'll have them roll 2 dice, write an addition fact with the two numbers they rolled, and then use the erasers as manipulatives to help them solve the addition problem.

The mini erasers weren't my only Target find over the weekend. I also found these spooky glow in the dark fingers in the dollar spot. I will definitely be adding them to my big book and pocket chart literacy stations for students to use as they point and read  big books, poems, and charts. Maybe I'll even turn out the lights one day and we can see just how well they glow in the dark!

My final dollar spot find were these cute little felt bags. I think I'm going to store pumpkin and candy themed math or literacy stations in them. Now I just need to find the time to create cute pumpkin and candy corn games for these bags!






If you've found any bargains lately-please share! If you have a great Target find, be sure to link up to the Target Treasures blog.

Station Management

I am a big fan of using a workboard to manage stations. My students use our workboard each day to see what literacy and math stations they'll be going to. I have been using Debbie Diller's literacy work stations kit for my workboard for several years now and love it! It has a card for me to write each student's name and stick on a photo (I covered up the photos with apples in the picture below to give my students a little privacy, so just imagine they are student photos). Next to the students' picture cards are the stations they are assigned to each day. Each student goes to 3 literacy stations in the morning and 2 math stations in the afternoon. The literacy station cards come from Debbie Diller's work station pack- and have cute icons to help the kids figure out which station to go to. When I began doing math stations this year I just made some number cards to put on my workboard for those.

At the end of each day, I quickly move all of the station cards down a row, with the very bottom row moving up to the top (I do not move the students' photos). I have magnets on the back of all my station cards so it is easy to just slide them down on the magnetic board. I do not use Debbie Diller's station pocket chart because it doesn't have room for more than two stations a day. This year I'm using a cheap oil drip pan I bought at a local auto store and spray painted white for my workboard (because there was no extra room for stations on my magnetic white board at the front of the classroom). I love how the pan is magnetic-and you can't really tell it was an oil drip pan because it is covered in stations cards. I just wish it was a little bigger-you can see one of my student's photo cards is practically hanging off the bottom since I ran out of space.

My students are all partnered up for station time-and really 2 students at each station is perfect-although when I have an odd number of students I end up having one group of 3. I have found that if more than 2-3 students work together they tend to get into mischief! When I pull reading or math groups, I do not worry if I split up a partnership (and one partner comes to my table and one partner stays at their station)-the kids know that if their partner is pulled to work with me then they will just have to work at their station alone. I am NOT a station-I like to pull kids for as much or as little time as I like and not have to wait for the stations to rotate (I rotate them about every 15 minutes).

I don't worry too much about partnering my students up with a partner of similar ability (although if I have any extremely high kids I tend to put them together so they don't do the station for their partner and also so I can sometimes give them more challenging activities). I really tend to partner my kids together more by personality-and I try to put kids together who will get along but not so well that they will be chatting all the way through station time! Partnering boys with girls has worked very well for my class this year.

I train students in the beginning of the year how to use our workboard-and they catch on surprisingly quickly. I absolutely start using the workboard the first week of school. We all sit in front of the board and I help each pair of students find their photos on the board and which station they are assigned to. Then after the first station is over, I ring my bell and we all come back over to the board and we find what station each pair of students is assigned to next. After 2-3 weeks of school, all of my students are able to figure out independently what stations they are supposed to go to and we don't have to meet back at the board between each station to go over it.

My literacy stations are spaced out all over the room-and students know where to go for our library station, our writing station, our listening station, etc. The little sign at each station matches the icon on the workboard's station cards.

For our math work stations, each pair of students has been assigned a table spot to work at. Then they just grab the numbered math bin they have been assigned that day off my math bin shelf, and go get started on the math station activity in that bin.

When math station time is over, my students put their math station bins back on the shelf. I did have to put little numbered stickers on my shelf so that the students could figure out where each bin belongs (number order was a tricky concept those first few weeks of kindergarten!).

