Tens and Leftovers Linky

Since spring break, we've been learning about making groups of ten and putting any leftovers in the ones place (a key Common Core State Standard).  We have been spiraling this concept throughout the year during calendar with ten frames, straw bundles, and base ten blocks, so it's been pretty easy.  Today as a fun team-building math activity I borrowed 3 inch plastic links from a fellow teaching friend and we went crazy with our own tens and ones "linky" party!

It's so easy, you can do it tomorrow!

I split the class into groups of 4 students, dumped a large pile of links in the middle and off they went!  It was interesting to listen to some students talking naturally about numbers that add to 10 while they were building 10 and others have trouble with one-to-one correspondence when counting their links!  Ahh...such is the life of a first grade teacher, dealing with such a wide range of skill levels.  Some students understood immediately that if two students had chains with fewer than 10 links on it, they could combine the chains to make 10, while other students didn't think to combine shorter chains together and simply dumped both chains in a huge pile of "leftovers" just because there didn't happen to be any single links lying around.  We had some really rich math talk and all in all it was a great math activity.  Next week, in my independent math stations, students will have a chance to do it all over again with tiny links.  Here are some photos of our "linky" party action!

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

The energy level was really high as the kiddos were busy counting tens of links, and of course they wanted to link ALL the chains together.  Since I would do almost anything to avoid inside recess thought it would be a great way to practice estimation, we did it!  We linked all the chains together and predicted where in our school the chain would reach from our doorway.  SO FUN and a great way too avoid the craziness of an inside recess body/brain break!

Oh!  And in case you forgot...

There's still time to register for the HUGE giveaway Nicole Rios is hosting! Even though her blog is for second grade, she's got awesome prize packages for grades K - 4.  Click on the picture to get registered!

 

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Spring is Here - April Fool's!

It's snowing here on April 1st!  I guess spring is never coming taking it's own sweet time...I suppose that's what we get after a long winter with 10, yes 10 snow days!  Anyhow, it's spring break for me and since it's not very spring-like outside I thought I'd try to bring some spring inside with this fun "Hop into Spring" Making 10's freebie for you!  This is a great Common Core State Standards based activity to help students learn combinations of ten!

 How We Did It

We actually used this spring Making 10's game in my class the week before spring break in math choices (More about how math choices in an upcoming post) and it went great!  Here's how I organized the activity:

I printed out all 4 game boards along with the 4 Easter themed game boards (part of  Making 10's throughout the Year) and I put one of each inside a plastic page protector.  

 

Students used dry erase markers to find combinations of 10 by circling adjacent numbers.  Since I had a parent volunteer helper that day I asked students to play the game as a 1-player game while the parent helped, and now that they know the game it will go into the games rotation as a 2-player game.  The kids enjoyed the activity and little did they know, they got to practice many of the first grade Common Core State Standards including: CCSS 1.OA.B.3 (Properties of Addition), CCSS 1.OA.C.6 (Fluency of Facts within 10), and CCSS 1.OA.D.8 (Unknown Numbers).

 

A fun alternate version of game play to increase fact fluency would be to give each child in your class or group a game board, set a timer and see how many combinations they can find within a set amount of time. 

And Now for the Freebie!

Click here to go to the download, available on TPT

I  hope you get a chance to use this spring freebie with your class or maybe just looking at  the cute spring flowers will brighten up your day.  Thanks for reading and please consider following our blog and/or facebook page!