I can make 10, can you?

We have been working so hard in room 19 learning our numbers 0-10, what they mean, how to represent them and of course, how we can put them together to make 10!

Last year this unit gave me a headache was very hard for our kinders, and they are now also paying for it in 1st grade.  We as K teachers weren't sure what worked, made some mistakes, found some great ideas, and created some great ideas!

Our math curriculum is pretty rigid, and it doesn't leave a lot of time for self exploration and hands on learning with the concepts, so we have implemented Explore Weeks!  This allows for us to teach the content, give students a good base, then spend an entire week in centers discovering, deepening our learning and sharing with our friends!

To help with this, I created a new pack, Ways to Make 10!  This unit was created to be used independently in centers, or can be used as reinforcement for students who aren't quite ready to work alone.

 The first center allows for reinforcement of number order.  At our school, we use AIMsweb, so these cards are extremely helpful for students to practice what they will be doing in a few weeks on their middle of the year AIMsweb.  The cards are included for first, second and third number missing for numbers 1-10.

The second center is aligned directly to the way that our curriculum teaches the ways to make 10, and I love that the students can have such a visual!  This center allows for the students to cross of the cubes to count them, write how many, and how many it makes all together. 

The last center is a matching center.  The students take the cube trains and match it to the card with the correct numbers on it.  I loved this one because it also subtly gets students reading the word AND each time ;) sneaky teacher moves!

After a week of using this center with my students, their mastery levels were excellent!  I was so impressed with the students ability to explain the what, how and why, and there was a lot less confusion than last year!  

You can find this center, along with more math resources and much more at my TpT store! 

About that lengthy absence...

Why yes I am still around, and didn't quite completely fall off the earth!  So many things happened over the last few months.. let me see if I can catch you up quickly! On top of the three things I'll share with you, there have been numerous Ole Miss and college football games, grad school and creating of products!

The school year started and I have my hands full with a lively bunch of 19 kinders, in 4 years this has been my smallest class yet, but they have definitely brought on their challenges!  Here is a peek at my classroom!  I love, love the green walls and that it was this way when I got it!  It makes for a much more warm and inviting room, and green is suppose to be calming, right?

On October 18th, I also had the very best day of my life, I got married!  We had such a perfect day, even though about 24 hours before we weren't sure if it was going to work out... You see we found this BEAUTIFUL lodge on a lake that was just perfect.  Except you see, we live in Mississippi and there are about a billion mosquitoes.  God was definitely looking out and we were able to have some cooler weather and a light breeze, along with a fogger and some bug spray, and everything worked out perfectly!

Some of the most exciting news over the last few months however might be this...

We are expecting our first baby in March!  We are going to stay on Team Green, as in we are not finding out what the baby is.  This was a long, hard fought battle, but there are just so few surprises in life, and this might be the biggest & best!   

So hopefully you can see why I've been so absent recently!  It has been difficult to keep up with everything that has been going on!