Saturday, March 10, 2012

St. Patty's Day Math for Smartboard

Last week was super busy and lots of time was spent on testing for school improvement goals and report cards. Watching my students take their Star Math test was a real eye-opener. Yikes! I can see we need to spend a lot more time on ordering numbers before the end of the year. Here is something I made for the Smartboard for extra practice during March.


I feel so fortunate to have such wonderful technology in my classroom!

I'm wondering how many of you have Smartboards in your rooms. If so, drop me a line and let me know how you use it for instruction or ideas for Smart lessons you wish were available.

The Smart Exchange has many great lessons available for download, but if you're like me, you probably agree they need some TLC!

Here's another fun activity I was inspired to create after attending a common core in-service training. This is an activity to practice sums to 5, 10 or 20. I found all green :) dark chocolate mint m&m's at the grocery store I thought I would use for this. I'll have to set some aside for myself before the kids play!

 So, you laminate the cute work mat. Then have the students shake and toss the counters over the mat- (I'll have to do some coaching or have the kids just work on the floor). They count and record the number of counters that landed on and off the mat.

 Sounds like good simple fun! I can't wait to try this out. The only problem is, the kids won't be able to eat the m&m's if they are being tossed onto the floor and tables. That would be a true test to the claim, "melts in your mouth not in your hands"! I might have to rethink the candy idea....




 You can play this on-off game with any mat and any type of manipulatives. I am going to work on creating other cute game mats in more holiday themes.

Here's the game in action! The students loved this activity! I ended up using green bingo chips as you can see.




Each student was asked to bring in a green treat to share. We had pickles, cucumbers, green peeps, Jello, candies, cookies, rice crispie treats and much more!


Here's a darling leprechaun craftivity I purchased from A Cupcake for the Teacher! I decided to attach a different writing paper, one that I made and offered as a freebie at my store.



This is one of my little leprechauns striking the peeker pose!


The students are working on writing to tell more and they sure did with this great writing prompt!  I had to shorten the project by skipping the legs and just glued leprechaun shoes to the bottom of the paper.





Here are the leprechaun kisses treat bags I made. The poem is also a freebie.



 
I have so many ideas for projects but not enough hours in the day to create them or take pictures and post the ones I do! Baby steps....

Have a super weekend everyone!



3 comments:

  1. I just wanted to let you know that I nominated your beautiful blog for an award! Please visit my blog to see the post!

    Lori
    TeachingwithLoveandLaughter

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  2. I love your blog and follow it...if I could follow you again I would.

    I love my Smartboardand use it for everything! I agree that they need to be cute! Many of the ones I have created cannot be shared though since you cannot secure the clpart.

    Your activities above look and sound cute. Are you going to be able to share them or are you selling them?

    Please come visit me when you get the chance. I have a leprechaun math *freebie*! =)


    Heather
    Heather's Heart

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  3. Hello, how do I download your Smartboard activity? It looks like something I would LOVE to use! Thanks so much!

    ReplyDelete

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