Time Flies...Some Free Activities Too

Wow, has it ever been a long time since my last post - I hate to blame it on time, but I'm going to!  Being a busy mom plus being in the junior grades for only my second year has really left me short on time...so...here's some of the things we've done that I haven't blogged about.  If you are doing some Halloween work, this Skittles place value might fit right in!!  I left you hanging with some place value ideas...so here is what I've done!

#1 - Introduction to Place Value - Real World Math
I wanted a good way to introduce place value to my kiddos, so I decided to print off the hockey salaries for the Toronto Maple Leafs for 2013.  It's funny - I know, the day after I made this activity, one of the players signed for 8 million and change.  Oh well...the kids had fun.  I put the salaries of the players in a table and made it into a scoot game where they had to go and collect all of the player salaries.  It was funny to listen to them talk..."Oh man...he makes no money!!"  The player made 900,000...it made me laugh out loud.  When they were done they had to put the players in order - from most money to least money.  When they showed me their table, they pulled a jersey to write their standard form, expanded form and words.  Here are a few below, plus the left half of my bulletin board!

 

#2 - Skittles Place Value - Modeling Numbers on a Place Value Chart
I handed my kids each a random pack of 30 skittles - well, 32 - they ate two of their choice...lol.  I made sure that each bag covered all of the colours but didn't look at how many.  I had the kids eat their two skittles and then record in a tally chart the colours and how many of each they had.  After that, I asked them to make the biggest number that they could with the skittles in their bag.  It was interesting that some of the kids had problems with this!! Goodness!  Then they had to make the smallest number possible.  Afterwards, I had them create 13 different combinations using their skittles.  They had to record on the recording sheet I made for them.  I then had the kids glue their skittles onto the mat I copied on cardstock with a hot glue gun and post their mat in the hallway.  We then had all the kids go into the hallway to check the numbers - did they agree it was the largest number (check=yes, x=no) and then compare and order them this time from smallest to biggest.  It was a fun activity and the kids got to eat some!  I tried to post the link to my files in google drive, but for some reason the font is messed up - if you would like a copy - leave your email in the comment link and I will email you my file.  Does anyone know why the fonts don't show up properly?

#3 - Genre Posters
After doing a lot of work on the different genres, the summative task was to go into the library and find two  books that represented the genre they chose to create a poster for.  I used my personal ipad to take pictures and it was awesome how engaged the students were!  They had to choose two books and then yank a paragraph from one of the books that would be a true representation of their genres.  For fairy tale, historical fiction, realistic fiction, biography and autobiography, the choices were easy.  Some were a little more difficult!  Check out some of the posters below - I think they turned out really well!

I have a lot more to catch up on in the blog world, but I will leave that for another time - we are busy doing our progress reports right now and I'm into some Halloween workstations with my kids - I hope you have a spooktacular week!