It's almost TIME for school!!!

Hey y'all!  

It's Freebie Friday!!!  I am so glad I get to hang out with you today!  I am Shana Grooms from Mrs. Grooms' Room. 

 (Pronounced Shauna...I think I need to start telling my online friends that.)   

And today, I am sharing part of my unit with YOU!  One of my favorite units that I have created is Telling Time with Momma Minute and Baby Hour.  You can check out the entire unit by clicking here.  Everything you need is in this unit. From centers, games, to practice sheets, you are set for the year.  It is the perfect way to start the year off!  

I always incorporate time into my calendar time EVERY DAY. We use Every Day Counts calendar math in my school district.  I LOVE IT!!  It takes a about 5 minutes a day but let me tell you...your children know time by the time you get to it.   

Howeverrrrr, I had to spice it up a little!!!  And since I use Momma Minute and Baby Hour, they are introduced in the very beginning of the year. 

So one of the things that we talk about in the very beginning of the year are the minutes.  We count minutes for 60 days and every day Momma Minute counts the number of minutes on the clock.  If it is the 15th day of school, then we count fifteen minutes on the clock with Momma.  

We always put our minutes into groups of five by coloring the minutes two different colors.  I use our school colors red and blue to color groups of five minutes.  You will end up having an AB pattern.  Also, a perfect way to show those patterns! ; )   

You will want to count the groups of five on the clock with your students every day.  (I promise...it will only take fives minutes to do!! BUT that pattern of fives will stick like glue!)    

We do the same for Baby Hour when we count the hours.  We count ALL the minutes in an hour before Baby Hour can go to the next hour or number.  

Helpful Hint: ONLY have Momma Minute on the clock when you count the first 60 days!  You can add Baby Hour later when you talk about hours. 

Now, it's freebie time!!

Inside your freebie, you will find... a clock to use with your students, visual aids for you to show Momma Minute and Baby hour, and little hands as Momma Minute and Baby Hour.  Of course, there is a practice sheet to use, too! 

We do a lot of prep work in the throughout the year to get us ready for our lessons on time. I know it sounds a little painful BUT the end results will make you cry only tears of joy. And your littles won't be crying at all!!  : )

Let us know how you help your students learn all about time in the comments below!!!  I would love to hear from you! 

Number Elimination Riddles Freebie!

Hi, Teaching Friends!

Do you like solving riddles? Give this one a try!

I love solving and creating number elimination riddles! They're a great teaching tool for so many reasons!

* They're a great way to review math concepts. Look at the example above ... you'll see comparing numbers, comparison signs, subtraction, counting coins, and odd/even, all in one riddle. Ah, I do love to hit multiple objectives all in one swing of the bat! 

* Use them to teach your students how to draw conclusions by eliminating the choices that aren't possible. Modeling how to solve an elimination riddle brings lots of opportunities for higher order thinking skills. Try a turn-and-talk with your students, and eavesdrop to get a good snapshot of their understanding of both the solving process and the math concepts.  

* Riddles are so much fun that they'll keep your students happily engaged. I'll bet you stuck with it and solved all the clues on the riddle above, right? ;)

How can you use math riddles with your class?

* Solve one a day at calendar time with the whole class.

* Use them as a warm-up before a math lesson.

* Use them as task cards in a math center.

* Set them up around your classroom for a Read the Room activity.

* Use them as challenge work for early finishers.

* When your students get really good at solving riddles and can handle the pressure of finding the solution quickly, use riddle cards for a game of Scoot.

* They're a great sponge activity for those few extra moments {that you so seldom have, I know... :) }

Would you like to try some free number elimination riddles with your class? I've put together a sample pack with riddles from six different sets from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Let's take a closer look at a few number elimination riddle cards. This one is from "Buzzing Around One Hundred".  The clues focus on the numbers surrounding 100, making it a fun choice for 100th Day math.

Here's another, a bit more challenging. It's from The Lovebug's Secret Numbers.

Would you like to try some free number elimination riddles with your class? I've put together a sample pack for you that includes 17 riddle cards drawn from six different sets in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click here or on the cover to download your free set!

Math skills used in solving the riddles in this free set include addition, subtraction, place value, coins, comparison signs, adding and subtracting ten and multiples of ten, odd/even, and measurement. It's very cool to watch your students' reasoning ability grow with repeated use of this kind of riddle.

If your students (or you!) fall in love with solving number riddles, you'll find links to the complete sets in the download, or you can see them in the "Riddles" category at my store.  Each of the complete sets includes an answer key and a student recording page.