I have a small filing cabinet in my room that I devote to storage of math station activities. However, that filing cabinet is starting to get pretty full with all of the awesome math station activities I have been downloading from other bloggers. So, my new plan is to keep more generic math stations in my file cabinet (like the games for learning shapes and telling time) and then if a math station has a seasonal theme (like apple patterns or counting pumpkins) I will store it with the rest of my teaching stuff for that particular month (I have big sterilite tubs in my classroom closet labeled for each month that I keep my seasonal teaching materials and theme stuff in).

I'd love to hear how you all stay organized and manage your work stations and centers!

Apple Themed Math Work Stations

My kindergarten students had a great time this week learning all about apples. We read countless apple books, learned how apples grow, graphed our favorite color apple, and even made applesauce. Of course we had to continue with the apple theme in our math work stations too!

Station 1: Apple tree counting mats

(Each counting mat has a different number on the apple basket. Students count out the right number of apples to put on the tree. I happened to have little apples from another game, but you could easily use red pom-poms for the apples. These mats can be downloaded for free from Kelly's Kindergarten-just scroll down the page until you see "apple counting" and click on it.)

Station 2: Roll an Apple Tree

(Students roll the dice and then color in an apple on the tree that shows that number. I'm using those little baskets I got over the summer in Target's dollar section as my dice containers-without the container the dice were all over the floor! You can download this game for free at Kindergarten Hoppenings along with some other awesome apple activities.)

Station 3: Share With the Bear

(Students roll the dice and trace the corresponding number on the sheet. This game is from Mrs. Wills' Apples Math Work Stations pack-click here to check it out. Lots of great apple math stations in this pack!)

Station 4: One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Bunch Game

(Students spin the spinner and color the corresponding picture on their graph. Students loved playing to find out which would win-the apple or the worm. This game is from Deanna Jump's Apples Math and Literacy Activities pack- click here to check it out.)

Station 5: Apple Counting Practice

(Students count how many seeds the apple has and match it up with the corresponding number card-I cut a slit on each apple card and inserted a paperclip so that the number cards could be easily attached. This game can be downloaded for free from Confessions of a Homeschooler along with some other great apple activities!)

Station 6: Spin a Shape

(Students use the 2 spinners to spin both a color and a shape, and then color in the shapes inside the apples on the corresponding game sheet. My students were amazed by the concept of a double spinner! This cute game is a part of the Apple Math Centers pack from Katie at Little Warriors- click here to check it out. This pack was well worth the money since it came with 4 awesome games my kinders have loved playing!)

Station 7: Apple Patterns

(I used our school's di-cut machine to cut out some different colors of apples. Students practiced making different patterns with the apples. Although it's not in the picture, my students used an apple pattern recording sheet to record the patterns they made. Musings of Me made a great (and free!) Apple Mini Unit which is where I got my apple pattern recording sheet.)

Station 8: Apple Math Mat

(Students take turns rolling the dice and using little red pom-poms to fill in that many apples on their apple math mat. The first student to fill up all the apples on their mat wins. You can download this free math mat from Making Learning Fun.) 

Station 9: Graphing Apple Colors

(Students spin and then record what color apple they got on the graphing sheet. This game is a part of the Apple Math Centers pack from Katie at Little Warriors- click here to check it out. The nice part about this game is that it comes with 3 different graphing sheets you can choose from for your students to record their spins.) 

Station 10: Apples Number Match

(Students take turns picking apple cards and clipping them under the corresponding number on their game board. There is also a corresponding student sheet for this game where they trace numbers and draw apples to match their gameboard-I didn't get a photo of it though. This game is a part of the Apple Math Centers pack from Katie at Little Warriors- click here to check it out.)

Station 11: Apple More or Less Game

(Students each pick a card, count how many apples are on the card, and then spin the spinner to see if the child with more or less apples gets to keep the cards.  This game is from Mrs. Wills' Apples Math Work Stations pack-click here to check it out. Mrs. Wills describes how the apple cards for this game can also be used for other fun math games.)

