Common Core Worksheets Link and Winners!

A wonderful colleague share a link to a site to download free worksheets for Common Core and I thought I'd pass it along! The site is called Common Core Sheets. There are loads of great resources here and no membership is required. When you have some free time, you may want to check it out! 

My winners from the last post were chosen the old-fashioned way. My son helped me out on this one by picking three numbers from 1-5. Texting comes in handy. :) 

Congrats to Suzy Q, Bright Concepts 4 Teachers and Michelle J! Check your emails for the Valentine Candy Heart Toss and Addition with Four Two-Digit Numbers activities! Hope you like them!

Valentine's Day Math Center Activity and a Giveaway

What a nice surprise it was to have an ice day today and get caught up on some things! I'm trying to get ahead with my February planning! 

As you know, I've been making my way through the common core checklist and using that checklist to guide my planning while trying to work in various monthly themes for January like penguins, Dr. King and of course for February, Valentine's Day!

This is a fun activity I will use as an educational center during our Valentine's Day celebration. It's a shake and toss (on/off) activity with conversation hearts and a mat. I used a similar activity last year for St. Patrick's Day with green bingo chips and my firsties loved it! I modified the activity so my second graders that looped up with me can use it this year with sums to twenty. 

I found these large candy hearts that I like better than the tiny ones for this kind of activity. After the game, each child will get a small box of untouched :) hearts as a prize for playing along! That way, I can reuse the large hearts next year.

To see more click on the picture below! The set comes with directions, a fun, colorful game mat and two versions of the recording sheet. One has sums to ten, the other sums to twenty. It's just $1.25 at my TPT shop. 

I also added some more practice pages and some posters for properties of addition and strategies for addition to my new addition with four, two-digit numbers set. My kids are really starting to get the hang of this and I have seen great progress in their written responses too!

As usual, with new items, leave me your email in the comments below and I'll randomly select three to get them free! :)

I'm looking for an easy, inexpensive whole-class activity or project for 100's Day. I need an idea for a 20 minute rotation with four second grade classes that can be managed with just little old me~ so Fruit Loop necklaces are out!! I'd love to hear your awesome suggestions! 

This week, we continue with our penguin nonfiction unit and research reports. I'll be back soon to share some photos, ideas and a links to some awesome penguin purchases I made that you may want to check out too!

Hooray for another four day week!

The Big Scary Math Problem and a Freebie

Blank stares and little panic filled the room as I presented the class with a mental math problem. The big, scary math problem before them: 

20+13+17+20= _____

This was tricky for most of my students because they are used to seeing two, two-digit numbers written vertically on the majority of their practice pages. 

Several students were able to persevere,  figure out the sum and share strategies for finding the answer. Light bulbs started coming on as others listened to their approach.

Following our double digit with and without regrouping addition unit, I decided to tackle 2.NBT.6.

Number and Operations in Base Ten (6): Add up to four two-digit numbers using strategies based on place value and properties of operations

I had a hard time finding resources for this so I made a few of my own!

Here's a freebie for you to help your students master this standard. The first page is blank so you can use it to write in additional problems of your own.

There are several practice pages included, each with different problems.

As we worked through the problem and talked about various strategies like the commutative property and looking for "friendly" numbers, the kiddos saw that the big, scary problem wasn't so bad after all! Still, we will need some additional practice with this skill! Hopefully this method will help with our mental math fluency as well!

Hope you can use this with your second graders, firsties that need a challenge or third graders needing extra reinforcement!

Have a wonderful rest of the week! I love four day weeks! :)

Tacky the Penguin and a Tacky Freebie

This week we started one of my favorite reading units~ Tacky the Penguin! I made this packet of activities to add to the unit that I know my kiddos will have a lot of fun with!

I'm so excited to use these with my class! I think they'll enjoy the Tacky brain break cards the most!

That's just a sample of what is inside. Click here to read more!

Here are a few freebie pages from the set that I hope your students will like! Click on the picture to download it from my dropbox! 

 Have fun with them!

MLK Packet and Civil Rights Photo Freebies

Tomorrow it's back to school for me! Break has been a whole lot of fun and I got some creating accomplished too!

I was able to finish my Dr. King Packet over break, which was a huge accomplishment! Some of it we will do on MLK Day and some activities I will save for Black History Month in February. It's an entire bundle of Common Core ELA activities integrated with social studies!

There are posters, a timeline project, a nonfiction reading selection and a guided highlighted reading activity, writing pages, word work activities, an easy bulletin board display project and some mind maps to get the kids doing some higher level thinking about the important issues of equality, justice, peace and diversity. 

Click here to read more!

Over break, I visited The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. I am so fortunate to be able to go often, because it's only an hour-long drive from home. I snapped a few photo freebies while I was there to share with all of you for your lessons for MLK Day. This is the actual bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat! Feel free to right click and save them from here. Everything at the museum is enclosed in glass and track lighting is all over the displays so there are a lot of reflections. For more interesting photos, click here to download a slideshow freebie from my dropbox. 

Feel free to Pin and share!

Remember to enter the Teachers Notebook Sweepstakes every day! :)