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Monday, October 6, 2014

Halloween Center Activities and a Free Math Game

I love October....probably because it takes me until October to get settled into a routine with the new class.  Today we started a new week of centers.  I wish you could walk through my classroom when students are in math centers.  EVERYONE is engaged.  EVERYONE is working...hard!  I love it!  They like being on their own, they like playing games and they love learning new things!  This week in centers, I have a few games to play alone, a game to play with a partner and a 100's board coloring activity.  Here are the games:

The first one is my Autumn Even and Odd Sort.  Students sort the number cards onto the odd or even sorting mats.  After all of the number cards are sorted, students answer the questions on their practice page.  For example, the directions might tell students to take 4 cards from their even mat and put them in order from greatest to least. 


  This Halloween "Spider" themed game was a big hit today. Students have 5 spider web number mats.  They are numbered 1-100, 101-200, 201-300, 301-400 and 401-500.  Students take a numbered spider card and decide which web it goes on.





 After they get all of the numbers sorted onto the correct web, they use this answer sheet.  For example, question 1 asks students to take 4 spider cards from their first web and put them in order from greatest to least, etc.  The students love this game.  I have similar games with numbers up to 1000 in my other center sets as well. And by the way, it amazed me at how some students didn't have any idea about where the spider belonged....once I could get them to think about the enormous number line in their head, or the enormous set of 100's boards in their head....it seemed to click.  So we will see....

Another game called Base 10 Battle.  In this game, students work with a partner.  The first person rolls 2 dice and makes a number.  They show that number on their base 10 mat using base 10 blocks.  The second person rolls the dice and makes a number.  The person who has the biggest number wins that round.  They take a token. (I put 20 counters in a bag to be used as tokens.) After all of the tokens are gone, the game is over and who ever has the most tokens is the winner!  For a variation, the winner would be the student with the smallest number...hopefully logic will kick in and students will realize that if they need to get the biggest number, they will put the dice in order to make the biggest number, etc.  The students really liked this game. 

I've attached a free copy of the directions for the game for you.  Click HERE!
 
If you liked the Halloween Math Centers, you can see the entire center collection in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  There are 5 math and 5 ELA centers.  The unit preview looks like this:
 
To see the unit in my store, click HERE!
I hope your October has gotten off to a great start!  Let me know what you think of the free game.  Happy Teaching!
Sharon
 
 
 

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