Fall Fun Giveaway

There is a giveaway, link-up fun, and a free printable in the post, so read on...
Please link your Fall themed Math activities, post and printables at the bottom, and enter the Fall giveaway.

To celebrate Fall, I have a fun fall giveaway. Just enter below, and win all of my Fall themed printables from TpT!  
Just go to my TpT store, and  under Categories, select Fall/Autumn.
That's 12 Math Centers and Literacy Centers printables, along with Fall Cutting Strips, and all the spooky Halloween themed fun stuff!


Here's a quick summary of some of the products.

• You can read about the Fall Cutting Strips (part of the giveaway) here.
• Fall Themed Skip Count by 2, 5, and 10
  
  • Each of the three files is 14 pages long. Each one has a 5-in-a-row board game, puzzles and tons of printables.
  
  
• Fall into Numbers Game
  • Teaches students about the commutative property, and how to decompose numbers. It targets Common Core Standards K.OA.A.3 and 1.OA.B.3.
  
  
  
• Halloween Math - Skip Count by 2, 5, and 10
  
   
• Halloween Math More or Less
  • Meets common core standards: K.CC.B.4, K.CC.B.6, K.MD.B.3, 1.MD.C.4, 1.NBT.B.3 
  • These Math Center Games gives students fun hands on practice on the concepts of more, less, equal to, most, least etc.
    The worksheets move from easy to hard. They work with numbers from 1 to 30. It will be hoot for students to finish the worksheets with these fun vibrant pictures!
  
  
  
• Halloween themed A to Z Alphabet or Poster Cards
  
  
  
    

• Halloween themed Long I Word Family Games
  
  • Trick or Treat with 5 Long I word games! 36 cards can either be sorted according to their word family (witches' hat word family cards), or be used to play card games (with 6 gotcha cards). They focus on these word families: -ice; -ide; -ife; -ike; -ile; -ime; -ine; -ite; -ive; -ight
  • The cross word puzzle, and placing the words in the correct boxes reinforce the same word families as mentioned above. 
  • The last worksheet with missing letters introduces kids to a few more families:-ipe; -ire; -y; -ie
    
• Here is a free Fall printable of preschool concepts from my TpT store.
• The worksheets teach visual discrimination, sequencing, estimation, counting (1 – 10), some fun handwriting practice, and letter recognition! 
• This is is free for a limited time only. Once the giveaway closes, it will be priced. So get it now :)
• Some shots from the file:

 

Now for the giveaway, finally......
  a Rafflecopter giveaway


Fall in love with Math!!

How I motivate and reward my kindergartener’s good behavior at school…

Batman's KG classroom has a color coded behavior chart.

Pink – seriously awesome super duper job!

Purple

Blue – above expectations

Green - everyone starts their day here (if they come home with this color, it is all good!)

Yellow

Orange

Red – big no no!

So green is good. Anything above green is better! The problem is keeping him there with consistency, and  motivate him to stay there.

He is the proverbial Curious George. He needs to know everything about everyone! So one of his challenge is not talking "too much". The other is the normal energy level of an active kindergartener, which is not conducive to sitting down for long  any period of time quietly. The third is being ahead of the curve. He finishes his work early, but does not necessarily think it is a fun or complimentary to him if he is given challenge work. His point - why do I have to do it when no one else has to do it? 

Strategies that I  have come up with:

• Humor - works great with boys - so what happened? Your butt got too fidgety, and would not stay put on the carpet? Tomorrow if it happens again, we will have to come up with a special booty dance, and we get to do it only if you manage to keep it parked in place correctly :)
• Save your words at school, and you can use it all up on someone in the family when you come home - which pretty much means he gets to talk UN-interrupted for 10 minutes!
• Little reminder notes in the lunch box and snack packs (write it out the night before)
• Loss of one privilege if it is yellow, two if it is orange etc. 
• If he stays on green, he always gets to choose his snack (from a selection) for the next day. 
• Now to the motivation part. It is his job to stay at green. But if he does better than expected, we have decided to go on a date (on his half day at school, when Spiderman will still be in preschool). He needs 15 points for a date. Blue counts as 1 point, purple as 2, and pink as 3. He can choose to go on a date every 5 days if he gets all pinks :) I might have to make it 20 points as we progress through the school year. 
• Small treats from a special "treasure box" if he gets pink, purple, or blue in a row 2 or more times.