I hope you and your student will enjoy using these number elimination riddles. I'd love to hear your ideas for using them!

Happy Teaching!

Free Wearable Learning

Hola! We're Nicole and Eliceo Sanchez from www.NicoleAndEliceo.com and we feel honored to be a part of this new collaborative kindergarten blog. Since we began the journey of designing this blog and recruiting bloggers to team up with us, we have met so many talented teacher authors along the way. Today we want to take a moment to introduce ourselves and share a free sample that we designed that you can use with your students. 

Let's start by telling you a little bit about ourselves. We currently live in Yucatan, Mexico, with our two kids, dog, adopted cats, about 200 exotic chickens, a few peacocks and a quickly growing number of rabbits. We are both stay-at-home parents and work out of the home while our kids are at school. We also do occasional volunteer team-teaching at nearby schools. We never pictured our life looking like this. In fact we usually like to plan everything in advance, and we can tell you, this is nothing like we planned. So how did this happen? Click to read more about "Our Story." 

When we're teaching, we love to incorporate hands-on "wearable learning." It's a great way to boost excitement about a topic plus it helps motivate students to do their best work as they are making something that they will get to proudly wear.

We use crowns and bracelets to teach the alphabet,

we use bracelets to teach phonics,

 

we use bracelets to teach math concepts,

we use crowns to teach about diverse holidays,

 

and... we use bracelets to teach kids about bullying.

Today, for Sample Sunday, we want to share a sample of some of our bracelets with you. They're super easy to use in the classroom, and my students always love them! All you need to do is print out the templates, cut them apart into strips and let the fun begin! Students will have fun tracing the letters, number or shapes and coloring the graphics. Then they will get to wear them proudly throughout the day. Another great thing about them is that they help communicate with parents what their kids are learning at school as they will see them wearing them home in the afternoon.

FREE BRACELET SAMPLE

We hope you enjoy these bracelets and look forward to your feedback, and as always, happy teaching!

Summer Themed Math

With summer quickly approaching, we have nearly finished our Math Curriculum. 

 Then it will be a great time to review what we have learned this year!  

Today I am sharing some sample pages from my End of the Year/Summer Math Packet.  

It can be used in SO many ways!  For me, it works great as morning work.  

It could also be used for a daily math lesson the last few weeks.

Numerous teachers have also commented to me that they sent it home for "Summer Homework". 

Enjoy!

Riddles for Math

Hi, Teaching Friends!

This is my first post on iTeachFirst - I'm glad to be here, and so happy that you stopped by today! I'm a retired teacher from NJ who (as expected!) found it just too hard to simply walk away from teaching! After 26 years of teaching (first grade, Reading Recovery, Basic Skills K-8), I'm now having a great time creating new classroom resources, blogging, and staying in touch with the world of primary classrooms that I love! It's a delight and a privilege to be able help teachers and their students around the world!

After all those years teaching I can say for sure, and I think you'll agree - nobody in any other job gets to laugh as much as first grade teachers do in a day at work!  A good part of that, of course, is the fact that our little guys are so cute, sincere, lovable, literal, and more. But I think a lot of the laughter comes from the fact that firsties are always ready for a good time. No matter what you're doing, if you call it a game, to them it becomes a game!

I think that's one of the reasons that I got started creating riddle sets. Riddles are fun!  Of course, they're also great for teaching inference, using key details, solidifying concepts and vocabulary... but to our kiddos, they're Fun with a Capital F!

Teaching our students to sort through clues, to come up with possible answers, discard those that don't fit, and continue the process of integrating the new information at each step ... all of this is higher order thinking for them! But since they see it as a game, they beg to do more. "Well ......, if you really want to, sure we can do some more!"  :)  If you're happy and you know it, solve a riddle!

I have a lot of riddles in my TpT store. You can see them all here. But today I want to share with you a free set of riddles that you won't find there.

One of my most popular resources is a set of math riddles. It includes a riddle for every number from one to 100, making this set very useful for calendar activities like counting the days of school. It's also fun for the 100th Day!

So, your freebie for this Sample Sunday is ... just to give you a little taste of the big set ... this brand-new sample set of a dozen riddles! 

Here's a close-up of one of the twelve riddle cards in this set. You can see how the possibilities narrow with each clue that's given, and how these riddles will really keep your little learners thinking as they consider and discard possible answers right down to the very last clue.
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I hope you'll enjoy using them! 

Thanks for stopping by iTeachFirst ... Happy Teaching!