Primary Flynn

Halloween is coming up and the students get so excited for it!!  This is when I love doing little Halloween games that are fun and the students can play over and over.  I use erasers and plastic spiders from the Dollar Store.  Here are some of the games we like to play in my class: Zero Wins Player A takes 10 pumpkin erasers and places them on the pumpkin and Player B takes 10 ghost erasers and places them on the ghost. Each player, in turn, spins the spinner and does what it says.  For example, if Player A spins “get 2”, Player A must take 2 ghost erasers and put them with their pumpkin erasers.  If Player B spins “lose 3”, Player B gives 3 of the ghost erasers to Player A.  The first player to end up with zero erasers wins. Spider's Web Taking turns, each player flicks the paper clip on the spinner and whatever number the paper clip lands on, the player takes that many spiders off the spider web.  Onc...

Last year for Thanksgiving, I wanted a game that the kids could easily play and have fun.  So I bought a big styrofoam ball and a bag of feathers from Dollarama and printed out a picture of a turkey.  I taped the turkey on the front and stuck the feathers in.  The students had to take turns rolling a die and take that amount of feathers out of the turkey.  Once all the feathers were gone, the students had to count how many feathers they each had and the student with the most feathers won.  Then the students placed the feathers back into the turkey and played again.   So this year, I decided to take this idea one step further and created feathers (which I laminated) with numbers and pictures of either one die or two dice.  And the game pretty much stays the same in that kids take turns rolling either one die or two dice and either take that amount of feathers or take the feather with that number/die/dice on it.  I hot glue gunned Q-tip...

Last March I created my Geometry fans that would be an assessment tool for me and just geometry fun for the kids.  My students LOVED using the fans with each other and at math centers.  So this year I have come up with number sense fans with a variety of numbers, dice and base 10 materials on each fan.  I am very excited to use this resource all year in my classroom.  I created small and bigger fans this year too.   This resource has been developed as a teaching tool and resource you and your students can use together or separately. These fans would be a great way to build number sense and operation sense with your students.  Students can use these fans as a reference when working on their math or at centres or with a partner. The fans are a great assessment tool for the teacher to quickly assess each student’s knowledge of number sense or operation sense. They are aligned with the Atlantic Canada Mathematics Curriculum outcomes. Included: ...

This year parents bought the school supplies and brought them in the first day of school.  It was very chaotic and I had a lot of bags to go through to that night.  I was at school until 11:30pm that first day.  I was going to let the students keep their scissors at their desks but I had a few students the first day cut anything in sight.  So I made sure every pair of scissors were labelled.  Many of the parents did label the supplies but some still needed to be labelled so I took some tape and labelled the rest and then put them in a big bucket.  But the first activity that they needed their scissors I found it took forever to hand them out.  So I wanted to come up with a solution where the scissors were still by me but the students could get them easily.  Then I remembered the foam you can use with plants.  I had used the foam a few years back for a mother's day craft with my grade 5/6s and I wanted to see if this idea would work.   ...

So last year around this time when my students were trying to find numbers in flyers, it was a HUGE mess in my class.  The flyers were just too big for their desks and the students had such a hard time and opening the flyers and trying to fold the flyers.  So I figured out half way through the year that maybe I could cut the flyers into little squares and it would be easier for the primary students to handle.  So today I did the same activity and it went sooooo much better.  I had the flyers already cut up and in a bin.  The kids were able to find the numbers and the mess was minimal.  Last year this activity left me exhausted, this year I loved the activity!!! Enjoy! Kemble :-)

Just wanted to share what my pringles can looks like with all my tape on it.  I always know where my tape is AND the caretaker was commenting on the can and remarked how I could put pins, elastics, rulers, etc in the middle of the can.  I didn't even think of that!!!  So I think my tape can will be turned into my tape and elastic can as I always find it hard to find my elastics when I need them.   Enjoy!! Kemble :-)

Any teacher that teaches primary/kindergarten know that you have to have loads of activities ready for the beginning of the year because being in big school can be a shock to some of the little ones and their attention span is not the greatest at the begin of the year.  I love playing bingo but sometimes the bingo games can just go on and you loose the kids attention very quickly.  I find 3x3 bingo cards are just right and the games can go at a pace the will keep the little ones attention.  I have 2 bingo games I play at the beginning of the year.  I play alphabet bingo and school supply bingo.  I also have large and medium sized alphabet cards so show the students so they get used to seeing those letters.  I also use these as alphabet mats the kids can use when sorting objects.  The supply bingo cards help the students recognize the different supplies we have in our classroom.   You can find these 2 different bingo games i...