 Suggestions are very very welcome. What has worked for you, and what does not work from experience from our collective mommy wisdom please :)

Indoor Fairy Play Invitation

I made some furniture for the fairy garden outdoors. But the kids decided they wanted a chance to play with them first, inside.

They wanted me to "surprise" them. We went though the house together looking for some of the components together. And  I set it up for them to play with some new things for the surprise element. Unfortunately, I could not resist playing with it myself, so there is no picture of just the components of the play invitation separately :)

This is what my two super-heroes came up with - an enchanted schoolroom in the middle of a magical forest. A moss sheet from Michaels, loose moss, fake flowers help set up the forest. The ceramic houses are candle holders. There's one for Spiderman, one for Batman, and one for me (my felted toadstool house)

 

The whole place is in a party mood. Batman told me we are having an "open-house" at the schoolroom. (Hmm, wonder where he learned it from). We have plenty of benches and wooden blocks for seating if you don't fancy the grass.

We are having a tea party. For seating, the super-heroes provided the guest with mushroom buttons, upside down flower pot, barrel, butterfly stones, and some low stools made of shiny smooth glass with small pebbles on the bottom. Batman made the stool with me.



If you don't like it picnic style on the ground, there is always the seating area. The chairs are the latest in style -  smooth shiny glass pebbles hot glued on corks, with polished shell for back support. 
(A tiny disclosure for others who are thinking of branching into fairy furniture: I made a few chairs with shells for both the seat and the back. Batman and Spiderman told me those look like "potty chairs". So use them for the fairy bathroom!)

There is a tiny book basket (a shell) with fragrant books made out of orange peel.
The table seen here is smooth polished river stone mounted on cork. Someone left some food on the table. There is a gazing ball near the seating area as well.

There is also a dance floor. The small tiles are glued together to make the dance floor. We have some lanterns for later in the night, and of course, some string light bulbs hanging from the branches.

As you can see, lots going on. Tinker Bell is visiting us, along with Bambi. There is a rose trellis (upside down, I think). We are still cleaning up, and getting everything ready.
 

Do join us for the party. 

Fall Cutting Strips

Happy Tuesday!

Does it feel like Fall where you are? Still feels like Summer in Southern California...

To get in the mood, I created some Fall cutting strips.

Spiderman wasn't sure what months are in Fall. He knows that Fall comes after Summer, but not the months. And the answer of course depends on where you live. But for the U.S., there isn't much confusion. So, some fine motor control, some learning about seasons and months, and lots of fun! These clip arts are great conversation starters, or writing prompts.
Spiderman told me it would be "awesome" to jump on a pile of leaves. He thinks he would like to gather them the first time. But after gathering, jumping etc, he would be "too tired", so I would have to gather the leaves the second time :)

The one for September is free. Get it here.
Please Note: This is for personal use only. Teachers, please see my TpT store.



The pictures inspired him to hunt down Pumpkin Soup , and Delicious , followed by Leaves (a wonderful book meant for a somewhat younger crowd. In my house, Batman reads it, and Spiderman turns the pages), and Big Pumpkin , with more books being gathered. 

Spider-man's list (for right now):
1. From Seed to Pumpkin
2. Curious George Goes to a Costume Party
3. Quite a few Dora and Diego Halloween themed books
4. Spooky Bunny Tales (Max and Ruby)

Batman's list looks more like this:
1. Calender Mystery #10 - October Ogre 
2. Flat Stanley and the Haunted House  
3. Ready Freddy! #11: Pumpkin Elf Mystery 

We are still adding to the list...

