Place Value

The Math Work Stations Blog Party continues~
What an amazing collection of resources I have accumulated over the last month. Both my son and my laminator thank all the bloggers for all the free games and activities!

I am kind of feeling like a slacker though. Every other blogger is offering a free printable activity with their blog post and I've got nothing.
I sort of feel like the lazy lab partner that relies on everyone else's hard work, but since I'm not currently teaching K-2 I am not as motivated as the rest of this crew.

As for place value, I've had a lot of fun using the following ideas this week with my son:

Bean Stick place value work mat from the fabulous Fran http://kindergartencrayons.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-spill-beans-beginning-place-value.html

My son thought it was silly that the mat only had space for 3 bean sticks because who wants to only count to 30?!? So we improvised and made the mat work for bigger numbers too! I think he's ready to start working on 3 digit numbers but I continue to review 0-99 so that he has a very strong number sense. He starts Kindergarten in the fall so there is no rush to learn BIG numbers, except in his mind of course!

Popsicle Place Value ~ "How Many Popsicles Did We Eat this Summer?" is the question. Collecting the data is happening now. Currently we are at one group of ten and 7 extras.
I plan on making some sort of cute box or pocket chart to display the sticks but I haven't got it done yet. So far we are just bundling groups of ten and keeping the bundle and extras in a tupperware container.
Tip: Use the mini hair bands instead of rubber bands for bundling groups of ten. They are small enough they don't have to be looped, and they're stretchy enough not to break!

Place Value Pocket Chart ~ I bought a commerically made pocket chart to use in our mini classroom. The one I got was made by Learning Resources and was only $14 through Amazon. I knew I could make a homespun version of this but thought it would help my math corner at home seem more 'authentic'. So far we haven't used it too much but I know my son is eager to work on 3 digit numbers.

Hundreds Chart Puzzles~  I loved this idea from Debbie Diller's book. Cutting up a cardstock hundreds chart and rebuilding it is such a great idea. I prepped this activity for my son one night and planned on teaching him how to play when my daughter napped the next day. Much to my surprise he did the WHOLE thing while I was making breakfast. Next time I am going to give him a mat without numbers printed on it, so that he will have to think a bit more to assemble this.

I printed our hundreds chart puzzles from DeeDee's post at -  http://www.mrswillskindergarten.com/2011/06/math-work-stations-blog-party-chapter-6.html

Bean Sticks!

A bean stick is simply a popsicle stick with 10 beans glued to it! Easy right? I love frugal teaching tools!

I decided to use tongue depressors with lima beans that I had spray painted green. To attach the beans I used white Elmer's glue. Hot glue would likely make a stronger hold but I wanted to do this project WITH my son, not FOR him. So I opted for the white glue so he could make these independently.

We will be using the bean sticks for counting, place value, adding & subtracting. I will post activities as we do them!

Extra beans that are spray painted on just one side will also be used as counters. We've been using these this past year to play a fun game called "bean toss addition". I will try to track down the link from Heidi Songs that has printables to go with the game!

One great resource to go with your bean sticks is the "Count Your Beans" mat that Fran over at Kindergarten Crayons has posted. (In the last week I have spent countless hours reading her blog. I even had dreams one night I was in her classroom!)

http://kindergartencrayons.blogspot.com/search?q=bean&submit=search

This other blog post by Fran explains how to use the mat: http://kindergartencrayons.blogspot.com/2011/05/count-your-beans.html