This Kahoot was designed by my husband for his 3rd grade class as an introduction to natural disasters.
The quiz features 8 questions with pictures of different disasters. The students have 20 seconds to select the name of the natural disaster in the picture. Some of the kids had never seen the disasters before and were amazed at the volcano and the tsunami. (Their definite favorites!)
His students used their Chromebooks and his partner across the hall used iPads. Both worked wonderfully.
If you have never used Kahoot! before, you can create them for about anything. The registration is completely free. Click here to read my blog introduction to Kahoots. My husband even created one for my birthday to test our family’s knowledge! Our students absolutely love them and love competing against each other.
If you would like to check out a few other kahoots, I have several with different topics that I made under menu, Kahoots or just click anything below..
So… this year, we decided to get a real Elf on the Shelf on Black Friday. I didn’t know too much about this but after reading the book that came with her, the kids and I were hooked. I am having so much fun finding her in so many new situations. The kids immediately go to the bookshelf every morning to see if she is there. If she’s not, its a giant scavenger hunt till she is found.
The other day our elf, Josie, was watching Christmas movies after she got back from seeing Santa! She must have been inspired by the North Pole!
Hiding in the tree!
Not causing trouble at all…
Well, maybe a little
The one above is one of my favorites. I saw several people do variations of this so I was super excited that Josie chose to put green streamers on all 3 of my kids’ doors!
Playing Twister?
This one was fun! Josie must have gotten the idea and the printable from frugal coupon living.
I’m a little concerned about the math here…..A friend of mine was shopping at Walmart the other day and sent me this picture. I decided it was a great picture to show my students. I tell my students daily, “check your answer- does it make sense?” “Use your estimating skills” If your answer doesn’t make sense, then we made an error with our math – case in point this picture!
Apparently its more common than I realized. When I looked up real world math mistakes, I found a ton! There was even an article written for the Huffington Post that showed several errors. Click here to see it.
I think I will make a slide show for my kids to see…. Might help drive home the point of always check your work and why it’s important in a very interesting way.
While traveling, we came across this little gourmet cupcake cafe in Fayetteville, Arkansas called Bliss. They were seriously some of the best cupcakes I have ever had in my life. They were so good, I had to write an article about them!
You can sit inside the cafe or choose to take them on the road. The small one in the middle is for our dog. (Yes, they even make cupcakes for the four legged family members!) Each day, the menu changes so if you ever get a chance to stop by, you may want to check their website located here.
Inside the box are 2 chocolate vegan cupcakes located in the back (my son has food allergies and he absolutely thought these were amazing and the fact that they even had a cupcake he could eat made him super excited.)
In the middle to the right is a S’mores cupcake (a graham cracker cake with a marshmallow filling, chocolate frosting, a mini marshmallow, and a piece of chocolate on top.) The one next to it is a gluten free Butterfinger cupcake (butterfinger cake infused with caramel and topped with a peanut butter frosting and chocolate drizzle plus more Butterfinger pieces on top)
On the bottom row, a Caramel Fudge Brownie Cupcake (brownie topped with caramel cream cheese frosting, caramel drizzle, chocolate drizzle, and chopped pecans) and a Cookie Dough Cupcake (vanilla Cake with cookie dough baked right in topped with vanilla frosting and a chocolate chip cookie)
Once back on the road, we began looking for other locations. Apparently they have two locations in Fayetteville, one in Rogers AR, and one in Jonesboro AR but franchises available. Hmmm……
Decimal Dice Game – A game involving place value, adding and comparing decimals to the thousandths place
Last year, I was fortunate enough to attend a NCTM (National Council Teachers of Mathematics) conference in Minneapolis, MN. One of the booths that was represented was a booth from Box Cars and One- Eyed Jacks. (Their website islocated here)
I bought some of the coolest place value dice. They were about 50 cents each and you can buy them online also however the shipping is expensive. I also found them on Amazon located here for decimals and whole numbers. Each of the dice had a particular number on them -see the picture below.
So when I got back home, I tried to think of something to do with these awesome dice. At the time, we were working on adding and subtracting decimals so I made the worksheet above. In it, the kids received one each of the tenths, hundredths, and thousandths dice. Their job was to take turns rolling the dice and then adding them together. Once they got their numbers, they had to compare it to their partners. A colleague of mine suggested that they could compare their numbers and determine which had the largest decimal therefore hitting not one, but multiple common core standards at the same time.
The kids had so much fun with these dice. I bought several of the larger place value dice as well. My next task is to develop some additional games or worksheets for students to write numbers in standard, expanded and word forms with those.
If you would like a copy of the worksheet above that I made, click here and you can print your own copy. I also have a store at Teachers Pay Teachers that has some more awesome math stuff.
If you would like to see some other awesome games I use in my classroom, click any of the links below, or go to menu, Math is Awesome, Math Games.
Grillby’s Burgers – small burgers on Hawaiian Roll bread
This year my 11 year old wanted an Undertale Themed Birthday Party. Now with teaching and kids, I had heard of Undertale but had no idea anything specific enough to throw into a themed party. This immediately prompted my son to begin showing me the game and all kinds of interesting food that went along with the game.