I had made Halloween themed A to Z Cards. After cutting the clip-arts, and taking a look at the cards, the two super-heroes were happily (read no fighting, screaming and whining)  engaged in creating fall themed cards of their own...

For the other two months, take a look here. These are great to associate events with months. Halloween is in October, Thanksgiving in November etc. I will add more as the seasons change.

Find my post and other awesome ideas here.

Back to School We Go....

I just came back from KG orientation! Seems like I am more anxious than my Kindergartener! Batman seems to be taking it all in stride!

But Spiderman is feeling a bit left out. So I created these fun patterns in back to school theme for him.

Please Note: The file here is intended for personal use ONLY. Teachers, please see my TpT store.The one in the TpT store has more patterns, and has more complicated ones, like ABCD patterns. 

In addition to patterns, you can sneak in some fine motor skills. The child cuts the answer cards, and chooses one (or more card, depending on the pattern and the question) to complete the pattern. You can also laminate them or put them in sheet protectors, and have them write down the right answer, by getting them to write 1, 2 etc underneath the card in the right order!

You can see some samples right here.

Download the file from here. Have fun!

Ten Frames Fun

Please check out my TpT sale on all products. You can net a 28% savings :)


Now on to some free and on sale stuff on the store....

Spiderman has gotten interested in ten frames all of a sudden.

Ten frames are great visual tools for helping students to not only "see" the numbers and count - connecting counting to cardinality, but it's great with quick mental addition and subtraction, gaining understanding of place value, start composing and decomposing numbers into tens and ones etc. All in all, good stuff, and aligned with the Common Core Standards!

So  I decided to capitalize on this, and made some printables with themes I know he will like...
He has already played with the Pirate Themed Ten Frames previously, posted on my TpT store. You can read more about the fun "10 Doubloons" game it contains here. The game is fairly easy for Batman, so for him, it is purely a review. It also has the frames, of course. Spiderman has been working on his "spidey-fingers" by cutting out all pirate-y pictures to fill his frame.  

But then he requested something "different". So I made the space themed ten frames, which are free to download from here!
It has an empty ten frame for 10 and 20, space-y pictures to fill up those frames with, and for some great scissor fun, and it has the numerals from 1 through 20, along with their spelled counterparts.

I also  made some "I have-Who has" card games - three to be exact - for cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers, with the same space theme. Please find them here.

Batman has been making various jokes - about how he is 'having a blast with them', and 'these are outta this world mom'.

Well, at least all the jokes are complimentary. Spiderman does not get it yet....

The two games are definitely a bit of a challenge for Spiderman, and Batman is getting a decent amount of workout with these. Spiderman can't read yet, so he can't play the ordinal game. So please keep that in mind if you are downloading the games.

It targets the following Common Core Standards.

Counting and Cardinality

• Know number names and the count sequence
• Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.

Number and Operations in Base Ten

• Work with numbers 11-19 to gain foundations for place value 
• Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones
• Understand that the two digits of a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. Understand the following as special cases: 10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.” The numbers from 11 to 19 are composed of a ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones. The numbers 10, 20, and 30 are composed of one, two and three tens and zero ones.
  

Game 1: I have – Who has?

This game helps your little astronauts review their numbers from 1-30. The numbers are made up of yellow “ones” units and “tens” units. 

Game 2: I have – Who has?

This game helps your little astronauts review their numbers from 10 - 100, skip counting by 10. The numbers are made up of blue "tens” units. 

Game 3: I have – What comes next?

The astronauts start with the first ordinal number, and have to find the card that comes next. Astronauts may also practice placing the cardinal number cards in order from first to thirtieth.

You can find the games here.

I am hoping Spiderman and Batman gain (and build upon) a strong sense of numbers with all these fun tools! It is an added bonus that they are working towards the Common Core Standards as well!
If your little pirates, or astronauts find these useful and fun, please do leave me some comments and feedback :)