I'll probably never be organized enough to have all of my math stations match my weekly theme again-but it was a fun week of math stations! So fun in fact, that we'll be keeping the apple math stations for at least another week. I'd love to know how your math work stations are going!

Coming up tomorrow- a post on my stations work board and station organization....

Letter of the Day

Anyone do letter of the day? I can't believe that we're already finishing up the 6th week of kindergarten and are nearly to the letter Z. In another week I'll be gearing up for round 2 of letter of the day (we go through the entire alphabet once each quarter- of course focusing on more challenging alphabet skills each time!).

I just have to share this video-it brought a smile to my face after a long week in kindergarten! It combines 2 shows I love-Sesame Street and Glee! I definitely plan to show it to my kiddos when our letter of the day is G.



If you are looking for some great alphabet video clips, go to Sesame Street podcasts on iTunes and you can download a free video podcast for every letter. They are each around 5 minutes long. I plan to show these quick letter videos each day for the letter of the day as we go through the alphabet next quarter.

Happy Friday!

September Math Work Stations

My math work stations seem to be coming along pretty well. A few times a week I take a couple minutes at the start of math station time to introduce a new game or activity. This way I just change out one station at a time and don't have to introduce 10 new stations to the kiddos all at once! Last week I changed stations 1-3, this week I am planning to change 4-6, and so on. So, after about 3 weeks each bin has a new activity. Not sure if that description makes sense-but I hope so!

I am also still taking about 5 minutes each day at the end of math station time for my students to come together and reflect on what went well and what they need to work on the next day. My students decided on 3 rules for our math stations time and we have been working on reviewing these rules every day.

1. Work quietly
2. Do your station the right way (I swear they can turn any math manipulative into a toy!)
3. Be nice to your partner (The kids like to call this rule "No Fighting")

Here are some of my current stations:

Station 1: Harvest Time (This fun game is from Mrs. Wills Apples Math Work Stations Pack. Click here to check it out. Students take turns rolling a dice and using a unifix cube to cover up the apple basket with the corresponding number on the game board. This is a total class favorite!)

Station 2: Bear Patterns (Kids make patterns with bears. They can make up their own pattern, or recreate patterns they see on one of the cards-I think I found these cards at my local teacher store a few years ago).

Station 3: Number Order Mats (Students take a number mat and fill in the missing numbers with magnetic numbers. This is surprisingly challenging and I often hear the kids couting quietly to themselves to try to figure it out! Click here to check out this free resource from The Toddler House.) 

Station 4: Geoboards (Students are doing free exploration with the geoboards right now, but there are lots of great free resources to make this station more challenging next month. Click here for my free geoboard task cards. Click here for geoboard templates from Making Learninging Fun that show how to make letters on the geoboard. Click here for templates for making numbers on the geoboard-they even have a blank geoboard template you can print out so that students can draw their own geoboard creations!)

Station 5: Brown Bear Color Graph  (This game is from Deanna Jump and Julie Lee's School is Fun: Math and Literacy Centers for August and September Packet. Click here to check it out. Students spin an animal on the spinner and record what they spin on the graphing sheet. This game is especially popular since we read the Brown Bear book earlier this month)

Station 6: Don't Miss the Bus (This game is from Mrs. Wills' Back to School Math Work Stations-Beginning Number Concepts Pack. Click here to check it out. Students take turns rolling the dice and tracing the corresponding number on their paper. Great for math skills and handwriting practice!) 

Station 7: Rock and Roll a Block (This game is from Deanna Jump and Julie Lee's School is Fun: Math and Literacy Centers for August and September Packet. Click here to check it out. Students roll the special pattern block dice and color in the shape they rolled on their graph. Students use the pattern blocks they roll to make a picture and color it at the bottom of the sheet.)

Station 8: Spin a Shape (Students spin the spinner, name the shape, and then cover up that shape on their game board. First player to cover all of their shapes wins. Click here to download this free game that I made).

If you have any fun math work station ideas for September-please share! Interested in what other teachers have been up to this past week-check out Clutter Free Classroom's "A Peek in my Planbook: Week in Review" Linky Party.