One of the first things we came up with was Grillby’s and apparently he serves burgers and fries. We didn’t use the fries but we did make some super cute mini- hamburgers/cheeseburgers using meat and Hawaiian Rolls as bread!
Timmie Flakes- AKA Frosted Flakes with a sign
Another treat that we found was something called Timmie Flakes – one of the boys literally grabbed one and ran shouting, “Timmie Flakes, Timmie Flakes.” We just used small containers with lids (found at Wal-Mart or at Amazon here) and loaded them full with Frosted Flakes. Printed a sign from Google Images (again any will do) and put them on a tray. Super super easy!
For some drinks – we made Spider Cider and Ketchup. (I have no idea but apparently it’s a thing). For Spider Cider – we just poured Apple Juice into a jug and added some Halloween spiders to float around inside. Ketchup was made using Hawaiian Punch which is so much better to drink! Added some Google image signs and we had some drinks!
Spider Cider – AKA Apple Juice with Halloween spiders floating inside
Ketchup to Drink??? (Hawaiian Punch masquerading as ketchup – tastes so much better)
For more Undertale Party ideas, please click on menu at the top, birthday parties, Undertale. Or Just click below…
Order of Operations….. A procedure that my students need to memorize in order to be successful in algebra and higher secondary math.
These task cards are designed to help my students practice while I work with small groups in the back. My students can complete the work and then use the iPad to scan the QR codes. The QR codes link the students to a sheet with my work. If they make a mistake, they have the answer and all the work shown to compare and figure out where they went wrong to correct the mistake. This provides instant feedback from me, even though I am not beside them. It’s like cloning myself!!!
The only prep and materials that are required are a printer, scissors and some lamination (optional). I went ahead and laminated them so that I can reuse these year after year. These task cards have both regular problems and test prep problems. If you would like to see them or use them –click here to find them in my store. I am super excited about using these again with my students next week!
Work shown step by step so students can check their work!
Hershey’s Chocolate World – New York, New York – Las Vegas, NV
On our last vacation, we found ourselves touring the sites of Las Vegas. As we were walking, we discovered an amazing store called Hershey’s Chocolate World. Their official site islocated here.
We had no idea what to expect when we walked into this two story store. It was floor to ceiling of sweetness and smelled of delicious chocolate! One of my favorite parts was a Statue of Liberty that was made out of almost 800 pounds of chocolate.
Twizzlers had their own department!
Certain different candies had a whole department all by themselves.
Jolly Rancher area!
The Jolly Rancher Wall of Awesomeness!
There are even whole walls devoted to Jolly Ranchers and Hershey Kisses!!! (An M&M Wall is located down the street at M&M World!) You can buy all the flavors you like and pay for them by the bag or pound. Other types of candy like Reese’s and Hershey Bars received whole rooms to themselves. (Be sure to check out the 5 pound chocolate bars!) You can see better pictures of the Reese’s room and Hershey Kisses wall on their official site.
If you find yourself in Las Vegas or on a road trip, then I highly recommend this stop. It is definitely worth driving into town if you are nearby. My only regret, and my children’s, is that I didn’t have enough room in my suitcase to bring more candy home!
Long Division….. The thought makes some people cringe in horror or shiver with remembering all of those hours practicing over and over that same method.
In 5th grade, our job is to bridge that gap between concrete understanding in elementary school to the abstract understanding required in junior high. Traditional algorithms are taught while also still allowing students to choose their method to solve real world problems. One of the ways I like to practice, is by using task cards.
I have 84 minutes to teach math each day (which is super exciting coming from 45 before) and my students work in a math workshop setting. Whole group usually lasts about 20 min while students use the rest of the time to rotate through stations. Since I am teaching a small group in the back of the room, I need stations that are set up to run independently which is why I created these task cards.
These task cards are cut out and printed on card stock. I then laminate them so I can use them for multiple classes and groups. The students use notebook paper to work out each problem and check their answers. Students use an iPad to quickly scan the QR code, and it takes them to a photo image which contains the problem worked out on white boards along with the correct answer. They can then check their answer and if they did something wrong, they can see exactly where they messed up.
An example of the answers from one of the questions above.
I am in the process of designing additional cards to be used for different areas including multiplication and decimals.
This is an example of one of my long division cards. 1/2 of the cards have no remainders, while the other 1/2 of the cards have remainders in which the students have to figure out how to interpret based on the real world scenario that is provided. Currently, I have cards with 1 and 2 digit divisors, decimal division, multiplication and expressions
If you would like to check out these task cards, I have a free sample version (contains 8 cards) on my teachers pay teachers website –click here.
The full version of the 1 digit divisor (containing 24 cards) is also on my site that islisted here . and the full version of the 2 digit divisor (containing 24 cards) is listed here. I would love to hear what you think if you try these out in your classroom or home school. They are designed for 4th/5th grade but can be used at other grades to enrich or for remediation.
Full Version- 2 Digit Divisor
Full version – 1 Digit Divisor
Full version with 24 task cards!
Task card printed in black and white, laminated on color paper.
If color copies are an issue (we don’t have a color copier at our school,) then you can print the cards out and glue them onto colored paper. Not nearly as pretty as colored but are effective none the less.
For Parents,Teachers, Scout Leaders & Really Just Everyone! 