Hi all!
Are you ready for
CENTER SATURDAY!?!
This is the weekly blog post where I show you are math centers from the week
and tell you all about them.
The goal is to inspire your center time activities to be more fun and engaging.
This past week, we had MLK Jr. day off on Monday, so it was a short week.
I also new our curriculum was full because I was teaching about MLK Jr.
AND I had to finish up Winter Animals since we were not able to finish it the week before.
I could not have long math centers.
But I could still make sure they were skill building, skill practicing, engaging and FUN.
And I had NO prep time to make fun centers so I had to grab some ideas from my friends.
Check out our center time fun below.
The yellow table was dedicated to our time to the hour mitten matching.
{Yes, we still teach time to the hour.}
I look a time worksheet that had clock faces on it. I made a copy of it and cut the clocks out.
I typed the digital time on my computer and printed it out too.
Then I took these fun mitten accent pieces and glued down both the
clock faces and digital time onto the clocks and laminating them.
The mittens only add to the novelty of the game.
But kids LOVE novelty and they will run to this station for this reason alone.
{And a smart teacher will make about 5 copies of both the analog and
dial time and add it to 5 different accents to make 5 “different” games all at the same time.}
Our orange center hosted this fun Count and Graph Snowflakes graph made by Annie Moffatt.
This looks like it might be easy,
but these snowflakes were sneaky and made my students concentrate.
Plus we were working on building and reading graphs.
The red table was close to my calendar time.
So I chose to let my students fill in the numbers on a January calendar.
I took this printable, also from Annie Moffatt,
and added initial number and ending number for this year.
Then I let my students use the calendar pocket chart to help them fill in the rest.
The purple table was a creation of mine.
I used these polar bear cards and answer sheet to have my students count the base ten blocks.
Since the cards have polar bears and they write the numbers on ice burgs,
this activity was a BLAST.
Most importantly, my students were really worked with counting the tens
and the ones to make a two digit number.
This activity can be found here.
The blue center was focuses on comparing numbers.
So we used these simple snowmen notepads with numbers on them to compare with <, >, or =.
And lastly I grabbed the Number Mazes from Maria at Kinder Craze.
You can grab it {here.}
The were at our green table.
I use these many times during the year.
Since we finished our 100th day of school I knew these mazes would be awesome.
I copied two of the mazes back to back for differentiation.
I encouraged my students to try to 1-100 side.
Some opted for the 1-50 side while many did the 1-100 side.
I was proud that some of my students did the 1-50 side and
flipped the sheet over to complete the 1-100 side for the fun of it.
I will do many more of the mazes with my class because
it is a FUN way to practice counting to 50 or 100 AND identifying numbers to 50 or 100 too!
I hope you loved this week’s
Looks great! Love the number maze!
Jennifer
First Grade Blue Skies
What a terrific idea! You should totally make your Center Saturday posts a weekly linky party! And I am DEFINITELY checking out your Number Mazes- those look terrific!
Stephanie
First Grade Bangs